by Alice Ward
“You don’t think it’s weird that I asked you?”
“Yeah, I kind of do think it’s weird, that’s why I brought it up.”
Annoyed at the bit of snark in his tone, I inhaled sharply through my nose. “Well, you’re welcome.”
Seth threw his head back in laughter.
I crossed my arms. “This isn’t funny. Why are you laughing?”
He chuckled one more time. “Because you’re… you’re a lot to handle. I like it.”
My pulse sped up. I couldn’t speak, so I just sat there and looked back at him, shy and fearful and angry and giddy, all at the same time.
“I would kiss you if it wouldn’t make the canoe tip over.”
I choked on air. How did he do that? Say something so romantic out of the blue that the words made the world flip upside down?
I fought to respond. “Uh… O-okay.”
Seth grinned a little wider and picked his oars back up. “Let’s keep going, shall we?”
I let him take the lead once more, my head spinning, my whole plan for the weekend going down the drain.
But what had I expected, really? That I could go off to a romantic setting with a man and expect to leave hating him?
Here I was, doing anything but getting over Seth.
I was falling for him.
Hard.
There was one thing left to try. One thing that would either bring us together or push us apart.
I no longer knew which result I wanted.
CHAPTER NINE
The massage didn’t help. Neither did the candlelit dinner. Or the waitress asking what my “boyfriend” wanted to drink while Seth was in the bathroom.
Walking up to the room, my heart sank deeper into my stomach with each step. I wanted the man walking inches behind me so, so badly. Yet I couldn’t have him in any way that went beyond one weekend. I couldn’t handle him.
So, I had to get my fill in one night and hope it would be enough.
The two beds leered at us, daring us to pick one.
“Would you like the bathroom first?” Seth asked, making me jump.
I sat down at the end of the nearest bed. This way if I freaked out and needed to abort the whole mission, the door would be only a few feet away. “No, you go ahead.”
“Are you sure? I can wait.”
“Yes, really.”
Please stop being so nice.
He shut the door to the bathroom, and I got out my phone. I needed someone to talk to about this struggle. I scrolled to Rory’s name and paused. The whole situation was a lot to explain in the five or ten minutes it took a man to use a bathroom. I couldn’t risk Seth overhearing.
Instead, I laid my phone on the nightstand and opened my suitcase. I’d brought a silky nightgown that screamed fuck me just a little too loudly. Shorts, a tank top, and a sweater it was. Though it was still summer, the temperature fell slightly with the sun. With my canny ability to be cold any time of the year, I was sure to get a chill within a matter of minutes.
I sat cross-legged on the bed and turned on the TV, but couldn’t find anything to watch. I flipped from a made for TV movie to the news, then back to the movie. The bathroom door opened, and Seth emerged. He smiled at me, his eyes flicking to the other bed.
I looked back at the television and forced myself not to analyze every movement of his eyes. He hadn’t kissed me like he’d said he wanted to in the canoe. All afternoon and evening, I’d been on edge, waiting for it. Now that we were alone in a room of beds the mood changed; the innocence, the comfortable, relaxed connection we’d found in the canoe vanished. I was about to break into a sweat beneath the sweater.
“I’m not tired,” Seth announced, still standing by the bathroom door.
I sprang up and onto my feet. “Me neither.”
“Want to take a walk?”
“Yes! That sounds great.”
I grabbed some jeans and pulled them on right over my shorts, then slipped on a pair of flats. The lobby was quiet, with only the one staff member at the front desk. She smiled at us in a demure and knowing way as we walked by.
After going out through the back door, we took the little path down the hill, now lit with LED lights. The luminescent trail ended at a collection of lawn chairs set out along the edge of the water.
“Would you like to sit for a while?” Seth asked.
I could hardly take it. He was such a gentleman, always checking with me before we did anything. Was this just a facade? Was he the one playing me, thinking he needed to act all chivalrous to get into my pants? If so, he was far off the mark. Chivalry really was dead, and I didn’t miss it.
“You weren’t like this at the bar,” I couldn’t stop myself from saying.
He was half-turned in the darkness, his expression unreadable. “Like what?” he asked softly.
“So… nice. So much like a gentleman.”
“Ah. I’m sorry I wasn’t that way at the bar. Or when I came to your house the other night.”
I frowned. “What do you mean? What were you like that night?”
“I…” He turned away a bit more. “We don’t have to talk about this, Quinn.”
Laughing dryly, I said, “Well now we have to since we’re already into it. I can’t just end the conversation here and then go to bed.”
He turned toward me and took a step closer, his eyes visible in the dim light. “I wasn’t very interested in you… beyond…” He sighed.
I crossed my arms in defiance and lifted my chin. “Really. Tell me. I can take it.”
“Beyond sex,” he finished.
The words rang in the air.
I licked my lips and tried to make sense of what he said. “But you haven’t even made a move on me. That night at my house I thought you were going to. Any minute. And yet you didn’t.”
“I know,” he nodded vigorously. “That was my plan when I came there.”
“But you didn’t,” I repeated.
“Yes.” He watched me in the dim light from the hill path.
“So why didn’t you? If you’re only interested in me for sex…”
“I didn’t say that’s the only reason I’m still interested in you. I said it was. Before I started getting to know you.”
I let that sink in. “Oh.”
Apparently, Seth and I were even more alike than I’d realized. Our similarities went way beyond being Type A personalities, like my friends claimed. We both had also aimed to use each other for the fulfillment of personal carnal desires. And we both…had changed our minds?
Wait. Hold on.
“Are you saying…?”
He didn’t answer.
He took a quick two steps toward me and cupped the side of my head right behind my ear with his hand. He pulled me close, and I went, letting him take control for a moment, letting him give me whatever he wanted, because whatever that thing was, I wanted it too.
His lips hit mine, cool and then warm, soft and patient on the curves of my mouth. Our lips melded around each other, met in a way that said they’d known each other before. Maybe in dreams late at night. Maybe just in mirrored longings that escaped our open bedroom windows to dance together up in the night sky, while the two of us slept on, unknowing.
I closed my eyes and fell into the kiss. The LED lights grew brighter behind my closed lids; they swelled and pushed through, turned multicolored and spun around. The whole world spun around. I could barely hang on, so I took a handful of Seth’s t-shirt and clung to him.
I’m falling in love, I realized as Seth kissed me. I’m actually falling in love.
Fuck.
CHAPTER TEN
Seth pulled back and wound his fingers through mine. All of the nerves that had been centered in my lips suddenly shifted to my fingertips, and I almost gasped with the sensation. I was overwhelmed by the kiss that I had waited days for…but couldn’t handle. My mind was a blank, on overload.
He pulled me up the path, in and out of spots of light, turning to plant a kis
s on my mouth every few yards. When we made it to the top of the hill and to the porch steps, a group of people came out of the lodge and Seth pulled me off the back steps and into the darkness. Pushing my back against the rough log wall of the lodge, he took my lips restlessly with his again, making the new kiss unlike the first. His tongue ran a circle around mine, his palm pressing warmly against my waist. My toes tingled, and I pushed onto them to kiss Seth harder.
When the intruding group left, we stayed where we were, my arms around Seth’s neck, his encircling my waist. Fireballs spun inside my core. Seth pushed his hips against mine, dove his tongue deeper into my mouth.
When I could handle the anticipation no more, I grabbed his hand and tried to pull him toward the back door. He didn’t budge.
I glanced over my shoulder at him, finding his eyes in the dark. Still, he didn’t move as his eyes pierced mine in the darkness. Yanking me back to him, he spun me around and pressed me against the outer wall, but this time with my rear to him.
I gasped in surprise, my cheek hitting the wood. Seth’s hands pressed against my back, running up and down the outside of my sweater. His breath kissed my neck, and I involuntarily moaned. Frozen with anticipation, I could do nothing, go nowhere. My legs shook the same way they did earlier this afternoon and my nails clutched at the wall.
A delicate touch on my neck made me gasp. Seth licked up the side of my neck, taking his tongue around the outside of my ear, then sucking my lobe in-between his teeth.
Something resembling language escaped my mouth.
Looping his fingers through mine, Seth pulled me back out of the darkness, up the stairs and over the threshold, through the lodge and into our room.
The door banged shut behind us. We broke our contact and took a step back from each other, two wild and heated animals sizing each other up. Seth’s chest rose and fell with his ragged breathing, his eyes fixated on me the whole time.
“We don’t have to take this any further,” he rasped.
I laughed out loud. Like I could really go to sleep after the groping I’d just received downstairs?
He went on. “I just… want you to know… What I said about…”
I silenced him with my palm over his mouth. Two wide blue eyes looked down at me over my fingers, questioning my next move.
Don’t, I could have said. Don’t tell me you want me for more than just sex.
Sex was what I’d come there for. Sex, fulfillment, and closure.
That was all. As simple as that.
Yet now it wasn’t.
I couldn’t say that words, couldn’t ask him to promise me more. And I couldn’t ask for just one night.
So I kissed him. I kissed him as he pulled my sweater and tank top off, kissed him and kicked off my shoes as he lowered me onto the bed. His mouth tore away from my face to lavish attention to the tops of my breasts, then my stomach. My nipples pushed against my bra cups, hard and tight.
Seth swirled his palm across my stomach. I sighed and let my head fall back. Each touch of his hands, no matter where, took me halfway to a climatic state.
He unzipped and pulled my jeans and shorts off, then moved onto the bed to join me.
I shuffled backwards, putting my head on the pillow. In the perfect position now, I wrapped my arms around Seth and pulled him down onto me to enjoy another kiss. His knee rested between my thighs, the rough fabric of the jeans scraping my skin.
His hands went beneath my back to grip me tightly, pressing into my sides, squeezing the slightest amount. It hurt, and it felt good at the same time. I’d probably have a bruise tomorrow, but I didn’t care. Seth wanted me, and his rough touch was proof of that.
He pushed his weight down onto mine, locking me into place.
So far he’d been the one in control of this heavy make out session, something I wasn’t used to. I had my own tricks up my sleeve, my own way of doing things. And I was ready to introduce Seth to all of that.
Wiggling slightly, I tried to push him off of me.
He broke his kiss. “Is this too much?”
“No, I…”
He chuckled slightly. “Then let me take control.”
I took in a jagged breath, shuddering.
Let me take control.
It should have been me saying those words, me calling the shots. It always was with men.
But… of course, Seth wasn’t most men.
I let go, relinquishing the desire to flip him over and climb on top of him. My eyes fell closed as he kissed across my neck and shoulders. The back of my bra unhooked and fell away, leaving my nipples tight from arousal, my breasts open to his touch.
I opened my eyes at the sensation of his touch on me and watched Seth run his hands across my mounds. His full lips encompassed one nipple, sucking and pulling at it. The pleasure turned into pain, and a sharp gasp left me. With a pop he let my breast go, pushed his hands down and pulled my underwear down my legs and off.
I eagerly grasped at his clothes, stripping them from him, needing his warm and naked body to replace the tepid air biting at me. Instead of chastising me for taking initiative, Seth let me have my way. I kissed him feverishly as I undressed him and threw his clothes onto the floor.
Finally, we were both naked. He pulled back slightly to look down at me, his gaze bringing a shiver as it swept down my torso and legs, his hand following it. Fingers pressed at my folds. I arched my hips, pushing back against his hand. A thumb teased my nub, alternating light and hard pressure. I attacked Seth’s mouth again.
“One second,” he murmured into my mouth, before breaking away.
He rifled through his bag while I waited on the bed, studying the tight muscles of his ass. The condom found, he came back to encircle me in his arms. His dick pressed sinfully close to my wet opening, the heat from our bodies mingling in the air between us. We kissed even harder, his tongue scraping the back of my teeth.
I reached down, ran my hand over his length. He pulsed under my grip, his girth growing. With a smooth gesture, his hand replaced my own. He slid the condom on and pushed into me. We both groaned as my walls spread. He kept going, giving me his entire length.
Pleasure flooded me, and I clutched his back, digging my nails into his flesh. Grabbing my hips, he pulled me closer to him, pressing even deeper into me.
Seth pushed me wide, the muscles of his back constricting underneath my fingers. I gasped against his ear as the sensations went higher and higher. He bit my ear, my neck, then lapped against my open mouth. The hunger ached inside of me for the taste of him, ravenous for the salt of his skin and the sweetness of his body flowing with mine.
An orgasm exploded through me. I held onto Seth even tighter, riding the ecstasy all the way to the end. Sensing the change in me, he pulled away and flipped me over onto my stomach. I landed against the pillows with a thud, my cheek pressed into the cotton. Seth took my hands and guided them both above my head, then encircled both my wrists with one of his palms. Trapped, I stayed motionless, waiting eagerly for what came next.
Seth climbed back on top of me and entered me from behind. The pillow muffled my cry, and he kept going. I took what he gave, loving every second of it.
Another burst of pleasure began to grow. Seth groaned as I arched upward, the sweat from his chest and face sliding down my back, taking our heat higher. He tensed at the same moment I did, and we were lost in the roar and swirl of release. Finally spent, he collapsed next to me, still holding my wrists above my head.
I turned my face away from the pillow to get some fresh air. Tendrils of hair stuck to my face and I shivered, coming down from the high. Seth slowly let go of my wrists. I lowered my arms, my shoulders aching the whole way. Tenderly, he ran his hand over my back and arm, then slipped his arm around my waist.
My breath caught in my throat. The moment right after sex was always an awkward one, whatever came next a sure sign of the tone of the relationship. Would he get up and go into the shower?
Should I?
&
nbsp; Seth’s lips pressed against my shoulder, the kiss soft and affectionate. His grip around my waist tightened slightly.
Each muscle in my body simultaneously relaxed. Seth pushed his face tighter against the back of my neck, taking me into a near catatonic state.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“We can put in the request for the records, but it’s going to take till next week to receive them.”
I started and sat up straighter in my chair. The desk phone, set on speaker, waited for my response. Had I really just spaced out in the middle of a call? I stood up to bring myself back to reality. I needed more coffee. Less nostalgia. More aerobic activity, less mental activity.
“Let’s do it anyway,” I told the secretary at Stafford Scientific.
“Great. I’ll reach out to your secretary to arrange the details.”
“Wonderful. Anything else right now?”
“I’ll check with Mr. Stafford, but I believe that’s all. Thank you, Ms. Laurent.”
“Thank you. Have a great day.”
I eagerly hit the button to end the call, then sighed and sat down on the edge of my desk. I started to rub my fingers against my tired eyelids but remembered my makeup and stopped myself just in time. Though I’d spent my usual number of hours in bed, they’d been peppered with dreams of Seth. Every hour, it seemed, I woke up from one, only to fall asleep to meet him in another new setting.
Where was my head?
The whole day I’d been unable to focus, my mind full of memories of the past weekend. One on top of the other they came at me, repeating themselves once they’d all been played. Seth and I cuddling in bed after sex. Seth and I waking up in the morning and taking another walk around the lake. He’d slipped his hand into mine, and I’d let him… I’d more than let him. I’d loved it.
At breakfast Sunday morning, we sat next to each other and spent the whole hour talking about books. It turned out he shared my love of Southern Noir. It seemed he knew every Flannery O’Connor story paragraph to paragraph and had multiple interpretations of each one.