“Are we getting dinner now, or what?” Sheila tossed the question over her shoulder as she carefully stowed a long lens in its section of the camera bag.
Eva’s gaze flicked to Drew’s in a silent message he couldn’t quite read. A plea? If so, for what?
“I’m heading home, actually,” she said as she disappeared into the cramped bathroom with her street clothes in hand. She left the door cracked enough to allow for conversation, but Drew couldn’t see anything interesting through the small opening. “I have some work to do. Maybe tomorrow, though.”
“Me too,” Drew said, hoping he was making the right choice. “I’m pretty wiped out, gonna make it an early night.”
Sheila’s head came up like a herd animal on alert. She opened her mouth then closed it again when Danny cleared his throat at her. He smiled blandly at Drew, who rolled his eyes at the whole thing and tried not to let his hopes rise too high when, a few minutes later, Eva asked him to walk her to her car.
They made it as far as the curb when she turned, and a startled Drew nearly knocked her over. The movement brought them short, with Eva’s back to her car, Drew bracing himself with one hand on either side of her shoulders. He could feel icy metal under his gloved fingers, the steam of her breath, the stirring below his waistband that always happened when he got this close to her.
When she didn’t move away or protest, he eased closer, letting her feel his stiff heat against her belly. Drew brought one hand to Eva’s cheek, holding her face, not wanting to let her look away from him. From his need for her.
“Just tell me what you want,” he whispered, his words visible as puffs of white that vanished into the chill. He pressed closer still, a brief pulse against her body, and gasped when she pushed back with a moan.
“I want you,” she replied, her own breath coming as rapidly as Drew’s. Her eyes looked huge, almost unearthly, in the sodium glare of the streetlight. “I want you. But not—not all that other stuff.”
“No ropes,” Drew hastened to reassure her. Nothing up my sleeve, he thought. Cross my heart. “I told you, I don’t need all that stuff.”
And for her, he would even try to mean it. For her, he almost wanted it to be the truth.
* * * * *
If Drew had said, “I like vanilla sex sometimes too,” or perhaps, “I’m not in the lifestyle, it’s just one of my favorite hobbies,” he would have been on firmer ethical ground. But then he would probably not have been in Eva’s apartment ten minutes later, pulling her sweater over her head, if he’d said either of those things. On the whole, he thought he’d made the right choice at the time.
They were trying to share the important, topical information in a hurry, between heated kisses. It was a conversation that might have been awkward if their motivation had been less immediate.
“Do I need condoms?”
He was on his knees, kissing his way down her stomach and working her jeans down her hips. Her response was prefaced by a loud gasp as his mouth found a particularly keen spot.
“Yeah. Have you been tested?”
“Oh my God, what do you even call these things?”
“Tanga panties.”
The panties were pale blue and lacy and wonderfully revealing, and Drew wondered if it might be possible for her to somehow keep wearing them while he fucked her from behind. “Tested a few months ago. I haven’t slept with anybody since before that. I’m clean as a whistle. I have a condom in my wallet. What about you?”
“Ooooh.”
He had pressed his mouth at the bottom of the soft patch of hair beneath the lace, working his lips there and then breathing out slowly. Eva melted a fraction more.
“Evie?”
“Mm. Yeah. Um, clean too. I haven’t had sex in almost two years. Oh God, do that again.”
He did it again, and she slid her fingers into his hair and held him there, arching her hips into the heat and pressure. Drew decided the panties, awesome though they might be, needed to go. Soon. He needed to have better landmarks to work with, and he wanted to see her.
He wanted to see her wrapped in a network of ropes, barely able to move a finger as he had his way with every exposed inch of her delicate skin.
“Fuck.”
“Drew?” She tugged gently on his hair.
Pushing the vision firmly down the basement stairs of his mind, closing and padlocking the door, Drew inhaled and let the sweet, tangy scent of Eva’s arousal spur him forward. He stood up and kissed her. Hard, unequivocal. His teeth grazed her lips and he tried to pull himself back, pace himself. But she groaned and leaned in for more.
Drew traced his hands down her slender back, taking a moment to marvel at her silky texture before finding and unhooking the clasp to her bra. It was blue, it matched the interesting panties, it was on the floor with the rest of her clothes and his shirt.