“You’re wound so tight,” he whispers before bending to kiss my neck. “How do I make you unravel?”
His hand is moving and his mouth slides from my neck to my jaw, and even when I arch away, eyes closed, I feel him follow me, his lips chasing my skin, telling me to come here, kiss him, tell him what I like. When I open my eyes, he’s still watching me. He smiles, leaning in to kiss me again.
“This okay?” he says, eyes clear and earnest.
I nod. Relief is like a drug, warm, rushing through my limbs.
We’re doing this.
I work at his belt clumsily, no longer concerned with when and where we have sex, and his laugh is a tiny warm burst of air against my lips. I get that he’s not laughing at me, he’s laughing at this, at the frantic, fumbling groping.
I smooth my palm down his stomach and gasp at the feel of him, the thrill of making him hard like this, the rush from the power of it. He moves into my touch and I slide my leg over his hip and like this we shift together, letting our hips do the work, letting our mouths move in this easy, hungry tandem.
I’ve forgotten the fevered powerlessness of letting someone else touch me, the desperate hope that they’ll get me there. But very soon I realize that he will, and he does, his hand steady against me. I try to keep my eyes open as it builds, but he watches me with such a singular intensity that I close them so it’s just the sensation of his fingers on my clit and his cock in my hand . . . and I dissolve.
His sounds propel me on, quiet grunts, and he’s moving faster, so hard against my palm, fucking, and then he comes with a helpless groan: living and vital in my grip, his relief so warm against my skin.
He laughs again, stilling my hips with the hand he’s used to touch me; it’s wet, and the intimacy of that—the knowledge that he knows how I feel and just made me come—makes me ache all over again.
We fall quiet in the darkness.
Carter’s mouth finds mine and he kisses me with that telling, satisfied laziness.
“Still okay?” he asks in a deep, scratchy rumble.
“Yeah. You?”
“I’m great, are you kidding? I didn’t have to do that by myself later tonight.”
I start to laugh but he immediately consumes the sound of it, his mouth coming back over mine.
“I think I made a mess on your comforter, though.”
I pull away, feeling down between us. “My bed is like, ‘What is this substance?’?”
He laughs hoarsely into my neck, and just when I start to worry whether I’ve just sounded too . . . single, he says, “Yeah, me too.”
“You’re insanely hot. I don’t believe you haven’t been with someone recently.”
“And you’re gorgeous. The lack of opportunity isn’t why we’re single.”
I nod, looking up at his face. “It’s been suggested that I’m picky. And maybe a little work-obsessed.”
He laughs again at this, bending to kiss me. “I just think we both need something else to look forward to every day.”
chapter six
carter
Saturday night, Michael Christopher and I have been put in charge of food prep, which is just code for me doing the cooking and Michael keeping Morgan from pulling out every pot and pan in the house. He’s at the table and she is happily pelting him in the face with Cheerios.
Steph comes in, carrying with her the scent of freshly cut grass, and a rush of cool air slips in through the door behind her. Although it’s the weekend, she’d gone into work when a huge up-and-coming actor landed himself in jail. It reminds me of what Evie said about being married to her job, and I know this kind of thing—the late nights and missed dinners—is exactly what she meant.
She looks at us, impressed with the dinner spread, and sits down. “Wow.” She doesn’t even have to ask to know how it all materialized in front of her. “Well done, Carter.”
“It’s nice to cook in an actual kitchen with actual cookware.”
Steph gives me a sympathetic smile while MC glares at me, envious.
“So how’ve you been?” Steph asks.
“Busy. Emil Shepard is moving to my list and it’s creating a little paperwork headache in-house.”
She winces. “Oh God. Is Blake losing his mind?”
“You’d think so. But honestly, he barely blinked.” I shrug and spear a piece of chicken for my plate. “Maybe he’s getting laid. Old Blake would have ripped off my legs and beaten me with them.”
“There’s something in the air. It has been such a shit show of a day.” Steph cringes, glancing to Morgan. “Oops! Earmuffs, baby!”
We all wait in tense silence, wondering whether Morgan is going to gleefully sing out the words shit show! It’s happened before with dammit, motherfucker, and asshole.
This time, she refrains.
Relieved, Steph turns back to me. “How was your date?”
MC perks up. I take a bite of my dinner and chew while I think, hoping my face doesn’t betray me. My heart jolts noticeably when I think about last night. I haven’t had this kind of physical reaction to a woman in years.
“It was great,” I say. “She’s just . . . she’s fu—” I glance at Morgan midsentence. “Fu-reaking great.”
“Great,” Steph agrees slowly, with a smile to match her tone. She watches me like I’m going to elaborate, but in reality what more can I say? I want things with Evie to go somewhere, and I really think that they can. It’s why I told her I didn’t want us to have sex yet, even though I really, really wanted to.
“She was similarly bare bones on details.” Stephanie stabs her chicken with a fork. “You’re both brats.”
“Am I supposed to tell you about our first kiss during study hall?”
She shoots up, eyes glimmering. “You guys kissed!”
“All right, crazy.” Michael puts his hand on her forearm. “Let’s not scare the nice boy away. They’ll tell us what they want us to know when they want us to know it. I mean, at the very least they’ll remember who brought them together when they’re deciding who’s best man at their wedding.”
“Is this what happens when you’re married with kids?” I grin at each of them in turn. “You have nothing to do but pair everyone off?”
On cue, they both lean in, voices erupting in unison.
“We haven’t slowed down.”
“We have a crazy social life!”
Morgan, who clearly finds the synchronized outburst cause for celebration, blows bubbles in her milk until it’s foaming over the sides.
“No, no,” I say, “full of youth. Of course. But you’re also sort of . . . settled.”
“?‘Settled’?” Steph scoffs. “Please. We”—she points between the two of them—“are crazy. We can party with the best of them. Trust me.”
“You still hit the clubs sometimes?” I give them an encouraging nod.
“Of course we do.” She points to her arm and after a bewildered moment, I realize she’s wordlessly reminding me that she has a flower tattoo, and that people with tattoos are obviously likely to be found at clubs. “There’s this place called Foxtail that’s so cool. You should definitely take Evie there.”
“Or he could take her to Orchid, right, Steph?”