Dating You / Hating You

by Christina Lauren

  Relief wipes his face blank for a heartbeat as he presses inside. But then my mind is erased. I can’t think of a single thing except the feel of him moving forward. I would be hard-pressed to remember my own name.

  I look up at him, focusing on his neck and his throat, where his head is tipped back, how his Adam’s apple moves when he swallows.

  He covers me completely, elbows planted above my shoulders as he looks between us, mouth open and breath escaping in sharp little stabs. He moves and he moves, fingers of one hand sliding down, biting into my hips, torso stretched above me as he pushes himself harder and faster and fuck, it’s so good I wonder if I could keep him right here all weekend.

  Our bodies slide together, skin damp with sweat and already flushed from exertion. My muscles tense and release, my leg slipping from his hip, and he reaches for the back of my knee, almost bending me in half with the force he uses to press back inside my body.

  I don’t recognize my own voice as it comes out sharp and surprised, bouncing back to us in the quiet room. The sound makes him harder, makes him wilder and frantic, and when I finally melt beneath him—pleasure so strong it takes me by surprise, drawing my legs open, my knees alongside his ribs—he grows fevered: hips and arms working, hands pulling me up onto him, pushing himself deep. I cling to him, panting hot into his shoulder as he says my name and yes and please and then we’re coming both of us together, barely able to catch our breath. I wonder if I’ll ever catch my breath again.

  • • •

  With his face pressed to my neck, Carter groans in his relief, back shaking beneath my hands.

  He tries to move and hisses before bringing his mouth to the shell of my ear. “Holy shit.”

  I make some garbled sound of agreement, unable to complete the connection between my brain and words.

  “I think I just found religion.”

  I giggle. I don’t want him to move an inch. My legs come around his, twisting and twining, and he indulges me in breathless kisses delivered through smiles. My legs are smooth, his are covered in soft hair, and the sensation of them sliding together, the heat of him heavy and already hard again between our bodies, rekindles something inside me, triggering a desperate need for more.

  When he pulls back, just barely, his eyes seem nearly backlit. “Be right back.”

  “Don’t go.”

  He laughs, kissing the tip of my nose. “I should get rid of this.”

  Oh. Condom.

  With a tiny groan of protest, I let him pull back and climb from the bed. He pads across the room. He is a study in shadow and geometry: straight lines frame the muscle along his spine, triangular planes at his shoulders, the hard curve of his backside.

  I watch his shoulders as he works with his back to me, grabs a tissue from a box on the dresser, and drops the trash into the bin.

  In the dim light I see the way he hesitates, taking a deep breath.

  Carter straightens and turns. The front of my body is cold with the loss of him over me and it’s compounded by the tremor of anxiety that he’ll step away, clear his head, come to his senses.

  “Are you sore?”

  If anything, I feel hungrier. My voice is hoarse: “No.”

  He squints, seeming to study me from across the room. “Are you freaking out?”

  It still feels like I can’t catch my breath, and it hits me in this bewildering burst what we’ve just done and how much I want him back in bed with me. “Not in the way you mean.”

  He takes one step closer and stops, looking down at me.

  “Are you freaking out?” I ask.

  “A little.” He reaches up, scratches the back of his neck while my stomach dissolves away inside my body. But then he adds, “I need to . . .”

  More hesitation. My lungs are incinerated.

  “I’ve thought about this a lot,” he says, “about you. I’m in love with you, Evie. You’re finally here with me. I don’t want to sleep.”

  I sit up, aware that he can see me better with the moonlight coming in the window behind him. The sheet falls away, and I climb onto my knees.

  I hear his breath catch somewhere high in his throat, but I don’t have to tell him to come back to bed, that it’s okay, that we’re a done deal. He closes the distance between us, smooth skin sliding over mine as he pulls me down, pulls me under again.

  chapter twenty-two

  carter

  I wake to scratchy sheets, an unfamiliar ceiling, and the kind of artificial darkness that only comes from heavy curtains. There’s movement at my side and for one horror-filled moment I remember Kylie, with her overglossed lips and no concept of personal space, and my heart nearly stops, starting again only when I see Evie sleeping next to me.

  An electric shock rolls through my body when I think of how we got here, how kissing felt like drowning and never wanting to come back up.

  Evie looks soft like this. Maybe soft isn’t exactly the right word, but there’s a stillness I’ve not seen in her before, like her walls are down and I could touch her skin and move straight past it to her bones.

  She’s so close—we’re almost nose to nose—and I can make out every eyelash, count each tiny freckle. She’s also naked, which I’m pretty happy about, but then I worry how she’ll react when she wakes up and sees that I’m naked, too.

  Are we still friends today?

  Did she hear me say that I was in love with her?

  A part of me wants to be more scared than I am. It would be easier if we came to our senses and chalked this up to a good time and crazy lapse in judgment. But my brain and body are a united front on this in love with Evie thing. The sheet is low on her back, her dark hair is tangled across the pillow. I think we had sex four times last night. I stretch my legs, clench my stomach. It feels like we had sex twenty times last night.

  I reach out and run a finger over the hand tucked under her chin and up the length of her arm, and she starts to stir.

  I suddenly realize I have no idea what I’m going to say and close my eyes, steadying my breaths so she thinks I’m still asleep. A few moments of silence pass before curiosity gets the best of me. I feel ridiculous; I’m a grown man pretending to sleep to avoid a grown-up conversation. A smile begins to tug at my mouth and I chance a peek, both of us bursting into laughter when we find the other doing the same thing.

  With a hand on my face she pushes me away. “You’re an idiot.”

  Warmth pools in my chest. “I’m the idiot? Have you seen your hair?” I reach to smooth it down and she laughs, trying to escape.

  “Have you seen yours?” she asks with a grin.

  I pause, serious for a moment. “Still freaking out?”

  She plays with her lip and hesitates before answering. “A little. Are you?”

  I tell her the truth: “A little.”

  “Do you want to stop this . . . whatever this is?”

  I lean forward and press a kiss to the corner of her mouth before meeting her eyes. “No . . .”

  “Okay,” she says, her gaze falling to my lips. “Do you want to avoid discussing it and have sex again?”

  I move until I’m hovering over her, marveling at how much of her body I can cover with mine. I look down between us, to where her legs bracket my hips. I rock forward, experimentally, and feel the way I easily slip across her skin, smooth and already wet.

  She groans softly and I know that sound. I remember the way it echoed around the room.

  Her hands move along my sides, nails dragging up my ribs and across my nipples to my shoulders. With a hand on the back of my neck she pulls me down and then there’s nothing between us at all, not even air.

  For a moment I think we could come from this, two bodies moving against each other at just the right speed, in just the right spot, like we did that night in her apartment. But that’s not what I want.

  Evie must be on the same page because her arm is already stretched to the side, fingers fumbling with the strip of gift shop condoms I tossed there at some po
int during the night.

  My eyes nearly cross when she rolls the latex over me, and I give her a reproachful look, batting her hand away. There’s no waiting after that. The sheet comes up and over our heads, a tent of white. My heart is racing and she rolls us over to straddle my hips, taking me inside and moving in tiny little starts and stops until she figures it out, gets where she really needs to be.

  Her palms press into my chest as she shifts forward and back, over and over, and it feels so good I put my hands on her hips to distract myself, line up my thumbs with the gentle contours of her navel. I thrust up and into her, harder and then harder still, and her mouth falls open, the headboard tapping near the wall, the springs creaking beneath us. Her eyes are closed, mouth partially open, and I wonder why we waited so fucking long for this, how we managed to let everything else get in the way, because this—fuck—nothing compares to this.

  She rolls her hips again, a tight little circle, and swears, her fingers moving between her legs in a practiced motion.

  “You gonna fuck me?” I ask her in a whisper, mouth watering at the way her nipples harden further.

  Her response is wordless, a soft little gasp that gets lost against my own sounds when she comes down harder, takes more of me inside. All I can do is watch her, nodding in time with her movements and feeling the muscles in my stomach tighten, the pressure build.

  Her hair is damp against her forehead and where it curls along the curve of her breast and I think she’s almost there, too, her movements getting choppy, rhythm frantic.

  “Yeah?” I say, placing my fingers next to hers and circling.

  “Tha—” she starts to say back when there’s a pounding at her door, followed by a frantic scratching.

  Our eyes meet, bodies immediately frozen, neither of us breathing. “Oh my God! Did I dead-bolt the door last night?” she whisper-hisses. “Housekeeping could—”

  But it’s not housekeeping, it’s about a million times worse, because following another knock, and some more scratching, is Brad’s voice.

  Brad, our boss, on the other side of the door.

  “Evie?” he calls, and knocks again.

  I’ve never moved so fast in my life. It’s a flurry of arms and legs, sheets and pillows. Evie jumps into a T-shirt and a pair of sweats at a speed that couldn’t possibly be human. Meanwhile I’m naked, wearing a condom, and still pretty hard when she starts herding me in the direction of the closet.

  “One second!” she calls, and then whispers, “I’ll get rid of him. Stay in here and don’t move.” Her face is flushed, cheeks rosy with a light sheen of sweat, and there’s no way he won’t know what she’s been doing.

  I hold up my hand to object and she closes the door, shutting me inside. Shit.

  I can’t see anything but a strip of light down the center, and okay, that’s mildly terrifying, but I’m an optimist so I’m going to see it less as this is where Brad could see me standing naked and still wearing a condom, and more as this is where all the oxygen is coming in.

  They say when one sense is taken away, all the rest of them are heightened. It must be true because not only can I smell Evie’s perfume when she sprays it lightly in the bedroom—good call, by the way—but I can hear her footsteps as she crosses to the door, then the sound of the lock disengaging, and can almost sense the moment that Brad is there, less than four feet from where I’m hiding.

  “Brad, hi.” Evie clears her throat. “Sorry, I was getting dressed. It’s—” There’s a pause and I imagine her checking her watch and giving him her best passive-aggressive smile. “Wow, it’s not even seven. What can I do for you?”

  There’s some sort of scuffle and then Brad is yelling. “Bear, get back out here.”

  “You brought your dog?” Evie says, and I stifle a groan. Brad has a Great Dane that is basically the size of a horse, and if he’s managed to escape from Brad and into the room, who knows what he’ll find. Namely, me. I’m briefly overwhelmed with the mental image of him easily barreling through these cheap veneer doors and dragging my naked ass out into the room.

  “Maxine drove him up last night. Bear,” he yells again, but it sounds half-assed at best. “He’ll be fine,” he says more quietly to Evie, “just sniffing around. Now, I wanted to ask you about the schedule today. What have you planned?”

  I can vaguely hear Evie rattling off the itinerary, and while I want to be furious at the way he’s talking to her, there’s a more pressing matter. Bear has obviously figured out that something about this closet isn’t on the up-and-up, and he’s sniffing around, his nose and dark eyes clogging up my oxygen crack.

  I’m silently trying to will Bear away when he finds something more interesting and wanders off. Without the cloud of dog breath and sounds of his panting echoing around the closet, I can finally make out parts of the conversation again.

  “And I guess I’m not really sure why you’re asking me?” Evie is saying. “The event planner put most of the schedule together; we just okayed it all and picked between the steak and the fish. I have to be honest”—a pause—“Brad, what is he doing? He’s in the trash.”

  “Bear, get out of there!” Brad shouts, and claps his hands. “What are you eating?” By the tinkling of his collar, I think Bear has run back to Brad, and he continues.

  “I also wanted to talk to you about your assistant,” he says.

  “Jess?”

  “Why are you having her email Kylie about vendors? Kylie doesn’t have time for things like that, and frankly, neither do you.”

  “I was having her verify some of the—”

  “You seem to forget I’m the coach here and I set the plays. Send all the invoices and receipts to Kylie to handle, where I’m assuming they were headed in the first place. I put you in charge of this event and that’s what you should be worrying about. Not—”

  “Carter,” she interrupts, and I stop breathing. Whatever flagging erection I still had is no longer an issue.

  “You put me and Carter in charge of this event, and yet I’m the only one you seem to be holding accountable. And you do realize none of this is anywhere in my job description.”

  There’s a long pause and I’m afraid to move, afraid to blink, wondering whether my hammering pulse is actually audible outside the closet.

  “Did you not hear anything I said last night, Evie?” Brad says, voice cool. “About working together? About us all coming together as a team?”

  “I heard every word.”

  “Then maybe you should do yourself a favor and think on what that means. You don’t have another strike left.”

  “What have any of my strikes been?” she asks, patience clearly thin. “Field Day was two years ago now, and there were about fifteen producers also on the hook. I’ve brought in more money than any other agent this year, male or female.”

  “Playing the girl card, I see,” he says. “You know how I feel about that.”

  He lets the sentence hang there, and a few moments later I hear a snap, the sound of a dog running past, and then the door closing, the chain sliding into place.

  Evie throws open the closet and a blast of fresh, cold air rushes into my face.

  “Thank God,” I say, my hand pressed to my chest as I attempt to slow my heart. “What the hell was that all about? What is his problem?”

  Her jaw is tight as she looks past me, staring at the closed door. “I’ll tell you, for a moment I blacked out and fantasized about pushing him off the balcony. Just a little shove and he would bounce like a tennis ball.”

  “Wow.” I straighten. “I don’t know what it says about me, but I am more than a little into your evil side.”

  “He is the worst,” she whispers, “the worst.” Walking toward the bed, she grabs a pillow and hurls it at the wall. “Lucky for both of us we weren’t anywhere near it,” she says. “I carry way too much guilt to be a very good killer.”

  “I mean, technically it would be gravity that’d kill him, so you just have to be a relatively good
pusher.”

  She throws another pillow. “Why did he come to my room? Did he go to yours first?”

  I sigh. “I suspect we both know the answer to that. I promise I would have said something if I hadn’t been naked and—”

  I motion to where the condom has probably permanently dried to my dick.

  She winces, and I slip into the bathroom, taking a moment to clean myself up.

  “Of course he let his horse-dog in to destroy my hotel room,” she says from the bedroom. “Next he’ll want me t—” She goes silent, then lets out a horrified “Oh my God.”

  I lean out of the bathroom, looking across the room to where Evie is staring wide-eyed at something on the floor. “What’s wrong?”

  She looks up at me. “How many times did we have sex last night?”

  “Ah, there it is.” I laugh, giving her a winning smile. “Just sinking in for you now that you slept with the enemy?”

  “No,” she says, pointing down. “Bear got into the trash over here. I’m trying to figure out how many condoms he ate.”

  • • •

  Are we dog killers?

  I mean . . . I’m pretty sure we’re not. I Googled it, and if Morgan can swallow a souvenir pressed penny the size of her entire windpipe and have it come out the other end just fine, Bear will be okay, too.

  I think.

  Evie is slightly less convinced and makes me clear my browser history so that if something goes awry it can’t be used against us as evidence. I have some time until our first team-building activity, and I go to my room to shower before pulling out my laptop to check email. There’s one from the creative director from the Vanity Fair shoot, and I’m initially afraid to open it.

  I needn’t be, because despite Jonah’s diva entrance and Evie and I nearly losing our minds being idiots to each other before groping in the dark mixing room, the photos are great. So great, in fact, that they want to book Jonah for another shoot. My brother might be a giant asshat half of the time, but he clearly has the talent to back it up.