“Like a condom,” she said, embarrassed that the word could still make her blush when she was here, doing this.
“Neither do I,” he said, grinning at her as he pressed a hard, hot kiss to her mouth. “Not exactly how I thought I’d spend my night. But we can still do a lot without one.”
“Yeah, but,” she said, trying to get the words out between his kisses. “You said you were getting close. But since we can’t, you know . . .”
He pulled back, his brow lowered as his gaze searched hers. “This isn’t just about me wanting to get off,” he said. “You know that, right?”
“No, I know—” She wasn’t even aware of what she was saying at this point, she just wanted to go back to when they were kissing and he wasn’t looking at her like she was defective.
“For that, I would’ve just jerked off in a bathroom stall like I’d planned.” From the quirk of his mouth, she could tell that he was deliberately trying to shock her. But it was also like he was trying to make her laugh, trying to make her relax.
And damned if it didn’t work. “Gross,” she said, biting back a smile. “At work?”
“It’s not like I’d do it on the clock,” he said, pressing a kiss to just below her ear. “But when I was staring down a night of being trapped in a building with a very beautiful . . .” He kissed her cheek, and she let her eyes flutter closed. “. . . very stubborn . . .” He kissed the corner of her bottom lip. “. . . very unattainable woman . . .”
She hummed against his mouth. “Mm-hmm?”
“Extenuating circumstances,” he said. “I think I can be forgiven for the impulse.”
“Well,” she said, her voice a little unsteady as he burrowed his face into the curve of her neck. “I’m glad it didn’t come to that.”
She buried her fingers in his blue hair, inhaling the scent of him. He lowered her gently until she was lying on the floor, using her discarded cardigan as a makeshift pillow for her head. He ran his hand over her breasts, her ribs, her stomach. There was something erotic about still being fully clothed, about seeing his bare chest next to the siren red of her dress.
“What about you?” he asked, bunching up the material of her skirt around her thighs—not lifting it all the way, but enough that her breath caught.
“I wasn’t planning on masturbating in the bathroom,” she managed to choke out, and he gave a little laugh.
“No,” he said. He brushed his knuckles over the pulsing core of her, the sensation through her underwear making her hips buck. “I meant, what gets you off?”
She licked her lips. She couldn’t focus enough to answer the question when he was touching her like that. “It’s okay,” she said. “I usually take a long time . . .”
“What about this?” He pressed the pad of his thumb against the damp fabric of her underwear, rubbing in a hard circle. “Or this?” He scraped his nails lightly over her slit, which sent a spasm through her body like she’d been electrocuted.
“All of it,” she managed to gasp out.
By the time his hand finally ventured under her panties, she was already wet and halfway there. He rubbed her clit in agonizingly patient circles, until the pressure building inside her was almost too much to stand. She reached down to grasp his wrist, looking down at her fingers wrapped around the lean muscle of his forearm, his hand inside her underwear. Then she looked back up at him.
He was watching her, a serious expression on his face. “Do you want me to stop?”
She felt like she was about to come apart. The idea of doing that in front of Asa . . . doing that because of Asa . . . it scared her. But she also couldn’t imagine a world where she told him to stop. She shook her head.
“What do you want?” He slid one finger in her hot, tight center, and she clenched around him, still holding on to his wrist. “This?”
“Oh god,” she said. “Yes.”
It was the last word she was capable of speaking as he stroked her with one finger, then two, harder and faster until all the building pressure inside her crested and broke over her like a wave. Her whole body shuddered and Asa’s fingers were still inside her, as if waiting out her body’s response, which felt like it would last forever. She knew it wouldn’t, knew eventually he’d have to withdraw, but she found herself wanting to delay that moment as long as possible.
It did normally take her longer to reach orgasm, even when masturbating. And yet it had immediately felt different with Asa. Like she was more in the moment, like there was no room in her mind for overthinking when there was so much to feel.
Aftershocks were still tingling through her when Asa lay down next to her, propping himself up on one elbow. He traced her collarbone, causing her to shiver. Her rose pendant must’ve gotten flipped around, and he fixed it, smoothing it until it laid flat.
“What’s the story with the necklace?”
She reached up for it reflexively. She was still trying to catch her breath. “My necklace?”
“You always wear it.”
The ridges of the rose petals were comforting against her thumb. It had been a long time since she’d given in to the nervous habit of rubbing the pendant like a talisman, but the old comfort was there. “My mom gave it to me,” she said. “For my first day of first grade. We had a thing where we’d pick a flower for the year, and called it good luck if we spotted it out in the wild. Rose was for first grade, lotus for second, then violet, then iris . . .”
He smiled, his hand brushing hers as he reached to admire the pendant. “Then what?”
Iris had been for fourth grade. By the middle of that school year, she’d been pulled away from her mother and placed in another school on the other side of the county. They should’ve stacked the luck decks better. Chosen a common wildflower, a hibiscus, an azalea.
Asa could roll right back into conversation, as though those same fingers currently twisting the pendant hadn’t been inside her only a few minutes before. She’d thought it was kind of hot, the way they’d never even gotten all the way undressed, the scratch of the carpet on her shoulder blades as he’d brought her to orgasm.
But now she was realizing that he’d never even finished. Maybe this had been part of his plan all along, to loosen her up and show her a good time. Wasn’t he always mentioning that? How she needed to learn how to unwind and have more fun?
She didn’t really think it had been planned. Or she didn’t want to think so. It was hard to know the difference. All she knew was that she’d definitely never intended for any of it to happen.
She sat up, pushing back against the wall. Her legs still felt a little wobbly, a delicious soreness between her thighs reminding her of what they’d just done. In her office.
God, what had she been thinking?
“Where are my glasses?” she asked, feeling naked and empty without them on her face.
He reached over and retrieved them from the potted plant, handing them to her. That’s right. She remembered him putting them there now. She’d been touched by how much care he’d taken with them, and the way he’d folded her sweater to make her a pillow. There’d been a tenderness to those gestures that had to mean he cared about her at least a little, right?
Asa is fickle. Wasn’t that what Kiki had warned her just earlier that night? Maybe what had happened between them wasn’t about pity, maybe it wasn’t even about some stupid random number generator game, but whatever it was, it had a shelf life of a couple months, tops. And what then?
“I’m going to freshen up,” she said, getting to her feet and trying to avoid eye contact with Asa without making it look like she was trying to avoid eye contact.