Love in the Time of Serial Killers(52)

Except then we got to his room, and suddenly it didn’t feel like only a summer fling. His room immediately felt like him, somehow exactly as I might’ve imagined it, with a tall shelf stacked haphazardly with books and a guitar case leaning against one wall and dark blue blanket mussed at the end of the bed, as if he’d gotten up in a hurry. Only how could a room feel like Sam to me, when I barely knew him in the first place?

He closed the door behind him, leaning against it as if giving me some space. I tried to keep my gaze on him from the neck up, because the rest of him was too distracting.

“It’s late,” he said. “We can just sleep, if you’d rather. Or we can get your clothes and I’ll walk you back next door.”

“Is that what you want?”

The problem with my neck-up strategy was that I’d underestimated those eyes, which bore into me now as he watched the emotions play across my face.

“I don’t think my wants are in question here.”

“Hey, I kissed you first,” I said. “I think I made a pretty clear declaration of my intent.”

He came toward me, one hand hooked in the top of the towel that rode low on his hips, as if making sure it didn’t fall. Meanwhile I just watched it as he moved, half hoping it would.

“And now?” he said.

I didn’t know how to put all the ways I was feeling into words. I didn’t know that I wanted to. I’d anticipated this moment for a while—not just hooking up with someone, but him specifically. And now that it was happening, it was scary and exciting and a little weird, knowing that this guy who’d become an important part of my life in the last few weeks was about to become important in a different way.

I slid my hands up his chest, pressing my thumbs into the notches of his shoulders. “I want this,” I said. It seemed safer than saying my first thought, which had been I want you.

I let my towel drop to the floor, until I was standing in front of him topless, the greenish light from the pool outside still coming through the window. We must’ve forgotten to turn it off, but I couldn’t bring myself to care about it now. I hooked my fingers in my underwear, and pulled them down.

I heard Sam’s sharp intake of breath, the hitch in his throat as he looked down at me. He reached up to gently pull the elastic from my hair, combing his fingers through the waves as they splayed over my shoulders. Even that massage on my scalp felt good, and I closed my eyes, swaying into him.

“You’re so beautiful,” he murmured against my mouth, his hands still in my hair as he kissed me. This kiss was different from the ones in the pool, somehow—slower, more exploratory, as though he had all the time in the world and he wanted to spend it with me.

Meanwhile, I felt restless and pent-up and like if I didn’t have him inside me right then I would explode.

My insistent hands on his towel and underwear must’ve given him the hint, because within five seconds we were both naked and twined together on the bed, kissing and touching everywhere we could. I took the hard length of him in my hand, and he shuddered against me as I rubbed my thumb along the silky head of his cock.

“Ah,” he said, his voice sounding strangled. “I won’t last long if you keep doing that.”

“What, this?” I said, and did it again. I liked seeing him this way, out of control, his eyes glittering and wild in the low light of the room. But then he turned the tables on me, flipping me over so I was pinned on my back, and he kissed his way down my throat, stopping to suck one aching nipple in his mouth, roll his tongue along the swell of my stomach before he found my clit. I bucked involuntarily, my hips grinding into him as if my body knew it needed more even before my mind did. He licked and sucked, his tongue doing wicked things inside me, until there was no way I could hold myself back even if I wanted to. I clenched at the sheets, gasping as I felt my orgasm shockwave through me.

When I caught my breath again, I hooked my thigh around his leg, rolling on top of him so it was my turn to be in control. “Condom?” I breathed against his mouth.

“Nightstand drawer.”

I ripped open the packet with my teeth, faltering only slightly when I saw the way one corner of his mouth twitched, something more than sex passing between us, a reminder of that shared moment we’d had back at his party. My fear in having a fling was that it would feel empty, but this didn’t feel that way at all, and maybe that was scarier.

But then I didn’t have any more time to think about it, because I’d rolled the condom on and sank onto him in one fluid motion, feeling suddenly so full that I let out an involuntary sigh.

“Fuck,” Sam said. It was the first time I’d ever heard him say the word. His hands squeezed my hips, my ass, as I rode him until we were both sweaty and spent, collapsing against his sheets.

We lay there for a minute, the only sound our heavy breathing. I felt suddenly shy, unsure what to say. Sam rolled toward me, brushing strands of hair away from my face as he pressed a soft kiss to my temple.

“That was amazing,” he said. “You’re amazing. How do you feel?”

Why did he have to ask me that of all questions? My body felt tired and sore and sated in all the best ways, and there was a part of me that was still floating on a cloud, a cloud of Sam telling me I was beautiful and the rasp in his voice when he’d said that single profanity. But my mind was already starting to come back down to earth, questioning things, like Will it be weird now? and Did I leave my bra in the pool?