Love and Other Words(54)

He shrugged. An obvious yes.

“Are you going to your fall formal with Emma?” I asked, returning to doodling in my notebook.

“Macy. What?” He looked bewildered and then laughed sharply. “No.”

“Good.”

“Do you want to go with me?” he asked.

“You want me to go to a school dance with you?”

“No? Yes? After all our talk of the right way to blend our weekend lives with our weekday lives, I’m not sure what the right answer is,” he said, wincing. “But if you don’t go with me, I probably won’t go.”

“Really?” I asked, heart pounding. “Because I don’t want to go and get the death glare from all the skanks who love you, but I don’t want you to go and get ogled without me to glare at them, either.”

He shook his head, laughing. “It’s not like that.”

“So Emma doesn’t email you all the time anymore?”

“Not really.”

“Lies.”

“She doesn’t.” He held my gaze, steadily. “I’m not into her, she figured it out.”

I gave him a coy flutter of my lashes. “It’s not that I’m jealous.”

“Of course not.”

Just then his phone buzzed and he looked at it, read a text, and then shoved it back in his pocket. He looked very guilty.

“That was from Emma,” I guessed.

“Yes.” He picked at nonexistent lint on his pants. “It’s like the universe wants me to look like a liar right now.”

“What did she say?”

“Nothing interesting.” He laughed at my skeptical expression. “I swear she never texts me.”

“If it’s not interesting, why won’t you tell me?”

He eyed me. “She just asked to hang out.”

“That’s it?”

“Yep.”

“Well, then hand me your phone. I’ll tell her you’re busy.”

He smirked. “Will you include the part where you’re acting insanely jealous?”

I rolled onto my back and closed my eyes. “Whatever.”

“Or we could take some pictures of your boobs and ‘accidentally’ text them to her.”

“Jesus Christ. Give me the phone.”

I reached for it but his long monkey arm kept it easily away from me and I ended up falling on top of him instead, my boobs completely in his face. He made a muffled happy sound and laughed out a string of unintelligible words, totally pushing his face into my chest.

I screamed, scrambling back and pushing at his chest to get away. “Pervert!”

Elliot grabbed my waist and flipped me over as he sat up, pulling me backward into his lap and tickling me with his crazy long fingers, digging into my ribs.

I gasped and cackled, squirmed as he tickled, and laughed and held his arm around my waist until he rolled over onto me.

He pinned me gently; his hips fit perfectly between my legs.

We both froze, out of breath, staring at each other.

I was seventeen, but I’d never felt something like this before. He was hard, pressing right up against me.

The mood was suddenly completely different from the wrestle-ticklefest of one minute before.

Elliot glanced down at my mouth, and then back up to my face. I wanted to say something, to joke about the wood in his pants, anything. But my throat felt tight, my face burning.

With one elbow propped by my head, he whispered a quiet “Sorry” and began to climb off me.

I trapped him with my leg around his thigh, and his eyes flew back to mine.

“Stay,” I whispered.

I think.

It might have been my subconscious saying it, because I really didn’t want him to get up. I was obsessed with what was under those buttons on his jeans, and more than that, I wanted to know if… well, I wanted to know what could happen.

He swallowed audibly. “Okay.”

I rolled my hips up, watching as his mouth fell open and his eyes fell closed.

Elliot shifted forward and back, pressing the solid length of himself against me, and did it again. And again. His breath was harder, puffing my hair off my neck, and then his hand gripped my leg and he held his breath and we started grinding in earnest… together. My body was all instinct, chasing something familiar, just in the distance.

Oh, my God, what were we doing?

I ran my hands down his back. If I overthought it, I would ruin it.

This was Elliot.

This was my Elliot.

I made fists around his T-shirt, thought about the weirdest things like how his weight felt over me, and that I wanted to kiss him but didn’t want to turn my attention away even a little from the feeling building inside me… and then I spun into a strange loop of wondering whether I was imagining this.

We were having sex with our clothes on.

He was so quiet, although I guess I was quiet, too, because I was listening so intently for any clue as to what he was thinking.

I needed more. I needed him. I’d never felt that sort of weighted heat before, not even when I was thinking about him by myself. It was a rush all over my skin and that heavy need low in my belly. The warmth of his mouth landing on my neck pulled a tiny, helpless sound from me. He wasn’t sucking or licking, just pressing his mouth there, putting his breath that much closer to my ear so I could hear his reaction in every sharp exhale.