Deeper (Caroline & West #1)(58)

“I’m going to grab a nap, and then I have my English paper to write still.”

“That’s your last thing, right?”

“Yeah. It’s due Friday.”

“You gonna be able to sleep?”

He means because Bridget’s family will be here to pick her up first thing in the morning. Part of her family—her dad and his new wife, plus some stepkids. The room will be a zoo.

“I hope so.”

“You could crash on our couch,” he says. “Write it over at our place.”

“Yeah?”

“Sure. Why not?”

West does the dishes, and I get drowsy. I fall asleep with my head against the leg of the sink, waking once when someone shows up to buy an eighth off West and again later when he drops a pan with a loud clatter.

On the walk to his apartment, I feel drunk. I fall asleep on the couch while he’s taking a shower, barely coming awake when he settles a blanket on me, kisses my temple, and says, “Sleep tight.”

I wake up shivering.

The blanket is a puddle on the floor, the apartment cold. Outside, the snow is blowing, nasty. I think of Krishna in his car and hope he’s okay. But it feels like late morning—he’s probably already home by now.

I reach for the blanket, wrap it around my shoulders, stand up.

I find myself on the threshold of West’s bedroom, still drowsy, looking in at him.

He’s a lump beneath a kids’ comforter, dark blue with rocket ships and planets on it. I asked once if he got it at a yard sale, and he gave me an odd look. “Brought it from home,” he said, as though that’s what we all did. Picked up the comforters off our childhood beds and carried them with us to college.

Everyone else I know works so hard to separate childhood from college, to prove we’re grown up and those years are far in the past. Not West.

It’s not because he’s still a child. I wonder if it’s because he never was.

I can’t imagine West’s childhood. I can’t imagine anything about his life away from here.

There’s nothing much in the room. No decorations. No Christmas lights. No sign that he’s loved or that he loves anything.

It’s not inviting, but it’s Thursday morning. Nine o’clock, according to the display on his alarm clock. I’m barefoot, wrapped in a blue fleece blanket from the couch, and I feel invited.

He invited me.

I walk to his bed and take off my jeans.

I flip back the covers. I climb in behind him.

I put my arm over him, nestling it up beside his arm. Tuck my knees behind his. He’s not wearing pants; his leg hair is ticklish on my thighs, and I wonder briefly if I should be doing this. If he’ll be angry with me for taking a liberty.

But West is the one who made it so we’d be alone, and here we are, on the verge of not being able to see each other for a month.

Mostly I do it because right next to West is where I want to be.

With my head on his pillow, I can feel him breathing, slow and steady. He’s warm and heavy, safe and so dangerously essential.

I close my eyes. He smells like bread and soap.

I drift.

When I wake up, we’ve flipped positions. He’s spooned behind me, and the energy is different.

He’s awake.

All over.

“Caroline.” His voice is low and husky, with an edge to it I’ve never heard.

“Mmm?”

“You’re in my bed.”

“Yeah. You looked cozy.”

“It’s ten o’clock. Thursday.”

I roll to my back. He rolls right on top of me, lifting my arm above my head. Our eyes meet, and then our lips.

The kiss is sleepy, lazy, but insistent. You’re in my bed.

This is how I get kissed if I’m in his bed.

My shirt is just a T-shirt. My bra is boring and white. I could probably use a shower. I have morning breath.

He kisses me like I’m delicious.

He peels off the layers of my clothing as though he’s going to find some fabulous treasure underneath, then strokes his hands over my naked body as if to say, This. This is it. You.

His shirt comes off. He’s gorgeous—tan and flawless, muscular and lean. I lick his biceps. Bite his shoulder. He tastes clean and alive, like everything I want.

In minutes we’re down to his boxer briefs and my panties, and I’m writhing. Actually writhing. It isn’t a thing I knew I was capable of doing, but with West it isn’t even a choice. I have to. Our tongues are at war, my hands on his ass, tugging him closer, closer, always closer.

I’m so wet. Wet through my underwear, I’m sure of it, and the tip of his erection is probing, pushing my panties a few centimeters inside me with the weight of his body and his slow, rolling thrusts. Two thin layers of fabric between us, moist, slippery, insubstantial. Our hips come together in time with our mouths, our tongues, our straining need.

I need him. I need him. I can’t think about anything else. My hands find the waistband of his briefs and slip inside to find the clench of his muscles under my palms.

“Jesus,” he says, with his face against my neck. “Don’t.”

I take my hands away, discouraged. West looks at me. Kisses the wrinkle between my eyebrows, the tip of my nose, my chin, my mouth. “Come on, I didn’t mean it like that. You’re killing me, that’s all.”