Heating Up the Holidays 3-Story Bundle(118)

“Good,” she said. “I was feeling a little miffed that you didn’t want to get in here with me.”

“I want. Give me the soap.”

She handed it over without protest, and he soaped his hands and washed her. Not carefully. Not lovingly. Just to feel the unfettered slip and slide of skin over skin, everywhere. So few things moved like that—frictionless, slick—and it was like sex in another guise, as if you could unhitch sex from the specific body parts he’d always associated it with and turn it into a full-body, all-over experience, as if the palms of his hands were as sensitive as the head of his cock. He’d somehow gathered her into his arms and was kissing her hard, rubbing his whole self all over her, her breasts with their taut nipples slipping back and forth over his chest, her belly against his, her thighs against his, his leg between hers, his cock moving against her skin with the pressure of his body and the pressure of her body on either side, her moaning into his mouth, and—

“Give me a sec.”

He stepped out of the shower and got the condom he’d brought up, rolled it on. Stepped back in.

She smiled coyly at him, then turned and faced the shower wall, her palms against it, and he almost came right then and there. She pushed up on her toes, her ass tilted up to give him access, her flesh blotched pink from the heat and arousal, and he could see her inner lips, red and wet and ready.

He failed again at careful. At respectful. At anything you’d do to woo someone you wanted to impress. He just—he banged into her, really. A nudge to position himself and a mad thrust as deep as he could go, and, fuck, she was thrusting back against him. Making low, harsh noises punctuated with little squeaks. He tried to figure out how to maximize the squeaks for her, but she reached back and grabbed his hip and said, “More,” so he threw all the rest of his restraint away and gave it to her, and—“Oh, Nora, sorry!” he said, because he was coming, whole body spasms gripping him, and he had to brace himself against the wall, too, and even so he almost blacked out.

He had some trouble restoring his sense of which way was up.

“Sorry,” he said again, when he could. “Neanderthal.” He wasn’t yet to the point of being able to form sentences. “I’ll make it up to you.”

“I came.”

“You did?”

“Uh-huh. Before. When we were all soapy.”

“Jesus.”

“I know. That has never happened to me. It was right after you shoved your leg between mine. Everything was so slippery. And your chest hair kept rubbing against my nipples. You were kissing me, so you probably didn’t realize how much noise I was making.”

“Nora?”

“Uh-huh?”

“You’re turning me on again.”

“Sorry!”

“No, not a bad thing. Just … give me a few. I’ll be at your service.” She laughed. “I’m not worried.”

She poured some shampoo into her palm and rubbed it into her hair. She handed him the bottle so he could do the same, then stuck her head under the nozzle and rinsed. “I swear, I am also capable of having sex not standing.”

“Sure you are.” She rubbed her fingers over her hair, and it emitted a squeaky sound. He took her place under the shower, rinsing his hair. “I’m taking you out tonight.”

“What, like a date?”

“Yeah, like a date.”

“A first date,” she said, almost reverently.

He wasn’t as sure about that. A first date implied a string of other dates, implied a future, and he … he wasn’t sure he had a future, let alone one in which he could include her. “I guess.”

“Because we never had a first date. Right? We can’t count the party, because we were both already there. That was where we met. We can’t count the phone, because, well, it was the phone. And can’t count any of this, because it’s not a date. We’re at your house.”

“True. So tonight. Dinner and live music.”

“I can totally deal with that,” she said. “I even brought a skirt and nice top. Not that—I wasn’t thinking—”

He grinned. “Cut the bullshit, Nora. You called my friend to get my address. You flew a thousand miles. You’re allowed to admit you had some … expectations.”

She laughed. “Okay. Yeah. Let’s call them hopes, though. Sounds a little less stalkerish.”

They got out of the shower and he tossed her a towel.

“Hey, Miles?”

“Yeah?”

“I want to help you work on the tile project. Before we go to dinner. I don’t want you to waste this weekend.”