“Come upstairs,” she breathed.
I leaned across the couch and her body softened, slackened against me. Not in surrender but in need. I cupped her face, not kissing that mouth I wanted so badly, but the sweltering breath we shared was close.
“What if this happens,” I whispered, my words palpable on her lips, “and it changes things, and we don’t like each other anymore?”
“I don’t even like you now, you egotistic brute.”
“I think you’re lying.”
“I think I actually hate you.”
“If you already hate me, we should probably just let this happen.”
“Agreed.”
She moved to kiss me. With an excruciating burst of willpower, I pulled back. “Tamsin,” I said. Her lovely name. The feel of her in my mouth.
“Arsehole. You won’t, will you?”
“No.”
“I do hate you. Truly.”
“I know.”
Her gaze tore away. “Be a gentleman and walk me home.”
We stood, both woozy from alcohol and arousal. Sauntered toward the elevators, prolonging this.
My head said, Be smart. Let it go.
My body said, You fucking idiot.
The marble floor glared brilliantly. In the brass elevator doors, our reflections: the curve of her waist in that clinging jacket, the cut of my clenched jaw.
Ding. Our reflections pulled apart.
I stepped into the elevator with her.
Tamsin flashed a devilish smirk and said, “Going up.”
Doggedly, I watched the numbers tick.
Every step down the hall to her room was a battle. When her key card clicked in the lock I felt faint. Torture. The door stood ajar, a seam of shadow beckoning.
With the last tenuous strands of my self-control, I said, “Good night, Tam.”
“Bollocks to you.”
Slam.
I leaned against the cool metal and slid to the carpet, hands raking into my hair.
Fuck this. All of this.
I’d spent five years piecing myself together from shards. Growing stronger, bigger, harder. Now, when I’d finally built a body and a life I felt safe in, he came back. To show me just how flimsy it all was. A little boy stomping on my sand castles.
There’s only one thing that can cure fear.
What made me flit from girl to girl? Fear of intimacy, Tamsin said. So painfully obvious. Like a page from the fucking textbook. Survivors of sexual assault often find intimacy difficult. Sex may be accompanied by feelings of guilt, anxiety, and fear.
Norah and her crocodile tears. I could show that bitch how it’s done. How to really sell it.
Fuck her. Fuck him.
They thought they could take this from me.
They were wrong.
“Tam?” I said quietly.
“What.”
My heart leaped. Her voice was right on the other side.
“Open the door.”
I sensed her standing at the same time as I did. Her hand on the lock, the flick. Her silhouette against the pale drapes.
I stepped inside, took her face in my hands, and kissed her.
First it was just heat, all over me. A wave of it breaking on our mouths and spilling down my body. Her top lip between mine, my tongue gliding across, tasting burnt caramel. Tamsin let out a little breath that felt like the word “finally.” Then her arms circled my neck and I pressed her to the wall. The door swung shut, enclosing us in an indigo dark. Too much heat inside me—I meant to tease this out, but the slow-burning rum was lava now and it wanted to ignite and dissolve us both. My mouth on hers was animal, crude. My stubble dragged over her skin. She clawed the back of my head but her lips were supple, receiving me softly. Wild, her willingness to be roughed up. Her trust. This was where it got dangerous, I thought, my body against hers, my strength overpowering. This was where the lines blurred. Where consent could shift in a heartbeat. I pulled back to look at her.
Cool blue lit one side of her face. In noir monochrome her features were striking, lips swollen, nostrils flared. I ran my thumb across her mouth and it opened, revealing a moon-white arc of teeth. Those teeth closed sharply on the pad of my thumb. My core pulled tight, hips bucking against hers.
Tamsin laughed.
She shoved a palm into my chest and pushed. The mattress touched my calves; we toppled onto the bed. She climbed atop me but I wrestled her onto her back. So beautiful beneath me on the silvery sheet, dark and slender, her hair a black halo.
She touched the top button of my shirt, looking to me for permission.
I nodded.
Slowly she unfastened. It felt like my body coming undone, rib by rib until everything unraveled into my belly. Tamsin tugged my shirt off and stared up at me.
What will she think, what will she think.
Fingers touched my face tenderly. Sculpted cheek and jaw, traced the cords of my neck, moved without break over my pecs, my abs, coming to rest on my hips.