The Ex Talk(62)

“What?” I say, desperate to know how that sentence ends. I plant my hands on his chest, the heather gray T-shirt. He is taut and warm beneath my palms. Slowly, slowly, I move them upward, and his eyes flutter shut when one of my hands reaches his cheek, feeling the stubble there. Letting it scrape against my skin. “Do I have any idea what?”

“How fucking perfect you are right now.”

That’s all it takes. My hands dive into his hair, and I tug his mouth down to mine. I am kissing Dominic Yun, and he feels incredible, so warm and slick and right as he parts my mouth with his. I thought this would feel like immediate relief, but it’s the opposite, a deep and dizzying need that grows and grows. I need him to kiss me harder. And he does, matching the swipe of my tongue and the bite of my teeth. I’d forgotten that rush of adrenaline that comes with being this close to someone new. Someone I supposedly broke up with a few months ago.

He spins us so he can push me against the counter, then kisses a trail from my mouth to my neck as his hips roll against mine. He’s so much taller than I am that I feel the hard length of him against my navel, and it turns me wilder. There’s a low rumble in his throat when I press back against him.

We shouldn’t be doing this.

We have to keep doing this.

I murmur an oh my god as he sucks at my neck, teeth on skin. I feel myself about to buckle, but he’s there, holding me up. “Bedroom,” I gasp out.

He pulls me forward, wrapping one of my legs around him, indicating I should do the same with the other. Then he’s picking me up, gripping my thighs and then my ass as we stagger upstairs.

“You have moves,” I say when he sets me down on the edge of the bed, giving me a moment to catch my breath and safely deposit my glasses on a nightstand.

“No moves,” he says, sounding earnest as he slides onto the bed next to me. “Just something I’ve been wanting to do for a while.” His mouth, back on my neck. His hands, roaming the sides of my body, lingering at the dip in my waist.

“Me too.” I experience a flash of panic as his fingers graze my breasts. “I should warn you, I’m wearing a truly hideous sports bra.” It used to be charcoal, but now it’s an unfortunate watery gray, the elastic peeking through various holes in the seams. Really, I should win an award for packing the world’s least sexy clothing.

A laugh gets caught in his throat. “I can one hundred percent guarantee I won’t care.”

I can’t take my shirt and bra off fast enough.

“Don’t tell me you prefer the bra,” I say when he just stares at me.

“Gorgeous,” he says, but he’s looking at my face. He leans in to kiss me again, a thumb stroking the hardened peak of one nipple before he bends to take the other into his mouth.

Fuck he’s good at this. At this rate, I’m half-convinced I could come before my leggings are off. I go for the hem of his shirt, and he helps me yank it off. I barely have time to appreciate the ridges of his chest before I’m tugging at his waistband. I’m so greedy that even with his pants half-off, I reach inside, desperate to feel him.

He groans in my ear as I close my hand around him. He’s hot and smooth and rock-hard, pulsing in my fist. “Don’t—don’t go too fast,” he says, and I’m reminded of the fact that he’s only done this with one other person. That this is a big deal to him.

That it must mean I’m a big deal to him.

“I won’t.” I draw back. Not too fast. I can do that. I can savor this.

Because there’s a nagging thought at the back of my mind that I don’t know what this will mean when we’re back at the station.

We readjust so he can remove his pants, and then he holds himself over me as he fumbles with the waistband of my leggings. Another terrible clothing choice.

“They’re kind of tight, so—”

“Making me work for it,” he says, but he’s grinning “I don’t mind. I have a master’s degree, after all. I’m used to hard work.”

I nod toward the impressive tent in his boxer briefs. “I can tell.”

He slides my leggings off and kisses me from ankle to knee to thigh, stroking along the outside of my underwear, already wet with my need for him. This pair is granny panty–adjacent, and yet I’ve never felt sexier.

“This okay?” he asks, his breath ragged. A finger grazes the fabric, and my body focuses all its attention on that single piece of cotton. I hold tight to his shoulders, silently begging him to push aside my underwear, tear it off, anything to feel skin on skin.

“It must be pretty obvious that it is,” I manage, but because I appreciate he asked, I add: “Yes. Yes.”

Except he pulls back into a seated position on the bed next to me. I’m still panting, half-embarrassed by how feral those few strokes of his finger turned me.

“I just realized I don’t have a condom,” he says, and the reality is louder than a thunderclap. He runs a hand through his hair, looking sheepish. In this moment, even his sheepishness is hot. Inconvenient, but hot. “Shit. I’m sorry. Do you—?”

I cut him off with a shake of my head, forcing myself up so I can lean against the headboard. My dating app hiatus evolved into a birth control hiatus. “No. Didn’t really think this would happen, so . . .”

We’re both quiet for a few moments. Enough for the awkwardness to set in, enough for me to feel a little exposed.