by Piper Lawson
He chuckles. “I’m your density. I mean, your destiny.”
“Are you quoting Back to the Future?”
“I could do it all night, baby,” he mumbles, still half asleep.
I ignore the way the endearment makes my stomach flop.
It’s the second time he’s said it tonight, and I pretend not to care.
“You hitting on me again? You’ll have to do better than sweet talk about bottled pizza if you want to get in my pants.”
Wes drops back to the couch. My throat constricts as his gaze locks on mine.
It’s too dark to read his expression, so there’s no excuse for the tingling that starts at my core, spreads between my thighs.
“Come here,” he murmurs.
I inch forward until my shins bump the couch.
Wes crooks a finger, and I bend, bringing our faces a few inches apart. His scent, masculine and subtle, hits me like a wave.
I swallow the moan.
He’s right that scent isn’t the same as compatibility.
If it was, my cells would be bridging the distance between us, colliding with his, melting us both into a puddle of atoms and electricity and wanting.
Wes reaches behind my head with both hands, working carefully. The ponytail falls out, and he holds out the elastic.
I slide it on my wrist. “I thought you liked it up.”
“I do. You have no idea how much.”
My heart is hammering right now just from sharing the same air as him.
“Hey, Rena.”
His voice is the only sound in the apartment, but I can make out a door shutting down the hall. “Yeah?”
“I’m glad you’re here.”
He says it as if he’s asking a question.
Wes is curious. He’s always curious but not like Kendall. It’s as if he’s chronicling the world every second but doesn’t always ask about it. He takes it all in, processes it, turns it out in some elegant version of its former self.
My throat tightens as I wrap my arms around myself. My fingers dig into my arms as goose bumps rise along my skin. My nipples are probably sticking through my shirt, but I don’t care.
“In your apartment?” I say at last, meeting his gaze.
He’s fully awake now, searching my face as if there’s something worth finding here. “In my life.”
I’ve had crushes, but this isn’t that. It’s a truth that makes my chest tighten and my pulse race anytime he’s close.
It’s impossible to think of anything other than him and the expansiveness in my chest.
He’s watching me, waiting. As though his words are the simplest thing in the world.
And maybe they are.
That’s the last thought I have before I shift onto Wes’s lap and cover his mouth with mine.
Yup, I’m kissing Wes again, and it’s nothing like the first two times.
For one, because we’re not in public.
For two, because no matter what he said a few hours ago, he’s kissing me back, his lips eager, his hands grabbing me with a roughness that’s new and sexy.
The air is crushed from my lungs as my back hits the couch.
Yeah, I’m definitely a step late in this dance, because Wes flips me over as if the deliberateness he wields like a weapon has deserted him.
The leather is cold against my low back where my shirt’s ridden up, and I officially give zero fucks about the remote control digging into my shoulder blade. My fingers tug on his hair, his tongue tangles with mine, and his hips rub against me.
He’s awake everywhere now, his body pinning me down and his hands running over me.
And Wes is on The Plan.
At least physically, because his erection’s digging into my hip as if it wants to beat me into submission.
I think I want that too.
I arch against him because I’ve been thinking about this since Friday. No, before.
His mouth moves to my jaw, and I moan. In support or complaint, I’m not sure… until it runs down my collarbone. When it brushes over my breast through the thin T-shirt, I decide it was definitely support.
“Wes, wait,” I pant, pulling back an inch and feeling his chest flex under my hands in protest. But I have to say something, because if he stops now, I might die. “You said you didn’t want this. What changed?”
At close range, his gaze is dark with heat and full of the same intelligence that hooked me from the beginning. “What changed is you’re not trying to push me away by fucking me.” He tucks a piece of hair behind my ear. “Which makes the idea a hell of a lot more appealing.”
My damp fingers trail along the leather couch at my side as I swallow. He’s right. I’m not trying to push him away at all. If I could drag him inside me, hold him there forever, I would.
“Okay, then.”
“‘Okay, then’ what?” he says evenly.
I haul Wes’s mouth back to mine.
God, his smile feels even better than it looks.
It’s three in the morning, my heart is beating out of my chest, and the most serious guy I know is laughing about it.
I take my turn, my hands running down his ropey arms. He feels damn fantastic, and it’s not just his body. (Although, holy hell, his body. I want to lick him everywhere.)
Just like the dressed version of Wes, this one’s precise. Every touch is efficient but eager at the same time, as if I’m a problem he’s solved in that Rubik’s cube brain of his, but he’s really fucking glad he gets to do it.
I pull at his T-shirt, and he helps me get it off. My breath shudders out on a groan. “Dammit, Wes, is this from boxing?” I drag a finger down his pecs, slowly tracing the lines all the way to his abs.
God, he’s sexy, and when his muscles jump under my touch, I do it again.
“It’s from sciencing.”
His solemn response has me laughing. I’m caught between admiring him and wanting to drape myself on him.
So, I do both, greedily drinking in the planes and slopes of his chest and abs as I pull him closer.
We’re skin to skin, and I clearly chose right because he’s warm and strong and smells like heaven.
Wes drags my tank top up and off my arms. Then pulls back to look at me.
“Whoa.” His voice is reverent and a little stunned.
I have good boobs. I know it. But I’m really grateful for that in this moment. “You’re not missing the ponytail?”
“I have other things to distract me.” He lowers himself to me. My superiority slips the second he fills his palms with me, cupping my breasts as if he wants to memorize the shape of them, and it’s gone when his hot tongue licks my nipple, and a jolt of electricity spears through my core.
He works me over with his hands and his mouth, and I’m happy to let him.
He lifts his head long enough to shoot me a dirty look before dipping his tongue into my navel, tugging on the waistband of my borrowed boxers.
I push his hands away, and he looks up, questioning.
If he thinks he’s going to take me apart again without letting me at him? He’s so wrong.
I thread my fingers through his hair, pulling his lips back to mine as I reach for the waistband of his pajama pants.
I’ve been feeling him through the fabric, and it’s not enough, not even close. I want to wrap my hand around him. My lips.
I want Wes Robinson and his cock to independently decide I’m the best thing to ever happen to both of them.
We swallow each other’s sounds as I find him. My fingers wrap around his hot, hard length, and he’s smooth and firm and all I can think is how good he’ll feel inside me. How good I want to make him feel.
His hungry groan mingles with my satisfied gasp as I rub my thumb over the head of his length, twisting away from his mouth. “Condom,” I pant.
Wes pulls back and looks at me as if I’ve asked him a complicated math problem.
Then he expels a stream of curse words that have my brows hitting the ceiling be
fore he vanishes down the hall.
Suddenly I’m wide awake. This is a problem. Like, big-ass, level-four hurricane, Richter-scale problem.
My mind spins, and I’m wondering if there’s a twenty-four-hour pharmacy within two blocks.
Hell. The way I’m craving Wes, I’d go to Brooklyn and back without a second thought.
“I hope that’s still viable,” I say as he reappears, holding a packet aloft as if he’s Arthur and just pulled a sword from a stone.
“Don’t tell me these things expire.”
I realize he’s joking the second he says it, and I’d laugh if he didn’t look so damn hot, shirtless with his pajama pants low on his hips.
“Hey, Wes?” I say when he stops in front of the couch, looking at me through hungry eyes. “I love that you don’t do this all the time.”
“Doesn’t mean I can’t.” He shifts back on top.
Excitement races through me, and I swear I’m tingling from my toes to my fingertips as Wes settles between my legs.
“You ready?” he asks, and I fucking love that he does.
I was ready weeks ago.
Part of me wants to blame this on the evening or the gummies, but I’d be lying to myself. It’s all Wes. I crave him, want him closer. And I’ve been dying for an excuse to do exactly that.
I thought I was prepared, but when he brushes against me, then presses into me, an inch at a time, my body freaks out.
Or maybe it’s the rest of me that needs adjusting to the fact that Wes is inside me right now.
My moan tangles with his tight exhale because, holy shit, he feels amazing.
He gives me a moment to get used to him – or maybe he needs the moment, I can’t tell because we’re both panting and tense and shaking – before he starts to move.
He finds a rhythm, his face buried in my hair. The heavy breathing matches his thrusts, both accelerating until all I can do is hang on.
Pleasure builds inside me, along with urgency, as if all of this is a preview of something bigger.
He moves over me, and the outline of his profile is barely visible in the dark. His hair falling over his face, brushing mine. The light sheen of sweat on his skin, the sounds he’s making, the tension in his back under my hands tell me he’s getting close too.
It’s so different from last week because it’s about him as much as it’s about me.
It’s that Wes is the one who’s part of me, who’s slowly unraveling over me, inside me, with me.
It’s Wes who’s as wrapped up in this moment as I am, which only makes me more in awe of him.
Of us.
And that thought has a warning tingle starting in the back of my brain.
You’re still friends. You can walk away anytime.
Somewhere in our childhoods, maybe grade two or three, we’re told by the world that lies are ugly. That the truth is always better, cleaner, purer, more virtuous. That the truth sets us free.
But lies can be beautiful too.
Wes groans into my neck, and I dig my nails into his back as if what I’m feeling will fade as quickly as the marks.
As I come and he follows me over, we’re as beautiful as a lie can be.
Because I’m falling in love with Wes Robinson, and I can’t do a damn thing about it.
20
Wes
A stream of polite curses drifts from the tiny form in the lab kitchen.
“You okay?” I ask, coming up behind Carly.
She whirls around, knocking into her coffee. “Oh. Yeah. Just a case of the Thursdays. Is that a thing? It should be a thing. Been overworked and drinking too much of this stuff. But I was reading one of your papers over the weekend. It’s amazing how much you’ve produced. You’re what, thirty-two?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“Wow. And you have another paper you’re finishing. It must be all you can think about.”
It’s not all I can think about.
Because Rena and I? We had sex. At my apartment.
Yes, I’m saying it as if I deserve a medal because I’ve done something momentous, but at the same time, I feel as though I would give it back because I’m honored just to have been considered.
This must be what Oscar nominees feel like.
The only reason I let it happen was that it was unscripted and earnest. It wasn’t about getting off; it was about sharing more moments together. Like the ones we’d shared earlier on the balcony.
So, I let her kiss me.
And then I showed her exactly what I’d wanted to do with her for weeks.
Okay. The trailer, at least.
I couldn’t have dreamed the way she shifted over me, her face open and wanting and honest as she took my face in her hands and pressed her lips to mine.
The rest didn’t suck either.
Seeing her naked was a totally new experience. Her curves were even better up close, and I wished I had enough hands to touch them all at once.
When I pressed inside her slick wet heat, I was torn between focusing on the present and thinking of all the other things I wanted to do with her.
When I woke up this morning, following two snoozes on my alarm clock I don’t remember initiating, light was streaming around the edges of the curtains, my phone had zero messages, and I had to haul my ass to school.
By the time I got there, I opened my phone to find a text message saying, “Thanks for last night. I had a really good time.”
By noon, I hadn’t come up with an appropriate reply.
Thanks for buying me dinner and watching my favorite movies.
Delete.
I enjoyed getting high with you.
Delete.
What I end up with is, “You’re welcome.”
It’s a thousand times worse, but once I hit Send, I can’t take it back.
Now it’s nearly 5 p.m., I’ve canceled on Jake at the gym because I don’t want to look him in the eye, and I’m trying to get through my paper revisions.
I take my coffee mug to my lab office. My books from school are still in my bag, and I set them on the desk.
My extension rings, and I pick it up. “Hello?”
“Hello, this is Ben, Jake’s friend. You left a message to discuss your app.”
I straighten. “I did?”
“This morning at”—hesitation—“1 a.m.”
Fuck. I don’t remember that.
I think fast. “Right. Well, I have a testimonial couple who provided some quotes. I could take you through it.”
“I only have a minute now, but let’s set up a time to talk,” he suggests.
I nod. “Sure. Thank you.”
I hang up with a fist pump.
Then hit another contact on my phone.
I listen to the ring once. Twice.
“Dr. Strange,” Rena answers. “What a pleasurable surprise.”
“I think the word is ‘pleasant.’”
The low sound of her laughter drags down my back. “You sure about that, Wes?”
The moment she says my name, two things happen.
One, I know she doesn’t regret what happened last night, which is a huge relief I didn’t know I was waiting on until now.
Two, I realize I’m sitting in my office with a full-fledged hard-on, because Rena’s voice goes straight for my dick as if she knows where to find it.
Oh, wait, she does.
I’m going to have to stop the inner monologue making fun of my teenage students for their rampant hormones.
I clear my throat. “Listen. Do you remember calling Ben last night?”
“Nope.”
“Apparently, we—I—did.”
Rena gasps. “Oh my God. Vaguely. That must have been between two and three.” After my silence, she clarifies, “Back to the Future II and III, I mean.”
Because we didn’t have a second round, or a third.
But now I’m thinking about it.
Tasting her while she moans, naked, over me.
Taking her from
behind, that icy ponytail wrapped around my hand.
Sliding my dick between her parted lips. Watching her eyes change color as she sucks me off.
“Right. Well, I told him we have a compelling testimonial and he said he’s willing to talk again. You and I should meet,” I decide. “To get the plan together.”
“Good idea. When?”
I wait a beat. “You busy now?”
“Some client work’s kicking my ass. When I get done, I need to get something for my friend’s wedding shower.”
That’s how, thirty minutes later, instead of working on the final revisions for my paper, I’m in a bookstore in Chelsea.
An interesting bookstore.
“You’re buying a gift?” I prompt.
“For Haley.” I remember her mentioning her school friend who still lives in Philadelphia with her rock-star boyfriend. Fiancé?
I flip through a book. “This is… detailed.”
I look up to find Rena studying me. Her red dress is high at the neck and sleeveless and shows off her long legs. Her hair’s pulled back in the usual ponytail, which has a dirty part of my brain working overtime.
But it’s the smile playing at the corner of her lips that captures my attention.
She cocks her head. “You keep looking at my mouth.”
“You aren’t wearing lipstick.” She looks surprised. “You weren’t wearing it last night either. You were at the debate. But not at my place.”
“It was a chaotic day.” She presses those lips together, which doesn’t help my awareness.
Another patron comes down the row, and I realize we’re way too close for a normal conversation.
I grudgingly put a few more inches between us.
Rena scans the row of books. “I realized something when I was doing research for this client Kendall and I have. It’s not about finding the perfect match. It’s about thinking that we have.”
“I don’t follow.”
“It’s a matter of perspective. For someone with a problem, ASMR has layers. It doesn’t matter that it’s a comb. The comfort we get from that is disproportionate to what it actually is.” I blink at her, and I’m about to blame my denseness on the distracted new reality I’m living in until she continues. “You’re not offering nine alleles, Wes. You’re offering security. Confidence. Relief for people who’ve been looking for so long they’re starting to think there’s no one on the planet for them. This work can tell them there is.