Still, he likes having Fiona propped up on one elbow beside him, the ends of her long hair just brushing his arm. It’s not like he’s trying to look or anything, but the collar of her tank top gapes open a little so he can see the tops of her breasts out of the corner of his eye, a handful of freckles scattered across her chest like glitter. He can feel the heat radiating off her skin. Something about the whole setup has Sam afraid to move too much, like how his mom always made Adam and him hold still when deer showed up in their yard while they were playing football. He doesn’t want to scare her away.
“Okay,” he says finally, grimacing as the narrator reports the findings of Sharon Tate’s autopsy in excruciatingly minute detail. “Can we turn this off, please?”
Fiona sighs loudly, flopping over onto her back. “I guess,” she agrees. “But if I wind up lying awake all night it’s your fault.”
Sam looks at her pointedly. “I might say the same thing to you, cutie-pie.”
In any case, she’s passed out what feels like two seconds later—hogging all the blankets, her chilly feet brushing his underneath the sheets. Sam looks over at her, squinting to try and see her in the darkness. The sound of her breathing is the last thing he hears before he falls asleep.
Chapter Nine
Fiona
The first thing Fiona registers when she wakes up the following morning is how nice the sheets are, crisp white cotton percale with what must be a thread count in the thousands.
The second thing she registers is that she’s lying in Sam Fox’s bed.
With Sam Fox.
Shit.
He’s still sleeping, thank fuck, sacked out on the mattress beside her with one tanned, muscled arm slung over his face—lean and bare-chested, the sun streaming through the trees outside his bedroom window casting patterns of shadow and light across his smooth, unblemished skin.
Fiona pushes the covers back and sits up as quietly as possible so she doesn’t wake him, lifting a careful hand to her mouth. Her lips feel swollen and itchy, bruised in a good way. Fiona shivers. She hasn’t kissed anyone like that in—she doesn’t know if she’s ever kissed anyone like that, actually. Kissing Sam felt like how she imagines it would have been to make out in someone’s car in high school: like she physically couldn’t get enough of him, like all this time there was a secret string of explosives rigged inside her body and he methodically set about tripping every single one. She curls her toes against the plush shag of the area rug and lets herself stare at him for a minute, the jut of his hip bones and the trail of dark hair beneath his navel and his stupid perfect pectoral muscles, the kind you only get if you’re a goober who goes to the gym every day and is obsessed with his own physique.
Oh, god, this is going to be so awkward.
Fiona tiptoes down the hallway into the living area, where her jacket is slung over the back of one of the leather barstools and her purse is slouched on a woven bench near the door. She slings the bag over her shoulder, then breathes a sigh of relief at having successfully avoided the cringiest non-postcoital morning after in recorded history and grabs her shoe off the hardwood floor of the foyer.
That’s shoe, singular.
Because its mate? Is nowhere to be found.
Fiona frowns, turning in a slow circle and scanning the living room. Sam was right, last night—she was surprised by how nice this place is, not just the apartment itself but the physical items inside it: the deep, cognac-colored couch and the antique pharmacist’s lamp beside the armchair, the block-printed throw pillows in geometric blues and greens. On the bookshelf is a black-and-white photo of a long-haired woman Fiona assumes is Sam’s mother holding a fat, bald baby, her head thrown back laughing; there’s a tall, proud palm tree in a big terra-cotta pot by the doors that lead to the balcony, and by all appearances it is alive.
Fiona checks fruitlessly under the coffee table and behind the door in the tiny black-and-white bathroom, then circles back to the kitchen and starts the search again. What the fuck? Like, quite seriously, did a coyote sneak in here while she was sleeping and run off with it? It’s a shoe. She’s on her hands and knees peering under the sofa when she hears the sound of someone clearing his voice behind her. “Uh,” Sam says, his voice low and a little bit hoarse. “Morning.”
Fiona winces, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment before straightening up and looking at him. “Oh,” she says, tucking her tangled hair behind her ears. “Hey.”
“Whatcha doing?” he asks, reaching up to scratch his naked shoulder. He hasn’t bothered putting pants on, the outline of his cock fully visible through his dark gray boxer briefs.
Fiona clears her throat, trying not to stare. “Did you hide my shoe?” she asks.
Sam snorts. “What?”
“My shoe,” she says again, feeling the slightest bit hysterical. “I was wearing two when I got here, obviously, but now . . .” She gestures at her orphaned boot. “Did you hide it?”
Sam looks at her like she’s insane. “Why would I hide your—?” He breaks off. “What, like, to keep you here?”
“I—” Fiona feels her cheeks flame. It sounds absurd, now that she hears it out loud. “No, of course not. I just—”
“No?” Sam definitely isn’t buying it; the corners of his plush mouth twitch in barely concealed amusement. “That’s not what you were accusing me of just now? Being so desperate for more face time with you that I snuck out here in the middle of the night and absconded with your—” He stops himself mid-sentence, lifting one perfect eyebrow. “That one?” he asks, gesturing with his chin in the direction of the armchair in the corner, where the missing boot is lying on its side like a wounded soldier.
“Oh.” Fiona nods. She remembers now, toeing it off mid-makeout—distracted by Sam’s hot mouth moving down her neck, his fingertips playing over her body like a piano. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he says, scooping it up off the rug and holding it out in her direction with a smile. It’s a real one, open and fond, and Fiona’s stomach swoops dangerously. When she reaches for the boot he holds on an extra second, tugging gently. She feels the pull right between her legs. “You want me to go back to bed so you can finish sneaking out of my house?”
“I wasn’t sneaking out,” she protests. “I was just trying to save us both from wanting to kill ourselves, that’s all.”
“Thoughtful.” Sam rubs the crown of his head, his dark hair sticking up in every direction. “Do you want to kill yourself right now?” he asks.
Fiona considers that for a moment. In fact what she kind of wants to do is push him back onto that boat of a leather couch and climb on top of him, but she’d sooner shove this boot down her throat than tell him that. “. . . No?” she asks, then completely fails to follow it up in any meaningful way.
“No?” Sam smirks. “Tell you what,” he says. “You stay there and consider your own suicidality. I’ll make breakfast.”
“You don’t know how to make breakfast,” she accuses, following him back into the kitchen. She’s still holding the boot.
Sam opens the fridge and pulls out a dozen eggs and a bright yellow tub of Earth Balance. “Can I ask you a question?” he says. “What is it about me that makes you feel compelled to heckle me one hundred percent of the time?”
That stops her. “I—” she starts, then breaks off and tries again. “I—”
Sam raises his eyebrows. “You?”
Fiona drops her shoe on the floor, pops up onto her tiptoes, and kisses him.
Sam lets out a quiet oof sound and kisses her back, his hands coming up to cup her face. His chest is burning-hot through her tank top. Fiona sifts her hands through his hair and bites at his bottom lip, at his tongue, at the shadow of scruff along his jawline. She reaches down to squeeze his ass, and he groans.
“I like you,” she admits quietly, her voice muffled against his shoulder. When she kisses his neck she tastes salt. “That’s why I heckle you all the time.”
Sam laughs out loud, the sensation of it rumbling pleasantly down her legs. “How old are you, twelve?”
“Basically,” she admits.
Sam nods like that tracks. “Well,” he says, reaching up under her tank top and tugging at her nipple through the fabric of her bra, making her gasp. “Grow up.”
He boosts her onto the counter, then hooks his hands behind her knees and spreads her legs apart, stepping between them. Fiona winds her arms around his neck. She rocks herself against him, she can’t help it, like he’s a scratching post and she’s got an itch.
“Fiona,” Sam murmurs against her mouth. He’s hard, the length of him thick and hot and urgent even through three layers of clothing. “Come back to bed with me.”
Fiona hesitates. She wants to. Fuck, she wants to. And it’s not like she isn’t already imagining it—his fingers and his cock and his wet, clever tongue, those soft white sheets against her skin—but she can’t help but feel like she’d be giving something up in the process. Something she isn’t quite ready to lose.
“Tell you what,” she says, kissing him one more time before nudging him away and hopping down off the counter. “Let’s go out.”