by Clover Hart
All the while, the image of that potted plant with the choked roots keeps recurring.
By the time the credits roll, I don’t know what the hell the meaning of the arty movie is. I don’t even know if it’s made to turn on women or men — or if it’s supposed to be provocative in that way at all.
All I know is that I wish Zach were here, because for some weird reason, I can’t shake him now. God, I should’ve known that this would be the outcome ever since that first day when we traded insults at the coffee shop.
But what am I going to do about it?
Anything?
As I tiptoe out of the balcony, I’m still heated up, flushed, not knowing what to do with myself. But when I emerge from the balcony staircase, I almost run into another person who was obviously sitting in a floor seat.
Shit.
Zach looks down at me and adjusts his glasses, then clears his throat. I cross my arms over my chest, using my crumpled jacket as a barrier. My pulse is beating in my temples, chest, and, oh yeah — my nethers. I’m one big, embarrassed heartbeat who can’t stop looking into Zach’s blue eyes.
I start to leave him standing there without a word, but then everything that’s been building up for an hour and a half rushes me at one time: need, desire, frustration—
I drop my jacket and spring toward him, wrapping my arms around his neck to pull him into a crazy kiss.
After a shocking moment, he holds me tight and kisses me, too. We stumble back into the stairway area, crashing into the wall. I’m pulling at his hair and he’s plowing his fingers into my hair and … dear God, I can’t get enough of him.
I want.
I need.
I’m going to have, and I don’t give a shit about anything else right now.
I break the kiss by yanking on his hair so that he’s looking at me. My cheeks are burning from the slight stubble on his skin, and the friction feels so damned good.
More.
“My house,” I say as I start to walk away. “Now.”
Without even looking back, I’m sure he’s with me.
Chapter 19
Zach
It’s happening.
I barely remember going to my car while Mandy goes to hers. Then I tear up the road on the way to her condo complex.
Streets, empty. Her place, not very far.
When I arrive, she’s fumbling with her keys as she tries to open her front door. It’s as if my mind clicks on a screenshot as I take her in — her hair a mess because of the way my fingers dug into it back at the theater, her skin flushed as she curses because her door isn’t opening quickly enough, her body in all those clothes that I’m going to work off piece by piece once we’re alone …
She shoulders into her door and I’m right behind her, forging into her house, catching the scent of her shampoo and flowers just before I kick back at the door to jam it closed.
I’m ready to pull her against me again — my goddamn body is screaming at me to do it now — but Mandy is backing away from me, her eyes wide.
This isn’t the same situation as last night when she retreated from me after I kissed her in the saloon. Now it’s as if she’s putting up the biggest dare of all between us.
I slowly follow her into the main room where there’s a plain leather couch, a plasma TV, a glass coffee table, and a view of the leafy sidewalk outside through the sliding glass door. And that’s all my stuttering brain processes before Mandy starts toward the curtains, probably to draw them closed.
“Leave them open,” I say.
She looks at me as if I’m insane, and I am — crazy with the heat that’s spreading through me, screwed up because I’m getting hard so fast, cracked in the head about this girl who’s so wrong for me. It’s obvious we’re not even going to make it to her bedroom, and when she pushes her hair back from her face, I can see that the thought of leaving the curtains open does something to her. Something hot.
That only makes me hotter.
“Someone might walk by and see,” she says.
“Just like in the movie when the neighbors saw each other through their windows?”
She bites her bottom lip and smiles a little as if she’s remembering that part of the film. She’s still got that armor on, but I’m beginning to see how I’m going to strip it off. God bless Aroused, because it’s already gotten her most of the way there.
Now I just have to do the rest.
I move a step closer, and she backs toward the window, her smile fading, her eyes widening even more.
She reaches behind her before she hits the wall. “If I leave these curtains open, then I’m an exhibitionist, not a voyeur.”
“Weren’t the man and woman in Aroused voyeurs and exhibitionists?”
Hearing the title seems to excite her, making her chest rise and fall with every fast breath. Or maybe it’s just our sparring that’s pushing things along. Her defenses are still intact, but the more she looks at those curtains, then at me, she seems to loosen up and …
Hell, I’m just starting to really get it now. Mandy doesn’t like to be talked into things, but she likes to be dared. That way she can talk herself into things.
“I dare you to leave those curtains open, Mandy.”
She lifts her chin, and I know I’ve got her — the girl who never refuses a dare. My heart is pounding, and she has to see what she does to me.
A heavy second drags by, and something clicks in her eyes.
When she surges toward me, I meet her halfway, and after we crash together, we kiss like we fight — with building tension that pushes us until one of us has got to give, and I’m getting there so fucking fast that I don’t know how much longer this can go on.
I pull up on the bottom of her sweater, and she grasps my wrist. I stop, then remember what Mandy needs.
I won’t talk her into anything.
I only slow down the kiss while running my hands up her arms, then back down. As she sighs under my mouth, I coast up her arms again and then change direction, using one hand to brush my fingertips over her soft throat. After a belly-tightening pause, I ease under her sweater’s neckline to skim her collarbone.
She opens her mouth against my chin, then makes a muffled sound.
We breathe together as I keep my fingers where they are. The wait is killing me, but I endure it, goddammit. I wait and wait, then finally take my fingers out of her sweater and stroke down the front of her chest.
As I cup her breast through her sweater, she stands on her toes and buries her face against my shoulder, clinging to my jacket. I can’t stop myself now. Knowing that I’m making her feel good needles me right where it counts. Everything seems to flip upside down in me as I try to get another moan out of her by circling my thumb over her bra, feeling her get excited even underneath all that material.
God, she feels so good, better than I imagined she would. She’s round and soft, just right for me as I lose myself a little more in playing with her and pleasing her. Every tiny sound she makes as she keeps pressing her face against me and pulling at my jacket drives me closer toward an edge.
Suddenly she tugs at my jacket, working it off.
When that’s done, I slow things down again and go back to what I was doing before. She has to be the one to get that sweater off, not me.
Tightening control of myself, I cup her tits and stimulate her through that heavy knit material some more, acting like the last thing I want her to do is get rid of that fucking sweater.
“Zach,” she whispers, inching her fingers under my shirt.
I suck in a breath at the skin-to-skin contact, and she seems to like that, because she runs her hands up my sides, exploring.
I’m getting to be one super happy motherfucker, but her sweater is still on, and I have the feeling that it’s because she’s afraid to strip off all that protection she wears.
I stroke my hands down from her breasts to her waist, then back up again, but I don’t remove anything from her or suggest a damned word.
“Shit,” she finally whispers, pushing away from me. And with one frustrated, hallelujah tug, she pulls the sweater over her head and tosses it to the floor.
We face off, both still fighting to control our breathing, just like neither of us wants to admit how in to each other we are. I’m probably breathing harder than she is, because here’s the girl I like, curvy in all the right places, standing there in a plain white bra with a pink ribbon in the center. It barely contains her beautiful tits, and that makes it the most fucking provocative bra I’ve ever seen. My body’s kicking and screaming for her to strip it off.
Now I’m willing to take a gamble to speed things along. “Those boots,” I say. “I dare you to get rid of those next.”
It’s not a bra, but it’s another step in the right direction.
She slides a glance over to the uncurtained sliding glass door. No one’s outside to see us.
“Who’s going to notice?” I ask. “Who’s going to know that you’re with the bad techie who wants to change this town?”
“I’m going to know.”
“And is that such a terrible thing?”
There’s something deeper going on inside her than getting caught by her neighbors. I can see it in her eyes, so I go to the curtains and close them.
“You,” I say quietly, “still have a dare on the table.”
She tilts her head. Then, instead of doing what I suggested with her boots, she unbuttons the top of her jeans, and it looks like she’s doing it just to be contrary.
Is she throwing some kind of dare back at me?
I have no idea what she’s going for, but when she hitches her thumbs into the front pockets of her jeans, my hard-on rages. She’s not only ready to go to war — she’s doing it country style, boots and all.
Until this second, I never knew how much the wholesome thing does it for me.
“How about you take off your shoes first?” she says.
I think I was wrong about Mandy. Evidently she wants to do the talking, and she’s skipping the whole dare part.
So shutting the fuck up right now.
I take off my shoes and socks. As she begins to take off her boots, my body thuds and clamors.
Is the armor coming off all the way? Please, God, yes …
“Your shirt,” she says. “Do you really need it that much?”
“Not right now.”
And there goes my shirt.
Mandy, in her bra and with her thumbs once again hooked into the pockets of her halfway undone jeans, looks me over. She does it in a way that leaves heat wherever her gaze travels — up my jeans, over my obvious erection, over my torso, then up to my face.
“Glasses,” she says in a softer voice, a slight catch in it. “I don’t think you need those either, Zach.”
Zach, not Hamilton.
“You know I wear glasses so I can see better, right?” I ask.
“Generally that’s how it goes.”
“Well, I want to see all of you.”
That seems to stun her, like Why would anyone want to do that? or Maybe I know that I won’t match up to your city girls and I don’t want you to notice …
I take a step toward her. “The only time I want to take these off is when they’ll get in the way.”
Her lips part, because I think she knows what I mean. I want to kiss her in places that’ll make her come, that’ll make her sigh and moan until she loses it all the way.
“Boy,” she says. “You nerds know what you’re doing, don’t you?”
I only smile.
She takes a step closer to me now, then starts to undo the rest of the buttons on her fly. The look she gives me tells me to get busy with shucking off my jeans or else, and I’m right there with her. When we’re both done, she only gives my boxers a glance, and I stare like an idiot at her lacy white panties.
That’s when everything speeds up: Mandy pulling off her bra. Me stripping down to nothing while I fixate on her fucking gorgeous breasts. And when she steps out of her panties, I’m a goner.
My control is a thing of the past, and I close the distance between us, scooping her into my arms, her skin pressed against mine as we kiss and grope our way to the floor. No more talk, no more dares, because I’m too busy tasting her all over — lips, neck, breasts, stomach and belly on my way down to where I told her I was going to go.
But first I take off my glasses, and she smiles in pure delight, even before I part her thighs and taste her there, too, making her shift around and pull my hair and moan and groan until she eventually arches up and lets everything go with a loud cry.
I have just enough time to grab a rubber and put it on before she’s pulling me back to her.
“Get inside now,” she tells me.
I like it when she does the talking.
My cock is stiff and ready to go, resting against her where she’s so slippery and wet for me, just as ready as I am. But I take a second — shit, a second is all I can handle — and I look down into her eyes. She grips my arms and bites her bottom lip before she whispers one word.
“Zach?”
And her whisper is what totally breaks me. I don’t want her to doubt anything about how I’m feeling, about what I want and how she’s the only one who can give it to me.
As I lift her hips and enter her, she makes a soft, desperate sound. She shifts against me once, taking me in deeper, and I groan. Everything about her surrounds me — heat, tightness, her — and I push into her again until she’s looking up at me — into me — and I’m looking into her.
All the way. Nothing between us now. Even without glasses, I can see that.
“Zach,” she whispers again, closing her eyes.
At the shaking pleasure in her voice, I lose my mind, and we start to slip and slide together, nothing holding us from going at each other. The pressure of her nails in my back, the sound of her laughing and moaning as if she’s found something that’s been missing for a while — every moment compresses inside of me, turning time inside out, piling up, pushing at me and pushing at me until, goddammit, there finally comes a point where everything crashes together, scrambling every bit of me into oblivion.
But she’s not done, and I want to help her get there, so I ease my fingers to her, working her with my thumb until she gets louder and louder, her voice bouncing off the walls and hitting me right back. When she cries out for the final time, I bury my face against her damp neck, hearing and feeling the beat of her pulse as it echoes inside of me, too.
I hold her close to me while we gasp for breath on the floor. I feel like I’ve found something more than just sex. Something I hadn’t even been looking for here in Cherry Valley.
When Mandy wraps her arms around me and looks up at me without my glasses, I can see well enough to know that she’s smiling, the armor definitely off.
Finally.
Then our breathing slows, and I can feel her pulling away. Not physically, but her mind is definitely somewhere else as she grins up at me, a little uncomfortably, a lot confused.
“Well,” she says.
“Well,” I say.
She clears her throat, and we roll away from each other on the floor. She starts to laugh, like What the hell just happened? So I do, too.
“It’s that movie,” she says.
My body is cooling down, my mind still fuzzy from all that good stuff we just got. “What about that movie?”
“Everything is that movie’s fault!” She nudges me in the arm, the friendliest gesture you ever did see during an afterglow. “But I’m up for another showing. How about you?”
What? If she’s being cute about asking for another round of sex, I’m going to have to wait for a little bit longer on that. But as the seconds go by, I start to think she’s serious about going to Aroused again, because she’s already getting to her feet, full of energy, her eyes bright.
This has to be the strangest afterglow ever.
She throws my jeans at me, and my head fills with static as I l
ook at her bare ass, tits, and all those soft, sweaty curves. Somewhere in that mental chaos I realize that Mandy really is serious.
She wants to go to the damned movie.
My vision clears as she smiles at me, scoops up her own clothes, goes down the hall, and shuts a door behind her.
This isn’t an afterglow — it’s a trip down a rabbit hole, but it’s Mandy, and right now, she can talk me into anything she wants.
Chapter 20
Mandy
Today, I discovered firsthand that nerds are really passionate.
At least this one is, and as I sit in the Acentric Alchemist, a brand new craft cocktail bar on Rainier Street, I can’t get over what happened this afternoon with Zach. I mean, really can’t get over it.
We did it. Had sex. And it was great. So great that, afterward, I realized I needed to get my head together, take a step back and figure out what’s going on. And he’s so easygoing — so Zach — that he didn’t act offended because I didn’t want to get all cuddly during the afterglow. He seemed to know that I needed to process what just happened, and he brought me back to the place that started it all today — the Bijou, where we caught another showing of Aroused while the town is still in the throes of the Homecoming carnival.
Since I was dying to talk about the movie anyway and wanted to see it again, it was a good excuse to do that rather than having to talk about what’s going on with us. And we were both serious about paying attention to the film before we came here to the Alchemist, where Zach is currently at the Spanish-tiled bar under the off-centered iron chandelier ordering drinks for us as if we’re a couple.
Are we?
Deep down, I know he’s still the invader who very well could be bringing all those big-city habits and ways of life with him, and I’m still the girl who wants to shield my lovely, pure town from all that. But it’s hard to remember this when, even now, I’m still humming from what he did to me.