Chapter 2
2
Dexter
three years ago
My move to Brooklyn two years ago isn’t necessarily a memory I like to revisit often. It was stressful more than anything. Mainly due to reasons like trying to find a roommate who wasn’t into conspiracy theories or didn’t have a secret meth lab in their closet. Add on the trauma of furnishing my room with items from Goodwill that weren’t infested with bodily fluids or bedbugs, and you got the grand slam of inhospitable welcomes. At the ripe young age of twenty-four, fresh-faced and working some temp job that might as well have paid me in clams, the glitz and glamour of moving to the city was a little intimidating. But my sister, Janet, made it memorable in her usual big sister fashion. She came to my apartment infested with cockroaches and smelling like stale chow mein with a bamboo plant and a white eight hundred thread count sheet set. The bamboo plant because she claimed it was good luck and the sheets because, according to her, I needed to balance the figurative “bachelor pad” neon sign I had hanging over my entryway with something other than my navy comforter and PS5. And while I appreciated the gesture, the sheets stayed tucked into the far corner of my closet, unused for a long time.
But today, in the early hours of Sunday morning, while stretching the elastic of that exact sheet set to fit around the curved edges of my mattress, I’m making a mental note to send Janet a thank you card. My intercom buzzes just then, and I sprint toward the door after smoothing my hand over the added duvet cover that felt like an actual Olympic sport trying to put on.
“Come on up,” I call through the speaker. I peer at my apartment, making a quick sweep. I also need to extend that same thank you card to my roommate, Hayden, for being mysteriously absent from our apartment this early in the morning.
There’s a light knock at my door, and I open it to find my guest.
“Hi,” Lucy says a little breathlessly. Her teeth press into her lower lip, and a flush creeps up to her cheeks as she peers at me with her deep brown eyes. Eyes that light up with intrigue and something that leans toward a challenge with the quick and subtle flick of her right eyebrow.
“Hey.” I open the door wider, letting her in.
She walks past me, her steps hesitant yet curious. “Is…”
“It’s just us,” I answer, although she didn’t necessarily ask a question.
She turns to face me and nods. She stands there, silent, while her fingers tug at the highlighted blonde strands of her long hair. She’s wearing sneakers today, a vast difference to the strappy heels she wore a few nights ago when I met her for the first time at a party at her sister’s apartment. With those sexy ass heels that made her long legs look irresistible, we were the same height. A small, teeny tiny part of me misses them, but looking at her right now in her flat shoes and flowy sundress, I can’t decide which look I like better.
“You know,” she says after a beat with a wavering hint of conviction in her voice, “I don’t even know your last name. ”
I take a cautious step toward her, finding that she’s still pretty tall even without her heels while loving that I wouldn’t have to stoop too low to kiss her. “It’s Greer.”
She nods again, slow and tentative, with a look of skepticism stamped on her face. Like I might be lying about my identity. And it makes me smirk, knowing how her nerves make her so adorable.
“Do you also want to know my date of birth? The last four of my social?”
“Oh no. I need all nine to dig up the really dirty stuff.” Her lips twist to one side when a small smile peeks through her sarcasm, and she looks away from me. Her eyes nervously skitter across the room, and her brow furrows, almost as if she’s trying to remember some minor detail like where she left her keys or if she left the stove on before leaving her house. “Look, I know I sounded all confident and flirty and all that jazz at the party the other night.” She pauses to wriggle her fingers in the air, making nervous jazz hands. “But I’m really not.”
“Not what?” I’m inches from her now, and I stroke her hand with my finger. I can feel her grow nervous, more fidgety and tense, but she doesn’t lean away. Instead, she loops her finger through mine, making her thumb and my pinky the only parts of our bodies touching.
“Confident. Or flirty.”
I lift an eyebrow. “I don’t know,” I argue. When I talk, a little low and drawn out, her gaze flicks to my lips. “That drinking game was pretty flirty. I believe you were the one who suggested the round of strip beer pong. Is that the usual impression you give people when you meet them for the first time?” I tsk my tongue against the roof of my mouth, working hard to hold back my smile.
“I was drunk, Dexter,” she responds flatly. “And I’m on vacation. Visiting my sisters, who I haven’t seen in ages.”
“So… ”
She huffs, annoyed, pinching my pinky as if to inflict pain while giving it a light tug. “So I was celebrating. Or just…having fun, I guess.”
“And what was the excuse for the text messages last night?” Both of my eyebrows shoot up now, one joining the other. It’s more suggestive than anything out of curiosity, but honestly, she started all of this with her inhibitions thrown out the window and her infectious laughter.
She opens her mouth, probably to throw some jab at me or to discourage this , but then shuts it. There’s a moment that lingers between us. It’s long enough for her to back out. To leave here and pretend like she wasn’t the one who texted me back this morning after I suggested a game of strip Twister, claiming she would need a good twenty-minute warning to stretch.
Would right now be a good time to tell her I don’t actually own the board game? Maybe not. Because I don’t care if I have to paint the colorful dots directly onto my wood floor. All that matters is that she’s here. Not across the bridge at her sisters’ apartment, ignoring my messages or shutting me down with close-ended answers to my suggestive questions like, What other games can you add the word “strip” to?
“I’m going back home tomorrow,” she blurts suddenly. She says it like she’s trying to convince me to talk her out of this. To tell her us living thousands of miles apart is going to somehow wipe away my nagging curiosity of what she’d feel like when her bare skin is flush against my own.
“So you’ve mentioned.”
She nods again. Third time, but who’s counting. “So this…”
“Are you suggesting we start an LDR based on a shared interest in naked drinking games and tequila?”
“L…?”
“Long distance relationship,” I answer when her voice trails, and her face scrunches into the cutest scowl.
“And here I thought only kids in junior high spoke in acronymic code.” She finally laughs. Whatever nerves are apparent in the tight set of her jaw and her too round eyes dissolve for just a second.
I close the last inches of space between us and reach for her cheek, running my thumb across her lower lip. “I’m not expecting anything,” I say close to her skin, feeling her warm breath meet mine.
I see her lashes flutter, fanning the skin I now know feels like silk, and a shallow exhale slips through her lips. “Good.”
“So…I can kiss you now?” I say lowly, my gaze on her plump bottom lip, tracing the curves at the corners and enjoying too much the small recoiling bounce her lip has when I pull at it with my thumb and let go.
Her chin tilts downward in the slightest of nods, the act so subtle it feels hesitant. My arms wrap around her waist at the same time hers hook around my neck, and our lips collide. I don’t mean to, but a low, desperate growl grumbles in my throat, right when her lips part and her tongue dips inside my mouth. She whimpers and runs her teeth along my bottom lip, taking a healthy nibble, and that sensation travels all the way down to my groin.
“You really wanted to kiss me,” she says breathlessly against my ridiculously greedy mouth.
“You have no idea.”
I turn toward my room, my feet stumbling over hers. My hand travels down to her thigh. And I take the moment to thank the saint of a human being who invented sundresses. Those thank you cards are piling up fast.
She hooks her knee over my hip, making her legs part open, and I rock into her, causing her to press herself against me. I start to see bits and pieces of her unravel. Those wound-up knots holding the remains of her reserve are unfurling, and I could spend all day watching her come apart like this. How her hands are no longer guarded and move with intent and motive. Or how she doesn’t care that I can hear her moans and whimpers, making them leave her lips more often.
My thumb tucks into the single string of her thong, and it slips, snapping against her tight skin.
She pulls away. “Ow,” she comments, not an ounce of pain in her voice.
“Sorry,” I respond, my voice all gravely and rough. “It’s in the way.”
“You can ask nicely, and I’ll take it off.”
I bunch her dress around her hips and tug at the string again, but this time with two hands. When the rip of fabric fills the air, Lucy’s eyes widen.
“Like I said,” I say casually to her stunned face, dipping my lips to her jaw. “In.” A kiss under her chin. “The.” Another kiss on her pulse point. “Way.”
“You totally owe me a new pair.”
“I’ll buy you the whole fucking store,” I retort darkly. My voice drops about four octaves, and it makes me sound impatient and desperate and wild. Like I’d clean out the nearest La Perla in a heartbeat if it meant I could listen to her breathless voice against my ear.
Her head falls back at the same time the backs of her legs hit my bed, and her body falls onto my new old sheets with a thud.
“Are these Egyptian?”
“Hmm. Eight hundred thread count.”
“I’m impressed,” she says softly, catching her breath at the same time. “And here I thought they were going to be flannel.”
“I guess I’m not like other guys.”
She laughs. “You are so full of shit.” The sweet sound of her giggle and the bounce in the column of her neck makes my heart stutter. God, she’s so beautiful.
My lips continue their journey, meeting the sexy-as-fuck swell of her cleavage. Her hand flattens and tucks between the waistband of my sweatpants. And when her hand grips me, my entire body turns into Jell-O. My hand pulls at the fabric covering her breast, exposing a bare nipple. I take it in my mouth, and she moans, her hand moving in earnest inside my pants.
“This is just sex, right?” she says, a whimper ending her question when my tongue flicks her skin.
“Just sex.”