Heating Up the Holidays 3-Story Bundle(76)

I smile back. “You are, I think. You kind of lost sight of this one.”

“Yeah. I’m sorry, Jenny.”

“I’m upset, just really upset.” I look at him; his face is so worried. “You know how when someone dies, everyone has sex?”

He looks at me for a long moment, his eyebrows nearly crossed, and then laughs, rubbing his palms over my jaw and down my neck and back again. “I think I know what you mean. Life-affirming kind of thing?”

“Yeah, that.”

He keeps up his touching, his thumbs rubbing tears before they drip, sliding down my neck and squeezing my nape. “Jenny—”

“That. I’d like that. I want life-affirming sex, Evan.”

He closes his eyes. So I kiss him.

He receives my kiss, his mouth soft.

Then I hold his face, tipping it where I want it, the nap of his bristles soft one way, prickling another. I kiss his top lip and his bottom one, I kiss the divot over his top lip and the crease in his chin under the bottom.

I touch with my tongue, just a little, and then he opens to me, kisses back.

I’m willing to kiss as long as he needs to.

As long as I do.

I hope it isn’t long, though, before he’ll follow me where I need to go.

I let myself just feel him. I close my eyes and ignore how that makes my heart feel too tight. I remember that day in the foyer, when my mind reached out to what was around me.

For a long time, kissing Evan is like swimming underwater. How the light pressure all over your body is at first giddy and novel, and then it just is what it is—small currents like little breezes. Relaxing, absorbing.

Then his hands leave my nape and travel over my shoulders to fist in my sweater. My heart speeds up, my hands start to move, too, I squeeze his shoulders, his sides, he’s solid and live and his movements are bulky, a little out of control, and I feel every part of him that’s touching every part of me.

“Jenny, I—” He pulls me from the chair, and we sink to the floor.

Kissing.

“Shhh,” I soothe, and I brush over him, over his fly. “It’s okay,” I whisper into his neck, “if this is all you want—kissing. I want you, but it’s okay.”

Though, really, I want him to lay me out, come inside of me, over me, but I know he has to be right with me.

He has to need this, too.

I open my eyes, and his are right there, looking in mine.

When he looks away, I try not to be disappointed, but he’s not letting me go, not at all, he’s fumbling in his back pocket, one arm still braced along my spine.

I watch him open his wallet. I watch his hands shake as he fumbles out a condom.

“Could you read this?” he says. “I need to make sure it’s okay.”

I take it from him, and it’s fine. Not even wrinkled. The expiration months away.

“Do you sit on your wallet?” I can’t believe my calm voice. My questions from Sex Ed 101.

“No. I usually keep it in my bag. I don’t usually have those in there, not exactly, I—”

“It’s okay. It’s good. Can I put it on you?” Our eyes meet again, and I try to keep steady, but I feel hot over my neck again, I feel like I’m standing on the edge of the abyss and Evan is the only thing keeping me from stepping over.

“Yeah.” He bunches up his T-shirt and sweater in his fist, pulls them over his head.

His skin is flushed, the planes of his body on the big, lanky scale that’s Evan, how he’s made.

I pull apart his leather belt, the buckle falling loose, kiss his shoulders, his chest, his collarbones, while I unbutton his pants, reach inside, hold him, full in my hand, then, touch him, stroke him until he’s completely hard.

I rub my nose over his collarbone and he gathers my hair in his hand. I play with his erection—soft touches, watch his stomach cave when I hit a sensitive spot.

I decide I could do this forever. Just touching, holding.

Then he bumps his hips up, groans, wraps his hand around mine and asks for a rougher touch.

I roll on the condom, slow and careful.

He eases me on my back, on the floor. The carpet is a short nap, the kind that’s easy to clean in buildings like this, and it’s rough on my ass and catches at my sweater.

He kisses me, and seems determined to kiss me for as long as it takes for us to get there, to that restless, needy place. His mouth is exactly what I want, and I’m grateful for the buzz that starts taking over my brain, for his fingers, sliding where my clit’s grown pinched, for his arm at my back keeping me steady.

Even better is his hard penis at my entrance where I already feel so tight and throbbing. I bend my knees and tip up at the very same time he spreads me open with his fingers and slides the head snug against me.

He keeps his thrust slow, and we watch each other. He feels big, slick, and I let myself squeeze tight, to slow it all down, but then he makes this noise, something almost articulate and awed and distracted and I tip up more and he pushes and then I make the noise, too, because he’s inside me, hot and stretching and good.

We move our faces into each other’s neck, and I breathe in his skin, and he gives another little push that makes my eyes roll back and my hips feel shaky.

I hook one leg over his back so he stays right there, and then I feel the pressure of his thumb or a finger right to the side of my clit, just pressing, and God, the whole world finally, finally disappears.