Heating Up the Holidays 3-Story Bundle(66)

It’s been so long since I’ve felt this way, like I could let go, let my lower brain steer things for a while.

Let a man do anything he wanted, let him look at me however he’d like to, get all far gone and lost, a body against mine, rough hair, slick penetration.

One small adjustment of the fine focus of my life and there he is—blue eyes, hot skin.

“I’m worried about later,” his voice is lower, softer. “I have all these new reasons to worry about later, when it comes to us. There is probably a lot of apologizing to be done later.” Then he blows out a huge breath, like he doesn’t exactly want to be talking about any of this.

“Wait.” I pull back a little, just enough to think, but my voice stays low.

“Yeah?”

“This is completely stupid. I mean, I’m not stupid, I don’t think. I’m fiercely intelligent. That’s a true fact. Also, I get it. It’s not right for us to be not kissing and working on therapy plans together. Except, that now, I want to work on therapy plans and I also want to do all the not-kissing stuff that’s really just a lot of kissing.”

He smiles at me. “You make it sound pretty simple.”

“I don’t know. Maybe it is.” I don’t want to admit that, actually, it doesn’t feel precisely simple. I have been kind of a poor judge of simple, lately.

“I really want it to be simple,” he says, and looks worried. But then, he looks down for a moment, and when he looks at me again, he says, “You’re beautiful” in a voice that has dropped his wryness and is instead, just, I don’t know.

Boy voice.

Boy you kind of like voice.

Low and scratchy, or something.

“Crazy-smart, too,” he says, almost against my mouth. “I could listen to you talk about your research all day. And sometimes, I can tell you know how to enjoy things, and have fun, and sometimes, you kiss me at bus stops.”

I’m just watching him speak, how he’s not looking away or fidgeting, now. We’re just this girl and this boy, and our table is a little too private, and our knees are touching, and so are our hands, and our faces are close.

Then he says, “Say something, say something else,” but he smiles, like he knows this negotiation between us, before we do something more than almost kiss, is almost the best part.

“Will you get in trouble?” I can’t believe I just said that.

My question swoops through me, live.

It’s not what I meant to ask, exactly.

But as soon as I do, both of us lean in a little more.

He smiles, he’s so close I can imagine that smile against my mouth. “You should know I already talked to my supervisor about you. Before I even went to the lab with you, that day.”

“Oh.”

“Before we even did that exercise in the lobby.”

Oh.

“I talked to her because I was pretty sure I was going to kiss you sooner rather than later.”

“That is”—I take a breath—“a really strange reaction to a difficult client.”

“It’s probably not the difficult-client part that got me thinking about kissing, exactly.” He puts his hand over mine on the table, and I feel it between my legs, over my thighs.

It starts to ache when he traces my knuckles. “Do you remember the day you came in with that huge strawberry milk shake?”

“It was a smoothie, and I think it was pomegranate.” I don’t even know if I’m speaking out loud, it’s all I can do not to let my eyes roll to the back of my head from all this delicious anticipation.

“There was like three gallons of whatever it was.”

“You would know, since all of it ended up in your lap.”

“You were using that giant cup to kind of gesture at me, while you yelled about night-vision goggles.”

“I don’t remember yelling, exactly.” I think I was kind of yelling.

I had just failed a test concerning my night blindness that put me in a more serious category for my diagnosis, and he had completely gone after using the night-vision glasses, which were awkward and pinchy and huge and I decided I would just never go anywhere in the dark, basically.

“You were yelling. And then the lid came off your drink, and then I was dripping with cold, pink goo.”

“Yeah. Not one of my finer moments.”

He strums over my knuckles and the lust is just bolting right through my middle, hard and sweet.

“Except, that it was. Because you went from yelling to helping, and laughing at yourself and you were even tearing pages out of this lab book from your bag to try to clean up the smoothie and it was like you didn’t even know where you were rubbing. I realized that even though this was serious, your pain and your diagnosis, you didn’t take yourself seriously. In the best way, I mean. There was this incredible, massive grief and you still drank giant pink smoothies and yelled and tried to be helpful and kind. Not like you were noble, just like”—he looked up to find the words—“you were the kind of person that was nice to have around, in this life, in this f*cked-up life, in general. The kind of person that made everything mostly bearable.

“After that is when I talked to my supervisor.”

I smile, let myself enjoy really looking into his eyes. “I totally realized later that I had been rubbing lab graphs on your junk and it took three beers before I was over it”—I captured his finger with my thumb—“by the way.”