“Your mother left? She just left you to all of that shit?”
She shrugged, though it hurt to. It really hurt to, this time, even with Van squeezing her tight.
“Well, I’m glad you came here to me,” he said, like a reminder—It doesn’t matter that your mother wouldn’t protect you. I can. I will. “Even if you just had to bike eight miles in the rain, find a place you’re completely unfamiliar with, and climb a fire escape to do it. You know what I did to escape? I took the money my grandparents left me and enrolled in an art course.”
“See, you say that like it’s not cool. But it is. Everything about you is cool.”
He made a sound she’d never heard before—a kind of snort.
“Is that honestly how you see me? Why? Because of the tattoos? They’re just armor. All of this is just armor.”
She closed her eyes and thought about how he seemed. So soft sometimes, so gentle.
“I know that. I know.”
It was the perfect time to say it back. So perfect. She could feel it, welling up inside her—those three words she’d never said to anyone either. But the further they climbed inside her throat the bigger they seemed to get, and by the time they got to her lips she could hardly get them out.
Instead she had to swap them, for something slightly less terrifying. Like turning her head to kiss him. Just softly, just sweetly, a little stand-in for all the things she couldn’t quite say yet.
And then a little less softly and sweetly, when his hand slid over her right breast.
She jerked the second he touched her. Couldn’t be helped. He just did it so abruptly, and after a second of feeling him actually fondling her she realized something else—he’d never made the first move in that way before.
He’d always waited for her to push and persuade, but something sure felt different now. He wasn’t even just cupping her there. He had her nipple between thumb and forefinger, and the more she squirmed the more firmly he tugged at it until everything cold and miserable inside her suddenly ran hot.
Of course, he chose that moment to pull away. Just as she could feel it buzzing and tingling between her legs, the urge to kiss him more greedily like a hand shoving at her back. Go on, go on, go for it. The light is green.
Unfortunately, the light was not green.
“Sorry, sorry,” he said, though she at least had the luxury of seeing him breathe all rough and hard. As though just that one second of kissing and touching had made him as crazy as it had made her. “It’s just…you’re very naked.”
“You like it?”
“Of course I like it. Haven’t thought about much else since…”
Her mind immediately went to certain images, without him having to spell them out. The way his jeans had looked, shoved around his thighs. The thick curve of his stiff cock, just waiting for her to touch and kiss and lick.
Yeah, she understood that feeling, all right.
“Me either.”
He hesitated then, but she could feel it coming.
“I really don’t want to take advantage when you’re this vulnerable.”
Though it was better than what she’d expected. It gave her an in, at least, rather than the total shutdown of a flat-out no.
“You think this is vulnerable?”
“I don’t know. It feels kind of like you’re rubbing your ass against my cock.”
She tried to laugh but managed only a long sigh of pleasure, to hear him say the words.
“It’s good, right?”
“I’m not going to deny it’s good.”
She slid a hand between their bodies and found the solid ridge of his cock. Rubbed hard in that way he’d seemed to like.
“How about this?”
“Evie, seriously. You need to rest.”
“Are you sure?”
He’d started bucking into her hand around the word seriously. One hand on her hip, the other trailing somewhere around her breasts.
“Ohhh God. No. No,” he said, then a second later, “Keep doing that. Oh yeah just like that.”
“You want me to make you come?”
He groaned, loudly.
“You’ve got no clue what it does to me to hear you say something like that. Here—move your hand.”
“But I—”
“Move your hand, that’s it. Like this,” he said, but he didn’t wait for her to obey. He just pinned her wrist to her thigh, and pressed up close to her again. Found the rudest thing he could with the stiff length of his cock.
Like maybe the cleft between the cheeks of her ass. If he’d been naked she would have bucked away from it, and she knew it. But as it was the feel of him rubbing in that place—so hard and solid and rough from the material of his jeans—just made her sex ache. A fresh slick of liquid coated the delicate folds there, turning everything unbearably wet and unbearably good.