So low that she could make out darker, thicker hair just above the waistband.
“Close enough,” he said, but he didn’t pull his t-shirt back down. He just sat there like that, half-exposed, while she searched for something else to say.
Of course her mind urged her to make it a subject change. But then, her mind was just as much of a spoilsport as he was when he started talking about going slow and having conversations. Her mind had ruled the roost for too long, and something else was in charge, now.
Something mischievous.
“Do you have any others I can’t usually see?”
A sound came out of him—half-amused, half-not—and he turned his face away. Put a hand up to his mouth, and rubbed over the scratch of stubble there.
“Yeah, but you’re not seeing them.”
“Are they in rude places?”
“We’re not talking about rude places.”
“Are you forbidding me again?”
He let out a frustrated breath.
“No.” He hesitated, then shifted on the couch. “Here. I’ve got one on my back.”
He lifted his shirt again—farther this time. If he’d been facing her she would have been able to see his chest hair, but as it was she had to make do with acres and acres of honey-colored skin. All of it so soft seeming she could hardly control herself.
Would he mind, if she just leaned down and kissed the almost apparent ridges of his spine? She suspected he would, but after a moment of staring and staring at the little black knot he’d had inked in the middle of his back, she stopped trying to control herself altogether.
She kissed him there, open-mouthed and wet. Tasted his warm skin, then licked when he tried to sort of shift away.
It was gratifying that doing so halted him in his tracks. He even made a little sound, sharp and breathless enough to send a spike of pleasure between her legs, and after a second of her doing this naughty thing his hand jerked behind himself, to find the side of her face.
Like maybe he wanted to stop her, but wasn’t quite sure how.
“Evie,” he said. Almost like a warning, really, even though he’d now found his way into her hair. She could feel his fingers threading through the strands, stroking as she licked a wet path up over his spine. Tightening there, when she found the hand he still had on his lifted shirt and kissed that too.
“Okay, enough,” he said, but he didn’t sound sure. And by the time she’d actually dared to suck one of his fingers into her mouth, he’d run said hand from her hair all the way down her back.
She wasn’t even sure how he managed to reach. But he did it, and when she got to his nape, he found the hem of her t-shirt. Pulled on it, just a little bit—almost as though he wasn’t doing anything like it at all.
He wasn’t the kind of guy who tried to undress innocent girls on their parents’ couch.
But he was the kind of guy who told her, Jesus, your mouth when she licked wetly over that tattoo on the side of his neck. The one that looked like the weathered bones of something, bound together to make a shaky crossroads sign.
She wanted to ask him what it was about. The lettering literally spelled itself out, and the knot seemed sort of obvious, but the crossroads could have meant anything. And he’d burned it into such a soft, tender place, too, just below his ear and right where her tongue seemed to feel best.
And she knew it did, because he actually told her. He even pinned her up against his back as he did so, both of his big hands now spanning her back. Most of her sense disappearing down between her legs, to feel him against her and hear him being so filthy suddenly.
“Ohhh that’s good. Fuck you’re greedy. What do you want, huh? Tell me what you want.”
Of course she realized then what she’d done. Put everything into high gear. Jumped everything right over mild petting and tentative making out, to grinding against each other as though the end of the world was coming.
Though the surprising thing was how little she actually cared. Some part of her—some distant part of her, who still enjoyed eating neat sandwiches and talking to Janie—went tense with fear every time he did something that suggested he was a man, with a man’s needs.
But the larger part—the one that had taken over the minute the opportunity presented itself—just wanted to let her know how good this felt. She could feel him all heavy and solid, pressing into the front of her body. And every time she licked he sort of undulated against her, rubbing and rubbing his firm back over her stiff nipples.
She couldn’t even describe the feeling it sent through her. It seemed like pleasure, but there was a sharp intensity to it that made her sort of want to pull away before it got any worse.