Vote Then Read: Volume III

by Aleatha Romig

  “No.”

  The lie slips through my teeth so easily, like a wiggly fish on a line that finds a way to escape, the hook deep enough to have caught it but not so embedded as to keep it pinned in place.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry about your mother.”

  “Is this what they call the getting-to-know-you phase?”

  We laugh. Laughing is easier than being awkward. So much easier than being raw. Being here with him, in unfamiliar territory, feels remarkably safe. At no point in any of my time I’ve ever spent with Andrew, from the moment we met in that boardroom at Anterdec for the pitch nearly two years ago (when Hot Guy met Toilet Girl) to these seconds ticking on and onward have I ever felt unsafe.

  Unmoored? Yes. Confused? Yes. Uncertain? Sure.

  But never unsafe.

  He is hard to read and right now, his eyes are on me, as if he’s trying to understand me the same way I’m pondering him.

  “Where did you go to college?” he asks suddenly.

  “UMass, of course. You?”

  He cocks one eyebrow. “Harvard.”

  “Of course.”

  “Where were you born?”

  “Mendon. You?”

  “Weston.”

  I can’t help but laugh. “My guess would have been Wayland, Wellesley or Weston.” The expensive western suburbs of Boston.

  “Favorite ice cream?”

  “Do I have to pick one? That’s like asking my favorite Yes song.”

  Eyes on me, his face changes, evaluating me like he can’t quite believe what I just said. His hands reach up to the top button of his shirt, the one right below his open throat. He unbuttons it slowly, then reaches down for the next one.

  This is quite a segue. I am getting my second strip tease in the same day, huh? No complaints.

  No complaints at all.

  Like Superman, he pries open the two sides of his business shirt to reveal—

  A Yes concert t-shirt.

  “No way!” I crow. “You went last year? At the pavilion?” Right across the harbor from Andrew’s apartment there is a large outdoor concert center where I saw the band perform just last summer.

  “Yes.”

  We laugh, the sound like threads being woven to make a pattern.

  “Too bad about Chris Squire.” I don’t even have to explain that I’m mourning the loss of the longtime band’s bass player recently, for Andrew’s face goes sorrowful instantly. He gives me a pensive look, then stands, reaching into his back pocket.

  He pulls out his phone, taps a few times on the glass, then inserts the device into a docking stage.

  Very familiar music floats through the air.

  This is really unreal.

  “I don’t know anyone under forty who likes Yes,” I say.

  “And yet here we are. Terry got me into it,” he explains. “You?”

  “A high school boyfriend with a dad who worked with them in sound production in their earlier years.”

  “You said you’d never had a boyfriend.”

  “Not a serious one. High school doesn’t count.”

  He’s so appealing right now, sitting there with an openness as he listens to me. Andrew’s curiosity feels less like being grilled and more like being known. Something beeps in the distance, and he crosses the room quickly.

  The scent of spices tells me it’s time for dinner.

  “It’s much better in the original vinyl, though,” I call out as he walks into the kitchen.

  “You’re a musical Luddite?” he jokes.

  “I just like the way it sounds,” I explain, the conversation cut short by dinner’s readiness.

  He’s surprisingly fussy, making sure the plates and table are set up correctly, but I understand why when we sit down. He opens a new bottle of wine and by the time we both descend into our seats, nestled in place, everything we could want is within arm’s reach.

  Including each other.

  The food is perfect, a beef dish with flavors that tantalize, and I should appreciate the delicious tastes I’m getting but I can’t. Andrew eats with a half-hearted precision that makes me wonder if he feels the same way. As I finish what I know is my final bite of this wonderful meal I sip my water slowly, then replace it with wine, swishing the alcohol in my mouth, savoring the mouthfeel.

  His tongue would taste even better against my own.

  Andrew’s face is tipped down, but his eyes flash up at me, framed by those long lashes. “What are you thinking about?” he asks.

  I nearly drop my wine glass. My laugh covers up my nervousness. Or so I hope. “Isn’t that my line? Aren’t women the ones who always ask that?”

  “I’m fighting stereotypes.”

  “I see that. You aren’t being texted three hundred times an hour like most CEOs.”

  “I turned off my phone.”

  “Oh.”

  He turned off his phone.

  In the range of behaviors C-level executives can exhibit on a date, that’s big. Shannon complains incessantly that Declan is constantly being interrupted by his phone. The tech tether that insta-communication creates is more a choke collar than a safety line these days.

  He turned off his phone for me.

  Remembering to breathe is about all I can manage right now, especially when he brings his wine glass to his lips and takes a long, slow drink, his mouth gripping the glass edge like a kiss. His tongue strokes the bottom of the goblet and I work the muscles at the back of my throat so I don’t moan.

  “No interruptions.” His voice is low and deep, punctuated by the heavy breath of someone who is—

  Actively remembering to breathe.

  “You turned off your phone for me,” I say with a long inhale that hitches in my bones. “That’s like donating a kidney for a CEO.”

  One side of that compelling mouth curls up in a smile. “I wouldn’t quite go that far.”

  “You wouldn’t donate an organ for me?” I tease, lifting my wine glass to my own lips and taking a sip.

  “I have a certain organ you can borrow tonight.”

  19

  Wine shoots up the back of my mouth and into my nose. The burning. Dear God, the burning.

  “Did you—” snort “—seriously just use a frat boy line on me?” I tip my head back and feel white wine dribble down the back of my throat and cough. Hard. If I’m going to lose my voice after spending an evening with Andrew, this is not exactly how I want to lose it.

  He dips his head down, biting his lips. “I guess I did.” He stands and finds a box of tissues on his fireplace mantel, walking across the room quickly to give them to me.

  “Thanks, but what am I going to do with these? Shove them up my nose? I literally just inhaled your Domaine Leroy de whatever.”

  “I’m out of practice. I haven’t done this in a while,” he confesses, hands on his hips in a gesture of mild cluelessness.

  “Used frat boy lines on women you date?”

  “Had a woman over to my apartment for dinner.”

  “Oh.” As my nasal passages recover from being invaded by fermented fruit, I sniff. It hurts. I sniff again, over and over, until the pain in my sinuses and epiglottis dies down enough to swig a bunch of water.

  “Are you okay now?”

  “I think so. Remind me never to put wine in my neti pot during allergy season.”

  He looks relieved.

  “When was the last time you had a woman over to your apartment for dinner?”

  His arms drop slowly, his breathing controlled as he crosses the room. He’s turned the fireplace on, one of those glowing real-wood simulations that casts a gentle light behind his tall frame.

  Andrew stops inches in front of me, his hands closing into soft fists.

  “Is that important for you to know?”

  “Yes.”

  The kiss he plants on my lips is quick and simple, his mouth wet and warm.

  “Never,” he says, fingers sliding up from my neck and sinking into
my hair. His palms cup my jaw and I look up into eyes that ask me to follow him wherever he leads me.

  “Never?”

  “You’re the first.”

  “You said you hadn’t done this ‘in a while’.”

  “In a while is code for never.”

  “You have your own language? I need to become fluent in Andrew.”

  “It’s like speaking in tongues,” he murmurs against my neck, his mouth planting open kisses, tongue leaving wet gasps along the way.

  “Like in church?” I ask, reaching down to cup parts of him that are speaking to me now. He hisses, the intake of breath the response I need as I kiss him deeply.

  “Oh, God,” he groans against my mouth.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  I am up in the air, his hands holding me by my ass, my legs temporarily stunned and bending up until my thighs are wrapped around his waist as if they had been programmed by a divine being to do so. My hands are against the hot skin at the back of his neck and I’m blinded by the sheer force of the kiss and our movement. His mouth is a playground, and I’m on the swings. The merry-go-round. The see-saw.

  And the slide, down, down, down...

  My back hits a smooth, cool softness as I realize he’s brought me into his bedroom and set me on his bed. His body folds across mine, covering me with a marbled, muscled fullness that is so exquisite I arch up, seeking more. His hands are everywhere, buried in my hair, cupping each breast, that glorious mouth tonguing and tasting and no longer teasing.

  No questions any more. We both know exactly where this is going.

  Thank God.

  “I have wanted you so much and for so long,” he murmurs, rolling off me just enough to prop his jaw in one hand and look at me.

  My mind skips. Just...skips. It’s like there’s a short circuit in the universe and everything halted for two seconds, but resumes.

  “You have? Because I’ve been right here. All along.” My words are soft and yielding, just like my body. My skirt is up around my hips and his caress is complete in its savoring of me. The intensity flows through his fingers like a current, a constant flow of emotion and need that surges through him to me.

  Being felt like this—not just touched or stroked or catalogued—takes a level of steadiness in me that I’m surprised to find I possess. Maybe I only have it when I’m with him. I don’t know. Instead of turning toward him or rolling to hide, I let him use his hands to study my body with a visceral connection that is wholly unknown to me.

  His eyes go contemplative, his breath unhurried as I, in turn, touch him. We don’t kiss. Not yet. Not now.

  “I know you have.” His voice crawls along the contours of my skin, as if it’s traveling by blood through my veins, seeking to send its message of desire to every pore, each cell. “And thank you.”

  “Thank you? Thank you for what?” My own hands itch to touch all of him, eagerness more powerful than patience. His waist is tight as I tunnel my fingers between the waistband of his trousers and his shirt and pull the fabric out, seeking the warm expanse of his toned back.

  “For—” he says, his voice halting. “For waiting.”

  “I haven’t been waiting,” I explain. “I gave up.” Being this honest would crush any other interaction with any other man, but not this time. Not this moment.

  Not this man.

  As I take in the lines of his shoulders, memorizing the angle of his shoulder blades, using my fingertips to chart the curl of muscle against bone, I appreciate the broad stretch of skin that houses the essence of him.

  He encircles one nipple with a finger that moves so slowly it feels cruel. Every millimeter makes me gasp. I can only inhale again and again and again until my lungs rise to meet his fingers, begging for release.

  He nudges the neckline of my top down, popping one pebbled, rosy breast out and his mouth—oh, sweet heavens.

  That mouth.

  “Andrew.” His name comes out of me in a gasp and a shiver, as if my vocal cords and muscles were unable to discern which biological system to respond with. His mouth plays tricks with my skin as his spare hand slides up between my thighs, where all the blood in my body has pooled and is beating a timpani, a bass drum, and a djun djun all in concert.

  I have, singularly, become the pulse point of the universe.

  A sudden need to feel him makes me push up against his hand, my fingers at his belt buckle. Unable to see, I use touch as my guide, the hard metal a familiar rectangle, my mind recreating the process for undoing the belt as my hands do my imagination’s work.

  The belt undone, I release the button, unzip him, and before I can touch him he’s kissing me again, the cold night air shocking my wet nipple as the fire of his arousal enflames me, the ice of his brief abandonment making me tug at his shirttails, pulling up to give me access to more of him.

  I need to see him. See everything. Feel everything. Inventory it and ascertain that this is real. This is happening. I am not dreaming or hallucinating. We’re in his bedroom, on his bed, and about to make love, naked and deliciously private.

  “Amanda,” he rasps, his lips against mine, his erection pushing against my thigh, his body moving in short, slow strokes against me in a preview of what is about to unfold. His mouth moves against mine with a steady spiral up, each kiss more intense than the one before, his bare belly against my clothed one, the sensation of him over me nothing short of divine.

  He reaches up and under me with swift, nimble fingers, the clasp separating and freeing me. I sit up and he watches with eyes that take in everything as I unbutton my top, peeling off my shirt and leaving me there with the loose bra dangling.

  I haven’t been naked, in the moonlight, with a man in so long that this feels like the first time.

  It’s not, but it feels that way.

  He takes care of the next step, skimming my arms with his palms, riding up my shoulders and dispatching with the lingerie with a flick of his wrist, leaving me topless.

  Without another word, he unbuttons his last bit of his shirt, pulls it off, and grabs the hem of his concert t-shirt, his thick arms reaching up, the cloth covering his face for a moment, giving me a complete view of his upper body on display without his eyes watching me.

  And that is the moment when I become utterly, overwhelmingly self-conscious.

  He’s gorgeous. Cut and broad, wild and perfect, with the textured skin of a man who spends hours a day with a personal trainer. I know what his legs look like in bike shorts, and I’ve caught glimpses of him over the past two years in suits, with and without the jacket, but having Andrew McCormick’s half-naked body within inches of mine and on display like this makes me freeze.

  This man is about to make love with me. I want him to explore and enjoy all the intimate places in my body and heart that can only be accessed by my yes. And my yes is throbbing through every nerve cluster, each blush, all the flushed skin on my chest and in the wet, wild parts of me that know we have a huge bed, a magical view of the ocean, and all the time tonight to do delicious, breathtaking, pleasurable things to each other.

  “Take off your skirt,” he whispers. Andrew is on his knees, his pants undone, hands by his side and inches from me. Towering over me, he’s radiating heat and want. His breathing is controlled, and his words make me reach behind me to unzip the skirt, as if there is no other choice, as if I have to do as told because I have already surrendered to him, even if my mind hasn’t quite caught up to what my body knows.

  I shimmy out of it, wearing only my panties now, and he crawls over me, leaning me back, connecting our bodies only with a kiss that stretches me from toes to ears, turning me into a tingling, breathing soul that knows only sensation and that seeks to understand the world via his touch. His taste. His sound. His gaze.

  Him.

  “You,” he says between kisses and hands, heat and pressure, friction and fire and strokes and oh—“are more beautiful in person than I’ve imagined all this time.” With arms like corded ste
el, he pushes up, impossibly up, and the light from outside catches his face.

  I see truth in his eyes.

  That truth gives me permission to touch him, to splay my palms against the thick muscles at his waist, to roam and rove and close my eyes and just feel. He’s mine to touch and his hitched breath tells me he likes this. I curl up enough to lick the base of his throat, then kiss to his chin, the rasp of a day’s beard making me shiver.

  Will he? Does he...? My self-consciousness burns off me, like the heat of the morning sunrise evaporating the dawn’s dew.

  That mouth separates from our kiss and he bends to my breast, sucking in one nipple as one hand reaches between my legs. I’m wetter than wet and while my mind goes on vacation for a few seconds to some ecstasyland I didn’t know I possessed, he renders me completely naked.

  And then stands, blissfully joining me.

  The long, warm stretch of his nude body against mine, thick hair against my own smooth skin, is a study in contrasts.

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” I say, as he crawls into bed and presses against me, but my tone isn’t one of disbelief. It’s one of confirmation.

  “Then I need to up my game, because if you’re still not sure this is real, we have quite a bit of work to do.” His mouth begins a slow descent between my breasts, over my belly, and to the promised land.

  And with that, he keeps his word, all hands and mouth and tongue and taste and sighs and moans and cries of pleasure and release that come from two years of not knowing. We make up for lost time. Again. And again.

  And again again.

  Remember Sex Math? Oh, yeah.

  And this game?

  We both manage to win.

  I have a confession to make.

  I have never spent the night in a man’s bed.

  I wake up in a total panic, my heart slamming against my chest like a bear whacked a bees’ nest and all the bees are trying to escape in one big buzzing wall of fury, synchronized in their brutal attempt to leave. I’m covered in sweat and my legs are sticky.

  Why do my hips ache?

  And who is this two-hundred-pound, six-foot muscled furnace in bed with me?