Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
HAPPILY EVER BEFORE
Arden
The very same message Stella and I used to mock receiving is now the one I send. The intention is clear as day because it's the middle of the night.
me: are you up?
It's some time after one in the morning, and while I've run through the motions of the rest of my day, I didn’t find myself merging with the floor when I came home. Instead I manic cleaned my entire apartment looking for a distraction, ate some grapes, tortilla chips, and a cheese stick for dinner standing at the sink, and since then, for the last three and a half hours, I have been lying here pretending I'm not obsessing over the idea of him.
My thumb hovers over the send button. This is exactly why I left him at the bar. Why I tried not to think about what happened. Because I’ve seen what being drawn to someone can do to you. But at some point between then and now, my resistance has crumbled into dust.
At least until approximately two minutes ago when my will power snapped. His response is instantaneous.
Will: yes, tell me where
Instantaneous and clear.
I pause a moment, wondering if I should have more hesitation about sending him my address. I should, probably. But here we are. So I fire off two messages. One to him. And one to Ethan explaining that if I'm murdered he should donate my books to the local library.
Will: you’ve got to be fucking kidding
The text comes through minutes after the original, the same time there's a soft knock on the door. No time to slip into something sexier as one would say, no time to make it seem like I'm casually lounging around, not expecting any company in matching red lace. But there's no real expectation to set here, is there? We both know what this is. It's a 'you up' text and a sure-thing fuck.
I open the door and he’s standing there, his smile dripping with desire.
"Are you the fucking Flash or something?" I look at my phone, check the timestamp of the message. "Three minutes. Literally. You got here in three minutes."
"I would have been here sooner if you let me." His voice is thicker than it was, likely because he can taste this thing between us just like I can. A thirst we both have that goes beyond hydration, and satisfies a different reciprocal need.
His eyes drop from where they were narrowed on me, and they run down my body. I bite down on my lip to contain the smile because I know why his face is lit up now. He takes a step forward into the narrow hallway of my apartment and I’m in arms reach of him. Something he makes me fully aware of when his large hands land on the bare skin of my hips as he slips them under the t-shirt and pulls me into him.
"I like your shirt." He says between kisses.
"I won it off some tour guide."
"Some tour guide, eh?"
"Yeah— he was fine." I smirk, tauntingly as his hand crawls up the column of my neck and tilts my head back ever so slightly. Stepping us further into my apartment.
"I’m not here for fine."
"Good, because I don’t settle it."
And with that his mouth is on mine. A kiss fueled by desperation of only a day, and yet, I was unable to wait, and clearly neither was he. We are an unrehearsed movement of limbs and lips as I lead him backwards towards my bedroom. There’s coordination in the air around us as we crash into each other. Frenzied and starved.
My hands grab for his belt as his are in my hair. The advantage that I’m already home, barely dressed, isn’t lost on either of us. But he doesn’t move to help me strip him any faster. Instead keeping his hands on me. He steps out of his shoes, and I move to the buttons on his shirt. He breaks our kiss and spins me from where I face him. He wraps himself around me from behind, as I feel his left hand crawl under my shirt and cup the curve of my breast. His free hand threads his fingers between mine, his palm swallowing the back of my hand as he lifts them together and presses our joined hands against the window I’m standing in front of.
His kisses direct my head, rolling it to the side as his lips move across my skin, landing right back where he seems to have a direct line into my thoughts.
"Did you know, Arden?" The depth of his tone drips down my throat landing within me. Pooling somewhere deep I know he will find.
"Did I know what?" My breathing is shallow and eager in response.
His mouth reaches for mine again as he says "I don’t know how you could have, but god what an incredible thought."
I’m so lost to him. Whatever he’s saying, perhaps some argument he’s having with himself, but with each breath from him, my knees feel just a little bit weaker, and his grip of me tightens in a way I’m sure he’s holding up more of my weight than either of us are actually aware.
"Look," he says, pressing my hand flat to the window, his long finger taps the glass. "You see that apartment? Fourth floor, just like this one. The apartment that you can see into perfectly. You wonder how I got here so quickly? Because that’s where I was. That’s where I’ve been. Apparently just waiting for you…”
My head lulls back against his chest and I can hear him breathing in a pattern that's expressing increasing torment at the constraint of his clothes. His hand flexes against the glass.
“So tell me darling, did you know?"
"I didn’t know it was you." I let out. "But I’ve watched."
" What have you watched, Arden?" He gently pulls down my underwear and they fall to my ankles. I hear the groan from behind me, feel his hardness pressed through his pants against me.
"You." I say, without shame.
"And right now, do you think anyone can see us?"
"I..I don’t know." His fingers find me as easily as they did earlier.
"Do you want them to?" he asks as his foot knocks mine, spreading my legs apart for him.
"Yes." I say, again, not an ounce of shame as I’m standing in his arms.
He doesn’t release me entirely as he steps out of his pants, and I hear the tearing open of a condom. The ‘you-up’ text, really doesn’t leave much to the imagination. Though, there was no way, this is what I had imagined.
He bends me forward where both my hands are pressed against the glass, and my eyes are wide open. But the only place I can look is into the depths and darkness of his apartment. The one I’ve stared at for months in question, in lust, in loneliness.
I feel him slide into me slowly, but like everything experienced between us, the escalation intensified beyond understanding. His hands knot in my hair as he fucks me deeply lacking any modicum of modesty or restraint. It’s as his hand reaches between my legs, teases me as he thrusts, I come apart completely in his arms, and he, right behind me.