Chapter 21
Wait.
Celeste’s voice was quiet and rough, but the word was clear as a bell.
John tipped his hips back, panicked he’d gone too far, too fast. Having her body pressed to his in the closet had been too much, that sweet peppermint calling to him from the softest spot behind her ear, beckoning him like a siren.
But now he waited, his mouth hovering just above hers. Celeste’s breathing was fast and shallow, her ribs expanding and contracting against him. Even as close as he was to her, he couldn’t make out her face in the total darkness of the closet.
He shuffled a foot back, ready to give her more room, but a tug on his shirt kept him close. She turned her face into his hand, pressing a slow, wet kiss to the middle of his palm.
“I want this. With you.” Her whisper vibrated against his hand. “But I can’t have a relationship. I’m not—” She sighed, pulling at him again until his body was pushed against hers.
Being close to her was intoxicating. Immersive in every way—her scent, her breath, her lips moving against his palm. He was dizzy with it, wanting only to encircle her wrists with his hands and slide them up over her head, returning his mouth to her neck to give her anything she wanted.
“I know,” he managed. They were stuck, wanting and not wanting the same things.
Her lips opened on the pad of his palm, followed by the scrape of her teeth. In the dark, it was all sensation, and his body was burning. But he held himself still, waiting for her to tell him what she wanted.
“I don’t want a relationship. And I love birding with you. But whatever is happening here—I don’t think it will work to keep denying it.” She sighed and dropped her arms to her sides. He took the cue to do the same, stepping back and letting darkness fall between them, their breathing still fast. “When I was a kid,” she continued quietly, “I used to love to scoot across the carpet in our living room with my socks on. I’d scrape my feet along, building up that static charge as I got closer to touching the doorknob on the other end of the room.”
Despite the tension between them, John laughed. That was a perfectly Celeste thing to do.
“That’s how I feel lately, with you. Like there’s this charge building up.” She lowered her forehead against John’s chest. “It was stupid to think one more kiss would help. It just made everything worse. I don’t know how to go back. I thought I could put it aside, but…”
Her head lifted from his chest, and even in the dark he could sense her looking at him. “Do you know what I’m talking about? Is it that way for you?”
She sounded unsure, as if he hadn’t just pinned her against the closet door. “You know it is.”
He dropped Celeste’s earring into his pocket and ran both hands down her arms. “Are you saying you don’t want to do the contest anymore?” He’d gone over the countdown in his head a hundred times in his woodshop. Nineteen more days of the contest. Nineteen more days with Celeste, and he was counting on them. He wanted them.
But he also wanted her, and that made things complicated.
“No,” she rushed out. “I want to do the contest. But now that this… charge between us is out in the open, how do we keep going? It might be a little hard to bird like this.”
It was hard to think like this, the taste of her neck still alive on his tongue.
After a moment, she took a breath and laid her hands on his chest. “I think we can manage it. But we need a plan. I don’t have experience with casual sex, but it’s a thing people do. Like, friends with benefits is a thing?”
John didn’t have much experience with casual sex either. He found he needed a connection with someone to really enjoy himself in bed, where he treated sex as both a good time and an exploration, a give-and-take that required trust.
But he had trust with Celeste. Somehow, despite the outward difference in their personalities, they’d been easy with each other almost from the start.
Maybe it didn’t need to be as complicated as he feared. “Yeah, people do it,” he said. “I haven’t been in that situation myself, but I’d be open to trying it with you. If that’s what you’re offering.”
If he could touch her again, he’d be open to almost anything.
“You know me.” Celeste slid a hand up his chest, fingers threading into his beard. “I’m always up for trying new things.” She brushed her lips across his Adam’s apple as her fingers moved to the back of his neck, working their way into his hair. “We could be birders with benefits till the contest ends. That way we can keep birding, but we also… release the charge a bit.”
“?‘Birders with benefits’?” He choked out a laugh as her fingers tightened in his hair. Only Celeste would come up with that. “We could do that.”
“Just till the end of the contest. Then we can each keep going on our path of self-fulfillment.”
Nineteen more days.
There were dozens of reasons why he should say no and get them out of that closet. The first among them was his lack of proof that he could do a casual thing with anyone, let alone Celeste. Nothing about her called for half measures.
But wasn’t he the one always going on about discovery? How could he say no when the thing he so desperately wanted to explore was literally within his reach?
And would he ever sleep again without knowing the shape of Celeste’s breast in his palm?
He guided her back against the door. “Okay. Yes.”
“Thank the goddess,” she moaned. “I’m about to combust. Are we able to start the benefits thing right now? Because—”
He caught her words in his mouth, holding her face with both hands. Immediately, her mouth was open, asking him for what she needed. She was sweet and warm, moaning greedily into his mouth as she gripped his hair, hard.
Their kiss inside the bar had been eye-opening, but muddled by surprise and confusion. The one outside had been a confession, but had felt like an ending.
But this kiss, dark and needy—this kiss was a beginning, a delicious relief. It was rounding the corner of a trail, knowing the view was just around the bend. It was the charge between them, building to near combustion.
It was a current, warm and steady, running between them and heating them both.
He held her face tight between his hands, angling her to him as her arm reached around his waist and pulled him closer, until their chests were pressed hard against each other.
“Touch me,” she groaned against his mouth before pushing her mouth against his again, swiping her tongue along his bottom lip and drawing it between her teeth.
John dropped his hand from her face long enough to find one of her hands, placing it over where he gripped her hip. “Show me where.”
She dragged his hand up her body, cupping it around her breast. Her nipple was hard through the thin fabric of her makeshift tunic.
When he flicked the nipple with his thumb, she yelped into his mouth, “Oh fuck, yes,” so he enclosed it between his thumb and forefinger, listening to Celeste pant. He craved all the knowledge he could gather about her body and what she wanted. His fingers tightened around her taut nipple, squeezing it while rolling over it with his thumb. “Tell me when.”
She hissed in a breath and bucked against him, wrapping a leg around his hip. He pinched harder, then harder still, until she moaned, “There. Right there.”
He crushed her mouth with another kiss as he played with her, letting up with his fingers before pinching again. He rubbed his beard against her chin and dragged his lips along her neck. “So much I want to explore.”
Celeste pushed her hips into him with a moan, all but riding his thigh. “Exploring is good. We should definitely do that.”
Muffled background sounds drifted through the closet door, a chorus of voices like someone had been found hiding. “The exploring I want to do requires more space, and definitely more light.” He needed to look at her and add each inch of her exposed skin to the guidebook in his mind.
She scraped her nails along his neck, then down his arms, leaning in for a kiss. She pulled back, speaking just against his lips. “So maybe you should invite me home with you tonight. That’s the prime benefit of our arrangement, right? Open exploration.”
“Tonight.” Tonight she could be spread on his bed. Tonight he could hear what sounds she made when they weren’t in the middle of a party. “Yes, tonight, I—” He groaned, biting back a curse. “I can’t.”
“You can’t?”
John leaned forward to catch the lip he knew was jutting out from an exaggerated frown, encircling her waist in his arms. “I promised Linda I would go over some numbers for the gala.” She’d even promised to make John his favorite veggie chili. “She’s been working with some local businesses for donations and—”
She caught him off guard with a kiss, this one slow and gentle. “Contest Linda? Your birding mentor? You gotta go.”
He did, dammit. He really did. “Tomorrow? I’m free tomorrow night.” His fingers wrapped around the rope at her waist, tugging it gently like he’d wanted to do all night.
She sighed and arched her back, sliding herself over his leg again. He was desperate to know if she could orgasm this way, his hands on the curves of her ass as he helped her set a rhythm.
“Tomorrow’s no good.” She untucked his shirt and snaked her slender fingers up his chest. “I’m going up to Phoenix for a special training. I’ve got a sub for two days, so I booked myself a hotel room. I had this idea that I’d treat myself. But now—”
He kissed her cheek, her jawbone, the side of her mouth. “Treat yourself. You deserve that.”
She sighed and stretched her neck, giving John space to work his mouth down her jaw. “I love being in hotel rooms alone. I turn the AC down really low and take a long bath and then stretch out on the hotel sheets.”
“Jesus.” That was a vision John would hold on to. Celeste, flushed from her bath, with goose bumps rising on her skin, stretched out, maybe even thinking of him.
She was breathing heavily, moving against his leg with a mission. “But when I’m back, we’ll figure out our schedules. Because I really want to—”
“So do I,” he assured her, finding her mouth again. Celeste grew more frantic, whimpering his name against his neck. He explored lines of her ribs, the hard dip of her sternum between her breasts, the soft skin of her inner wrist, which he pulled up to his mouth for a long suck.
A groan issued from deep within her as she moved faster on his thigh. Christ, she was responsive, moving faster like she might be close to coming, just like this.
Then there was a small, metallic click, and the world came pouring in as Celeste tumbled backward into the hall.
“Jesus, Andrea, I told you not to—” Maria shook her head at Andrea but broke into a grin of her own when she looked at Celeste, who was smoothing down her tunic before adjusting her braid, which had strands sticking out in every direction. Her face was flushed, her lips wet and swollen, one earlobe bare.
She was breathtaking.
“Looks like I found the last two hiders.” Andrea smirked at Celeste. “I knew you wouldn’t be in character enough for that celibacy stuff.”