“Yes,” she says immediately, pushing aside the collar of his T-shirt so she can bite at the hard ridge of bone there. “You were never actually in them.”
Sam nods like he expected about as much. “Makes sense,” he says, nudging at her with his hips and chest until she sits down hard on the mattress. “I can’t land a fucking part to save my life right now.”
Fiona smiles, sliding her hands under his shirt and across his stomach, feeling the muscles flex under her hands. He’s built like a Ken doll, all slopes and sharp curves, and when she runs her nail across the jut of his hip bone she feels his whole body shudder. “Poor you,” she says.
“Poor me,” Sam agrees. He gets one knee up on the bed beside her, kissing her back into the pillows and tugging her T-shirt up over her head. He goes to work on her bra next, flicking the clasp open with two fingers and pulling the straps down her arms, then sits up to gaze at her in the half dark.
“You,” he says slowly, reaching out to touch her with one careful finger. “Are. Really pretty.”
Fiona makes a face, feeling her cheeks get warm. “You don’t have to flatter me,” she tells him, fighting the ridiculous urge to cross her arms across her chest. It’s not that she doesn’t want him to look at her, exactly. It’s more like she’s scared of how much she likes it when he does. “I’m going to sleep with you either way.”
But Sam isn’t laughing. “I mean it,” he says, boosting himself up into a kneel and slinging one leg over her hips, looming a little. He’s still wearing all of his clothes. “You can insult me all you want, that’s fine, I like that. But you are.”
Fiona swallows hard. “Not as pretty as you,” she says. “Heart Surgeon, et cetera.”
Sam makes a face like he’s getting exasperated and for a moment she’s worried she pushed him too far, that he’s going to stop what he’s doing on account of her shitty attitude, so she arches her back underneath him, hooking one leg around his and pulling at his shoulders until he drops all the way down on top of her, close enough to grind against. Sam groans, and she smiles a secret smile over his shoulder.
After that it feels like it’s happening in flashes: She wrestles his shirt off, tossing it onto the rug. Sam peels her shorts down her legs. It’s like he knows instinctively how to touch her, thumbing along the undersides of her breasts and stroking the creases of her elbows, nipping his way down her ribs until her skin feels tight and hot and her whole body is humming. When he hooks his finger in the elastic of her underwear, letting it snap gently back against her hip bone, it’s all she can do not to gasp.
Still: “Sam.” She’s about to tell him he doesn’t have to do that, either, but Sam must know it’s coming because he drops his forehead against the lowermost part of her stomach, the day’s worth of beard on his face scratching against the sensitive skin of her inner thigh.
“Fee,” he says, his breath hot through the fabric of her underwear, “let me, okay?”
So. She lets him.
He takes his time about it, his hands and his mouth and his body pinning her down against the bed, her heel sliding against his back. He’s thorough. Fiona clutches at her hair, at his shoulders, at the mattress, trying not to make an embarrassing amount of noise.
She overcorrects, probably: after a couple of minutes he glances up at her, his brow creased like he’s worried she’s running lines for A Doll’s House in her head. He’s got two fingers curled inside her as he draws slow, purposeful circles with the flat of his tongue. “That okay?” he asks against her skin.
Fiona nods up at the ceiling. “It’s not terrible,” she allows, breathless, then squeezes her eyes shut and immediately comes apart in his hands.
When she opens her eyes again, Sam is grinning at her. His hair is sticking up every which way. “Was that—?” he asks, looking openly delighted with himself. “I mean, did you just—?”
“Maybe,” Fiona says, already yanking at his shoulders. The pleasure is still fizzing wildly through her, like her whole body is full of seawater. She wants to grab him like a life raft and hold. “Come up here.”
“In a minute,” Sam says, still smiling his curly smile against the inside of her thigh—and fuck, the way he’s looking at her. “I want to enjoy this.”
“I’m pretty sure you’re going to enjoy it,” she promises, hoping she sounds more confident than she feels. As much as she’s spent the last few days trying to convince both of them otherwise, the truth is she’s a little overwhelmed by him, Sam Fox with his Big Three TV show and his smile and his six-pack, all the pretty girls he’s probably seeing. She’s afraid of accidentally getting her heart broken. She’s afraid of letting him know he could.
He’s still got his jeans on, the hot length of him pressed against her as he works his way back up the mattress. Fiona reaches for his zipper with clumsy hands, pulling at them and at his boxers.
At least, she’s expecting to pull at his boxers, before she realizes all at once that he isn’t wearing any.
“Oh my god,” she says, and just like that she isn’t overwhelmed anymore. God, he is a ridiculous person. “Are you seriously one of those guys who thinks he’s too cool for underwear?”
Sam sighs theatrically. “I’m not too cool for anything, thank you,” he says. “I just—”
“I’m confused, though, because you were wearing them the other night. So this is a mystery.”
“Yeah, better call up Robert Stack.” Sam fixes her with a withering look. “I’m sorry, sweet pea, would you have stayed the night if I had strolled in here bare-assed for a long winter’s nap?”
Fiona nods. “Point taken.” She’s got her hand around him now, stroking experimentally. His skin is very, very warm. “So is this like a laundry thing, or—”
“Oh my god, fuck you,” he says, but also he’s thrusting into her palm so she doesn’t actually think he’s too mad about it. “Brad Pitt doesn’t wear underwear, for the record.”
Fiona bursts out laughing. “How do you know that?” she asks. “I mean, who told you that? Sam, I don’t think that’s true.”
“It’s true,” he says firmly. He leans over and roots around in the nightstand until he comes up with a condom, ripping the foil open with his teeth and working it on. Fiona sinks her teeth into her bottom lip as she watches—his hand on his cock and the muscle bunching in his stomach, the way he lines himself up close enough so she can just barely feel him. He stays there a long time, teasing, only just grazing the place where she needs him to be. Fiona tries to move, but he’s stronger than he looks.
“Do you want to make fun of me some more?” he asks quietly, the ghost of a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. “Because if you want we could just call this whole thing off, maybe go get some frozen yogurt, and you could try out some more of your hilarious materi—”
“Shut up,” Fiona mutters fiercely. “Sam.”
Sam grins and lets go.
This time she does gasp: the size and the stretch of him, the rangy weight of his body on top of her. “That okay?” he murmurs into her hair.
“Yeah.” It’s better than okay, if she’s being honest—the slow, purposeful way he’s moving inside her, like there’s nowhere on earth he’d rather be. Fiona shifts her hips. “I—yes.”
He smiles then, or at least it sounds that way. “Okay.”
It goes on like that for a while, his mouth on her jaw and his hands everywhere he can reach her, her waist and her thighs and her hair. “Wanna see you,” he tells her finally, rolling them so she’s on top, and before Fiona can think of anything to say to that his fingers are between her legs and she’s coming again, no warning, shocked by the speed and the intensity of it. “Oh my god,” she says. “Oh my god, Sam.” She catches her breath, lifts her head to look at him. “Don’t be smug.”
Sam laughs up at her, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “I’m a little smug,” he says.
“Yeah.” Fiona swallows. “Keep going,” she murmurs, rocking her hips to encourage him. Up close he’s not entirely perfect, with a tiny acne scar near his hairline she’s never noticed before and the beginnings of crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes. She reaches down and collects his wandering hands, curling her fingers around his wrists and pushing them up against the pillows. Sam’s eyes get very dark.
“Fiona,” he says, so quiet, and there’s a ragged edge in his voice that sounds unfamiliar and strange. “Fiona, please.”
Fiona nods. “I lied,” she confesses, dropping her head down so her mouth is pressed right up against his ear. “When I told you I was only imagining the sheets.”