After Hours (InterMix)(111)

I trailed off, but it didn’t matter. His lips were there to take the place of words. Our kiss was tender and slow, excruciatingly personal. It took all my will to pull away after a couple minutes. I cleared my throat.

He stared at me with something like awe lighting his gaze. When he kissed me, he seemed so, so close, I felt a tingle behind my nose. But I wouldn’t cry. This was too nice to mess up with crying, and Kelly and I communicated best with our bodies.

His mouth explored mine, and in no hurry. He’d kissed me this way before, for a moment here, a moment there, little glimpses of tender passion. But this time it stretched out for glorious minutes, a kiss erotic and romantic enough for the movies. He held my face in one hand, fingertips stoking the vulnerable hollow behind my ear.

I wriggled closer and found him hard, but for once he seemed immune to the demands of his cock. All this was different. I could feel it. And it felt better than the sex, almost. And way better than resisting this thing between us.

The kiss seemed to strip me bare, past my clothes, through my skin, until Kelly held my heart in his hands, held my hope. I felt more naked and quivering and helpless than I ever had, faced with violence or danger. Was this love, turning me inside out? It felt as wonderful as it did scary.

After five minutes of possibly the best human contact I’d ever experienced, I pulled away. I took a deep breath of the warm silence hovering between our mouths, then another.

Kelly stroked my hair. “You look like you’ve got something to say.”

“Why do you like me?”

His smile was pure surprise, and it crinkled the skin at the corners of his eyes in a way that made my loins melt. “Why do I like you?”

I shuffled back a little and put my hand on his arm. “At the risk of sounding like a presumptuous jerk, I got the impression you . . . I don’t know. That you weren’t really after something . . . you know. Serious.”

“Well,” he said slowly, “at the risk of sounding like a dick, I wasn’t. I never am. It happens, from time to time, usually because a woman sees something in me that she decides needs saving. Or thawing, maybe. And I’m not just a walking cock, despite how I advertise. I want more than just sex, if the woman seems special. But like I told you when we first talked, my domineering shtick doesn’t usually fly, past a couple weeks. Not once a woman realizes getting bossed around isn’t hot, in the long run. It’s not a sustainable way for two people to relate. Especially with the kind of girls I like. You scrappy types. It might work a date or two or five, sure. Not much longer.”

“You only bossed me around for a night, really. Like, properly.”

“Yeah.” Kelly nodded, averting his eyes. “I dunno quite why that was. Why I liked you better, speaking your mind.”

I smiled, a bit cocky. “Maybe you like my mind.”

He tugged me closer. “I think you know I do. But back to your original question, about why I like you?”

“Yeah?”

“Maybe because like me, you grew up with nobody really fighting for you. Right?”

I nodded.

“Surrounded by people who were too beat down to give a shit, even if it wasn’t their fault. Nobody showed you how it felt, to be cared about. Or wanted. But I know if anybody got between you and your sister or your nephew, you’d kick and scratch and bite to defend your own.”

“Sometimes I wish I wouldn’t . . . But yeah, it’s in there.”

“You grew up into a better person than the ones that raised you,” Kelly said. “And that’s unusual, with people like us. Me, I’m an okay guy, brought up by a violent drunk and a passive shell of a mom. I’m better than they raised me to be. That’s gotta be rare.” Kelly smiled and stroked my hair. “So that’s why. Because you’ve got something special in you, something that won’t stay buried, no matter how many times experience tries to say it’s fighting a losing battle. That’s what made both of us take these jobs, I bet. Believing maybe we could fix something ugly in the world, try to be of use to the people everybody else has given up on.”

The first tear escaped, rolling hot down my cheek. I’d never thought about it that way. I’d taken my job because I needed to be near my sister, but what he said was right, too. I didn’t want to give up on those people, no matter how nasty and ungrateful they sometimes were. I wanted to believe they were like Kelly, if you just dug deep enough—a hard exterior hiding a vulnerable core.