Heating Up the Holidays 3-Story Bundle(76)

The physical yearning is intense, wrong, almost, if wrong is exactly what you want to be doing, all the time.

His hand on my jaw is holding tight, hard, and it’s insane because the way he touches me usually are these light touches, these directive touches to politely guide me through a door or an activity, or get my attention.

But his hand is honestly holding on to me, his fingertips are into my hair, almost pulling it, his thumb is pressing under my chin, and he knows where he wants me, which is close, and at an angle so he can get his mouth over mine, and then I finally breathe, I think, because it’s his tongue I feel next on the inside of my lower lip and then I need to reach up and hold on to him, too.

“Jenny,” he whispers, when my hand is around his nape, but that’s all he says before he kisses me again, and you know how tongue kissing is sometimes all you can think about with a guy, but then you’re kissing and can’t work out how to get it started?

With Evan, I don’t even realize how deep we’re kissing, it’s just simple and hungry and dirty because it’s Evan.

It’s Evan with both his hands bracketing my face.

It’s Evan whose mouth is a little rough with mine, and like he wants to be rougher, like he wants to hold me a little too tight, and I want him to, with one of my hands over his on my face, and my other tangled in his messy hair, and let myself get soft and pull him closer.

I feel his grunt in my mouth, and fuck, fuck he rakes his hand into my hair all the way and he pulls it, hard, I think he’s fisting it, and he sucks in my lip and bites it while he pulls, greedy for me, hot for me, and I feel another sound in his throat, so low I can’t hear it, and every time he comes for my mouth between breaths he gets me where he wants me by that fist in my hair, the sting washing tight, icy-hot goose bumps over my spine, into the crease of my ass, my God, and then pulsing with dark, dark pins and needles all through the slick swollen mess of myself, my clit.

It’s a kiss that isn’t supposed to happen and he isn’t supposed to take, and so it tastes so good, it’s spiked, it’s drugged, and I’m messed up, I’m so messed up, I want to bite, too, but it’s better just to get fucked on this burn, this shot of something so ill-advised that it doesn’t let you breathe until it’s soaked through your middle, hot.

He pulls away to pant against my mouth, his forehead against mine, and I realize he’s squeezing my nape, keeping me right where I am.

“Let’s go somewhere,” he says.

“My house,” I tell him. “Come home with me.”

* * *

We’re walking along the sidewalk with all the shoppers, kind of fast, and he’s got all of my bags hung on one arm so his other hand is free to lace through mine.

It’s unreal. This is unreal, the cold and the shoppers walking all around us, and the glittery window displays, and his big hand all through mine, his arm pressed into my side, his glances in my direction that make his almost smile look completely different. Because it is promising something, to me, Jenny Wright.

And I think that smile always has been promising me something, but I was too wrapped up in my own sadness to see it.

So it makes sense, I think, that seeing this promise cracks through my sadness, and it makes sense that I feel like I am in the middle of some kind of unreality, because my entire reality lately has been to be sad. Ohio, for me, has been a sad place. Even with my lab and ESEM—because of my diagnosis, maybe especially with my lab and ESEM. I finally achieved what might get taken away.

This doesn’t feel sad. His kiss didn’t feel sad. The way we’re walking, breathless, the taste of our kiss still in our mouths, is not sad.

It’s not because I need Evan, either.

I need myself.

Kissing Evan is an entirely unexpected bonus: in fact, Evan is an entirely unexpected bonus. The fact of his enjoyment of so many ordinary-life things—a woman who could laugh off dumping a smoothie in a man’s lap, pratfalls, simple science, snow.

He’s a man who sees this huge big picture, the entire view, and takes it in.

I feel the entire promise of the holiday, actually, the fresh newness of the year as the old one goes away. How the white blanket of snow isn’t really concealing but tucking everything in to sleep, to get rest, to be made new.

I realize, too, that the only times I let myself really feel the full scope of my sadness was with Evan. He’s seen my anger, too. When I trip over chairs or bump into walls, it’s not just that he knows why, it’s that when it’s him that sees me stumble, I let myself kick the chair and the wall back and swear and otherwise lose my shit.

I dumped that smoothie on him during our third session, and he had already seen all of this, and yet he talked to his supervisor about my potential irresistibility.