by Amelia Wilde
An infinitesimal shake of his head. He doesn’t believe me. “I said, do you want to go for a beer or do you have to get back?”
The anger dissolves. There’s no fucking way I can sit at my desk like this. “Let’s go for a beer.” I get up, everything stiff and weird. “I’ll go back once we’ve had a beer.”
15
Whitney
The arrangement on the coffee table could only be from the version of Wes I met last night. The one with kindness at the core of him. Last night, I met the version of Wes who was raised in the same household as Summer, who learned how to care for people in an atmosphere of love instead of loss, and who carried that with him, even during his stint in the Army.
I almost pass out from the sheer patriotism swelling in my chest, the pure swooning love for timeless American values, for this small-town thing he has going on, before I pull myself out of it.
Or at least I try to.
I don’t go for this kind of guy. I like the moody blues, the powerful executives who moonlight in shitty bars, men with a complicated view of the world. I thought Wes was simple, selfish.
Yet there’s a bag of Chex Mix on the table, Sweet & Salty, the kind I like. Five different candies, including the Rolos I was pining after, are fanned out around it. And a Vitamin Water. He didn’t forget the drink.
This isn’t the mark of a selfish man.
Beyond that, the apartment is spotless. I can still smell the lemon scent of the cleaning solution we keep under the counter. Has he been here recently? Did he do this before he left for work? I get the whole neat-as-a-pin attitude, no doubt coming from his days in the Army, but this is beyond.
I wander into the living room, looking for something to straighten, but not so much as a pillow is out of place.
There are flowers too.
It’s a little bouquet from the bodega, the kind they keep by the cold drinks for a few dollars, but it’s bright and happy, stuck into a little vase he must’ve found under the sink. It’s not the kind of bouquet you’d get for someone on, say, Valentine’s Day. It doesn’t scream I’m trying to impress you. It screams something else entirely. A friendship bouquet?
Heat rises to my cheeks. Sure. I’ve never had a friendship this tense.
I pick up the bag of Chex Mix and hold it in my hands. It shouldn’t be bringing up this level of emotion. This is a normal bag of Chex Mix, but in my hands, it seems weighty with meaning. He chose these for me. He remembered. I’m not much for showering men with praise for remembering simple things, but Wes is a different story. The Wes I met in that hotel room wouldn’t have bothered using the brainspace for this. That version of him would have considered last night to be more than enough.
I hug the Chex Mix.
“Oh, my God, you’re ridiculous.” Hearing it out loud doesn’t make it any less true.
His keys rattle in the doorway. How should I be standing? Next to the coffee table? In the kitchen, with some cookies on a tray, since we’re apparently doing nice things for each other now? My heart flipflops in my chest. I drop the Chex Mix on the table, then pick it back up.
Wes cracks the door open and comes inside, bringing a burst of spring air with him. He looks a little drawn. I feel stupid, holding this bag, but now that he’s inside, there’s nothing to be done about it.
“Hey.”
He drops his bag on the table. Our eyes meet, and his face lights up. I’m grinning like an idiot and I can’t stop.
“That smile looks better on you than the tears,” he says gruffly.
“It’s highly offensive to tell a woman to smile,” I shoot back, but I can’t help it.
“I wasn’t telling you to smile.” He comes over to the coffee table and peers down at the candy. “I was only saying that you look nice this way. Your cheeks are all pink. You look happy.”
Of course I do. Of course I do. “Someone was...very sweet to me. Was it you, or should I be concerned about breaking and entering? I know the security here is a joke.”
Wes huffs a laugh. “It wouldn’t surprise me if you had a secret admirer like that, but it was me.”
“I take back what I said earlier. You’re only fifty-percent asshole.”
Wes’s green eyes widen, and his gaze searches mine. What’s he looking for? I mean every word. “What’s the other fifty percent?”
“Hot.”
He’s more than hot. He’s an inferno, the kind of tumbling heat that blocks out everything else, that makes me want to run straight into the center of the fire. I breathe in the scent of him. That Wes I dragged out of the hotel room—that wasn’t the real Wes. This is the real Wes, which is green eyes sharpening with need, the sunflower streaks around his pupils expanding along with them. He’s an asshole sometimes, but he’s also a good man. I was right. Something was happening with him that day, and it made him different.
Jesus, I want him.
I wanted him last night, curled into the crook of his arm. I wanted him with every single breath. I wanted to kiss him, and I didn’t want it to end at that kiss, didn’t want to tear myself away at the end. The only thing I wanted to shred was the clothing between us.
He takes a deep breath. “I don’t fuck around with roommates,” he says, voice low, a challenge.
“Then don’t fuck around.” The urgency sweeps through me, glittering in my veins. It’s been too long. I need someone. I need him. If I have to stand here, this close, for one more minute, all this need is going to burst out of me and make our apartment radioactive. “Just fuck me.”
16
Wes
The bag of Chex Mix pops open between us, pretzels and cookie sticks falling to the floor. I don’t care. I’m only reacting to a very reasonable request on her part. Request granted.
Whitney doesn’t flinch at the sound of the bag bursting open or the rain of Chex Mix hitting the floor at our feet. It’s like she’s on the Titanic and I’m the last lifeboat—once I touch her, she’s not letting go.
Her lips are soft and yielding against mine for the space of exactly one heartbeat, and then she growls deep in the back of her throat, her body working against mine. Fierce. That’s the only word I can use to describe her in this moment. Fierce. It’s as if all the grief and sadness from yesterday compressed itself down into the center of her and she’s turned it into hot desire.
I know that feeling so fucking well, because I want her this much. The heat is equally as intense at the center of my spine, a coal mine of want compressed into something hard as diamonds.
“Wes—” She murmurs the word into my mouth, her lips making the shape of my name. It’s so intimate it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Is she asking? Warning?
“Yes,” I tell her firmly. I don’t know what question I’m answering, but if this is the wrong answer, then fuck me.
It’s the right answer.
We crash together again, Whitney nipping my bottom lip, and the teasing pain of it makes my cock jump. It’s an incredible relief, the way she strips my mind of everything except her body, except the taste of her, her tongue battling with mine. She’s nothing like the bubbly blondes I’ve picked up in bars around the world. Those women live in a pink cloud of whispers and shy smiles. Whitney might as well be prowling the jungle floor.
“Fuck,” she says, sucking in a breath like there’s not enough air.
I don’t share that feeling. The air seems super-saturated, every inhalation making my vision sharper, my senses deeper. Whitney scrambles for the buttons on my shirt, her fingernails scratching through my undershirt as she claws at the buttons.
“I’ll do it,” I tell her, voice sharp, and it’s not because I don’t think she can do this. It’s because I want to see her naked. I have to. “Take that off.”
The buttons fly open underneath my fingers and I whip the shirt to the floor, followed by my undershirt. My belt is next, and I kick off my shoes. I’m in my boxers, nothing else, by the time Whitney stands barefoot in a ring of crushed pretzels. Her
eyes are huge and dark, locked on mine, but she’s struggling with the zipper at the back of her dress.
It’s a navy thing, simple, clinging to her curves. Her face flushes pink. “I can’t—”
“I’ve got it.” I take her by the elbow and turn her so that her back is to me, shoulders rising and falling. The zipper is two inches down, caught on a loose thread. I run my fingers from her shoulder to her wrist just to see the goose bumps feather over her skin. “I want this dress off.”
Whitney reaches to help me, and I catch her wrist in my hand. “Stand still,” I tell her.
Standing still is hardly an option, but she manages it, even though she’s trembling. I unhook the zipper from the thread and pull it down, opening her dress like the world’s finest gift. She has a matching bra and panty set on underneath. Navy-colored lace.
Holy Christ.
“If you don’t like it,” she says softly, “then you’re out of luck, because I’m not changing.”
I spin her to face me and drink in the teasing, wanting smile playing across her lips. “You’d change, if I asked.”
I’m not asking. I’m challenging. I can’t help it. It’s in the air between us, always. I’m only giving that tension words.
Whitney bites her lip and raises a hand to run her fingertips down the ridges of my abs. “If a man like you demanded, I’d probably have a more positive response.” Her eyes flit up to mine and back down again. “I’m normally not into that kind of dynamic, but with you...” Her voice trails off and something flashes through her expression. There it is—that sadness. It’s at bay, but barely.
I wrap my hand around the side of her neck and dip my face to the space between her jaw and her shoulder, kissing once, twice, three times. “I don’t want you to wear different clothes.”
“Good, because—”
“I want you to take these off. Right here. I want to see all of you.”
Her eyes light and burn, the heat there morphing into a blaze. “Always about what the men want.” She makes no move to slip a finger under the straps of her bra or hook a thumb into the waistband of her panties. “What if I want them on? What if I want to feel how—” I push a hand between her legs and press them apart. The navy lace panties are damp with her desire. “How—” I stroke two fingers over the fabric there, enough pressure to feel the outline of her beneath the ridges of the lace. Her lips drop open.
“Were you saying something?” On the last word, I yank those panties to the side and dip my fingers into the unbearably smooth, unbearably soft darkness between her legs.
Whitney sucks in a breath, probably struggling to find the perfect coy but-what-if response, but she’s melting into my hands. “Nothing important.” She gives a little pushback with her thighs, testing. I push them back apart and press my lips to her neck.
Her knees wobble.
No fucking joke.
A space in my chest that I thought would always be empty fills with a scorching wind. I want to push my fingers inside of her, I want to feel the way her body will open for me...
...but not here.
I take my hand away and lift her into my arms. She wraps her own arms around my neck and pulls herself up, so she can lick the line of my jaw. “Where are you taking us? Somewhere naughty?”
“A bed.”
“What’s wrong with the floor?”
Every breath is filled with her, every heartbeat is rocketing toward ecstasy. “I wouldn’t want your knees to get sore.”
We’re in the bedroom in an instant. Mine, not hers. There are fewer distractions here. I know the soundscape of this room better than any other place in the apartment, and I want nothing in the world to take my attention from her body. I stand her on her feet at the side of my bed.
The light spills in from outside, tinged with spring, and makes her look golden and warm. Something to devour. Something to subdue. But there’s a part of me that knows—I’ll never contain that wild energy.
I can only try and bend it to my will.
“Take off your clothes.”
In the stillness of the room, Whitney’s eyes light up. She bites her lip. She shakes her head no.
“Then you’ve made your choice.”
Her bra comes away easily, the straps silken under my fingers. The clasp falls open beneath my fingers. Her perfect round nipples rise in the cool air, beneath the swirls of my thumbs, and she arches back.
“Oh—” She breathes the word as my hands slide down the naked curves of her hips. My heart is in my throat at the warmth of her against my palms.
I push her backward onto the bed.
Whitney’s eyes are wide, the dark lit in flashes of the sun, and I can’t stop touching her. I can’t tear my hands away from her face, her jaw, her neck. I need her skin against mine.
She bucks underneath me. “Here I am, naked in broad daylight, and you’re still…partially clothed. How is that right? It’s not right.” Her voice is low and smooth and it makes the muscles in my back tense with anticipation. “It’s not right, Wes.”
I stand up and wrench the boxers to the floor. “That better?”
“Not better.” Whitney reaches for me, and I tumble back into the bed.
Her arms go around my neck.
Her mouth is on mine, hot and wanting.
I push her backward to spread her out again, but she throws herself into my weight, twisting us so that I’m the one who lands on my back on the bed. She crawls over me, her body lithe and graceful, as if she’s aware of every movement, and probably she is. That’s how acting works. I half wish there was a camera to our right to capture every bit of light streaming over her curves, every touch of my hands against her hips, because I’d like to replay this moment for the rest of my life. Just so I can breathe.
She lowers her head to my collarbone and presses a heated kiss there, spreading her legs over the stiff rise of my cock. “You can’t always be the one on top, Wes.”
“Can’t I?”
“No.” Whitney rocks her hips forward and her wetness comes into contact with my crown. It’s a like a shot going off, the beginning of a mission, and I’m bigger and stronger, so it’s no contest when I flip us both, pinning her beneath me.
“I want to see you underneath me. I want to see the look on that pretty face the first time I take you, feel your body writhe while I show you how crazy you make me.”
Whitney’s eyes glow with the challenge. I don’t know which of us moves first—do her hips rise or do mine thrust forward? All that matters, is that I sink into her, all the way to the hilt, and for the first time in a long time, I have the world in a firm grip.
17
Whitney
Every muscle on this man is utter perfection. Utter provocation, if you ask me. One thrust of those perfect hips and I’m done for. He fills me with his eyes wide open, boring into mine, daring me to fuck him back.
What other option do I have?
What other option could I want?
I rake my fingernails across his back and he grits his teeth, then bends his head to kiss me so ferociously it’s almost a bite. The pain twines itself around my pleasure and races down between my legs. Everything about him is pressure and my body fucking loves it. It gives me something to move against. It’s like running into water—that resistance feels so good after living in the air for years and years.
“Let me—” I drive my palms into his chest and try to turn him over.
He presses his mouth into my collarbone, holding still. “Let you?” He growls the words into my ear. “What if I don’t let you?” He draws himself in and out, in and out, his rhythm totally uninterrupted, totally under his control.
I wrap my arms around his neck and pull him closer, the frustration down at my navel curling into pure desire. “Why do I find that so sexy?”
Wes slows his pace and I tighten around him, trying my damndest to draw him in further. “So sexy, but you can’t stop fighting me.” He pulses inside me.
“You
like it.”
His eyes flash. “I can’t get enough of it. Explain that.”
“While we’re fucking?” I struggle for a full breath. The pleasure is making me lightheaded, and I don’t care. “You want to talk?”
“I’ll listen to you.” Fuck, he makes it look so easy, so nonchalant, even though I can tell from the tension he holds in his body that this is not easy, that this is something else entirely. “If you want to talk, I’ll listen. Tell me again how much you love this.”
I’m never into this kind of thing. I’m into men who worship me, who find me exotic and magical, and maybe Wes does too, but this isn’t simple worship, a kiss on the back of my hand. It feels like desperate need, cloaked in something else.
I know all about that.
“I love it—” He comes in deep and it coaxes a sigh out of me. “I love it more than I thought I would.”
“Oh?” There it is again, that little torque of his hips that rocks his crown against that rough, secret space inside me, and a moan slips from my mouth before I can cover it with my hand. “What about now?”
I can’t look away from him. “More than most things.”
Wes braces himself on his elbows, leans down, and licks my bottom lip. It’s a slow, sensual motion in contrast with the unrelenting pounding of his hips. As soon as his tongue rises, he thrusts back in, so deep, so deep. “What about now?”
It’s the perfect rhythm and every stroke is driving me toward release. I’m losing myself, breaking down around the relentless beat of him, the heat spreading from my hips all the way to my fingertips, all the way to my toes. I can hardly breathe for the force of it. I grab for the sheets—anything to close my hands around—and Wes catches one hand, puts his own into it so I have to hold him. “What about now?”