I lower my head back to my pillow, and he never takes his eyes off me as he resumes his movement in slow, long thrusts. They grow slower and slower until they stop altogether.
“I wish you could see yourself right now,” he says. “You have no idea how beautiful you look.”
Maybe it’s the cold, maybe it’s something else, but I suddenly need him in my arms, and I need to feel myself in his.
“Come here,” I say, and he releases my headboard to settle over top of me, lowering his lips to mine and kissing me slowly, leisurely. “Just go slow,” I whisper.
Joel’s hips move slowly, his fingers brushing my cheek, my hair, my neck. We move together until early morning, when I whimper against his mouth and he pulses inside me. Afterward, with him still buried all the way inside me, I wrap my arms around him and hold him like I’ve never held any man ever.
After a while, he kisses the side of my jaw and gets up to close the window, but then he crawls back into bed with me and wraps me in his arms. I play the role of the little spoon, content to let him hold me.
We fall asleep together, we wake together, and the next morning, I’m lying on my stomach watching him get dressed. His back muscles ripple as he bends over to pick his worn-soft jeans off the floor, and my blood heats when I remember the way those muscles flexed under my fingertips just a few hours ago.
“I’m not going to call you,” he says as he buttons his jeans, and my brow furrows.
“Why not?”
He lifts his gaze, and I can see he’s serious. “It’s your turn. I did it first the last time.” He leans down and kisses me, softly. A fragile breath escapes me. “If you miss me,” he instructs, “then pick up the phone.”
When he pulls away, I collect myself and tease, “I think I’m set for a while.”
Joel tickles my side until I take the tease back so that I don’t end up screaming and waking my dad, and then he stands and motions for me to give him his shirt. I pull it over my head and hand it back, doing my best not to pout when he covers all of that gorgeously toned skin. He licks his fingers and tries to salvage some semblance of the spiked mohawk he arrived with last night, and then he wipes his hands on the front of his jeans while I find my own shirt bunched under the covers and pull it over my head.
“Where are you parked?” I ask.
Last night, before we fell asleep, I asked about his new car and he told me he bought a clunker from a friend. He got the name of my hometown from Adam, looked my dad up in the white pages, and crossed his fingers while guessing which window was mine. I still can’t believe he finally bought a car, or that he did it just to see me, but it makes me want to forgive him for not talking to me these past three days.
“Down the street,” he answers, his eyes traveling around my room. “You like Stephen King?” He picks a book off of a shelf on my wall, turning it over in his hand.
“No, I just like books about teenage girls who go crazy and kill everyone,” I say with a sweet smile.
Joel laughs and sets it back on the shelf, picking up a DVD in its place. “Dirty Dancing? Seriously?”
“Oh,” I croon, “Johnny Castle could wipe the floor with you.”
Joel scoffs and sets it back down; then he moves to my desk and picks up a picture frame, his mouth pulling into a wide smile. “Paintball?”
He turns the frame toward me, and I smile at the picture of Rowan and I at an eighth-grade graduation party. We’re covered in paint, each with an arm draped around the other and a paint gun propped on our hip, looking entirely badass.
“The boys had no idea what they were in for,” I say, and Joel laughs. He continues perusing my room, scanning pictures and books and knickknacks. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?” I ask, climbing out of bed and propping myself against my windowsill.
Joel sighs and opens my window. He slides one leg into the early morning cold and says, “I wish I could stay.”
When I say nothing back, he finishes sliding the rest of the way out, dropping between the bushes and turning to face me. I bend low, kiss him slowly, and confess, “I do too.”
Something sparks in his deep blue eyes, and his hand threads into my hair and practically pulls me out the window. He crushes my lips against his, and I grip the windowsill to keep from falling out. When he pulls away, he flashes me a white smile, and then he spins around and walks toward the street.
I pull back into my room in a boneless heap, sitting on the floor and touching my lips. A tiny giggle escapes me, followed by a whole fit of them that have me flopping onto my back and smiling up at the pale green stars on my ceiling. I’m still swooning when my doorbell rings and the stars explode into apocalyptic fireworks.
I rush to the doorway of my room, in full view of the front door, and helplessly watch as my dad beats me to it.
“Hi,” I hear Joel’s voice say from the doorstep, “is Dee home?”