Time (Laws of Physics #3)(13)

“We have to move on.” His brown eyes flickered between mine, and—just like all the other times we gazed at each other for any length of time—I had to remind myself not to tackle him to the ground, rip his clothes off, and kiss and lick and bite every square centimeter of his rock-hard physique.

Especially his bottom.

That’s right. I wanted to sample his bottom. Every time he paced away, little pheromone pixies danced on my pelvis, gleefully, wickedly smashing my concentration into a million pieces of agitated yearning. I wanted to touch it, stroke it, massage it, bite it.

Whew.

Clearing my throat, swallowing, I sucked in a breath and tore my eyes away from his, fanning my T-shirt. “Is it—” I had to clear my throat again because my voice cracked. “Is it hot in here?”

The thing is, I wasn’t this person. No one, not even me, would ever describe me as physically focused, or fixated on touching an attractive or alluring exterior. Ever. I actively rejected external beauty as a contributing factor to how or if or when I interacted with people. I’d never been tactile. I observed. I calculated. I analyzed. I didn’t even like playdough as a child.

But with Abram, I couldn’t stop noticing. I couldn’t stop thinking. I couldn’t stop wanting.

“Mona.”

Think of the Queen! Isn’t that what the British always said? What was the US equivalent? Think of the first lady?

I worried my bottom lip, breathing in through my nose, endeavoring to get my brain out of his pants. “Okay. Okay. Where are you going after Perth?”

“Mona.” He leaned close, using his hold on me to pull both my hand and his phone toward his chest.

My gaze darted up and then away, cheeks heating, because if I looked at him again, I’d be—again—fighting the impulse to tackle him and we still had three months to—

“Mona, look at me.”

I did. I gave him my eyes. I also held my breath.

His gorgeous amber irises seemed to glow as they moved over my face, dropped to my mouth, lingered there. They felt hot yet controlled, self-possessed, and for some reason the self-possession took my heat level straight to plasma.

“I think—” He licked his lips, taking his phone from my grip and placing it on top of the throw pillows piled by the headboard. “I think we need to do something.”

“Something?” I asked, still not breathing so the words came out more like a hitching whisper. I didn’t know if it was the lack of oxygen or Abram that had me feeling so dizzy.

Abram. Definitely Abram.

On my sixteenth birthday, I’d had an IUD implanted, a gift from my sex-positive parents. Lisa had received one too. Leo had received a reversable vasectomy for his.

Even with the IUD, I’d always used a condom for sexual intercourse as well as spermicide I would procure after triple-checking the lot numbers and packaging date. Anything older than three months, I would throw away.

I’d administered two blow jobs, again always with a condom, and the second one only because I was convinced I’d missed something the first time. Once, a guy attempted to conduct cunalingus using a female condom. I’d insisted after discovering he hadn’t been vaccinated against HPV. It wasn’t enjoyable. I’d stopped him after the timer denoted the agreed upon two minutes was over, not liking how messy and wet on my thighs it had become.

I mean, saliva. Do you know how filthy the human mouth is? Disgusting.

I’d done many, many things with my seven sexual partners—working my way through a checklist of positions and techniques, toys and gadgets—and everything I was open to exploring had been attempted at least once. Notes had been made. Items had been crossed off. Second and third attempts at pleasant activities had yielded varied results, leading me to the conclusion that masturbation utilizing a LELO vibrator was the only consistent—and therefore worthy—method of satisfaction.

But with Abram . . .

I wanted to do it all again, try it all again, even the items I’d crossed off my lists.

“We have twenty minutes left, before I have to leave,” he said, the words rough. His palm came to my knee and my body jolted at the benign touch. A small smile tugged his mouth to one side, his delicious dimple making an appearance, and his voice was low and rumbly as he asked, “Do you want me to touch you?”

“Touch me?” I squeaked, clearly incapable of brain function higher than a parrot. Forced to exhale because my chest felt like it might burst, not a half second later I was gulping air again.

“Yeah.” His hand slid higher on my leg, sending hot spikes of twisting tension straight to my center, and he leaned closer, rising slightly above me, filling my vision, his warm palm shifting to the inside of my upper thigh.

My feet did something weird, arching and pointing uncontrollably, almost like they’d been tickled, the muscles of my legs and stomach flexing. I sucked in an involuntary breath just as his large hand stopped at my hip, his thumb drawing a firm line over my thin cotton pajama pants from my lower abdomen straight to my clitoris.

Well, that escalated quickly.

I gasped, my eyes closing, my head hitting the wall at my back, my hands fisting in the comforter on either side of me while my body dichotomously froze and melted. I couldn’t breathe.

I can’t breathe.

“I can feel you,” he said, his voice still a growl as the pad of his thumb circled me through the two layers of fabric, pressing, searching. “You’re so wet. Is that for me?”