Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
Alicia
“You’re getting handsy, Miss It’s-Fine-I-Can-Handle-A-Fifth-Drink.
” Remi didn’t make any efforts to stop my hand drifting down from his chest to his stomach.
He leaned lazily against the wall outside of a storage closet.
I’d grabbed his arm, pulling him around the corner like an old vaudeville hook, pretending like this hidden hallway was privacy and not just the illusion of it.
“I’ll make a deal with you,” I offered. “I’ll keep my hands to myself if you start getting mouthy.”
“What exactly does that mean?”
I shooshed him as his laughter made his voice louder.
“Get that mouth on me, baby,” I said in mock sexiness. It was meant to be funny, but also I wanted him to take my words seriously.
“Here?” he asked, his voice pitched low.
I bunched the cotton of his shirt in my fist and went up on my tiptoes to scrape my teeth along his jaw. He gripped my hips. The sheer size and strength of his fingers had me wondering just how much we could get away with in the dark. A growl rumbled in his throat right next to my lips.
“Let’s get you home,” he said.
My back stiffened. Pulling away, I searched his eyes. “Would it be that bad for someone to see us?”
His thick, long eyebrows shot up wrinkles pressing into his forehead. His thumbs drew soothing circles on my pelvis. “No. Not for me.”
“Then kiss me.”
“I don’t know if this is what you actually want or if you’re just drunk.”
“I always want this,” I admitted.
He urged me forward until my stomach was pressed against the ridge of his growing erection.
With slow intention, he lowered until his lips brushed mine.
My eyes fluttered close. My heart fluttered into a million little pieces—tickling down my spine.
His hand slipped to splay wide between my shoulder blades, deepening the kiss.
It was a tender urgency. This call and respond.
Every little movement he made drew something out of me, something that longed to be seen in the way he saw me. To lean into the support within the circle of his arms. To whisper, I love you, against his soft full lips.
He pulled back, exhaling deeply then pressing a kiss to my forehead. “I wanna take you home. Now.”
“Okay.”
Neither of us moved, because to leave was to untangle our limbs and I just couldn’t yet. Instead, I wrapped my arms even tighter around his waist and rested my cheek against his chest. His heart thumped a steady beat that I could set my clock to.
Kissing my temple, he peeled out of my hold. “I’ll go grab our coats. Be right back.”
We snuck out the back door to the parking lot, and I retrieved my bag with the petition, double checked that my car was locked before sliding into the passenger seat of his SUV, as we pulled out of our parking spot.
Benji’s supported cars staying overnight if it meant sober drivers, which I loved.
It wasn’t exceptional for a small-town bar, but I’d gotten out of the practice of free parking. I did not miss paying for parking.
Counting Crows’ Time and Time Again played on the speakers quietly, and I wondered, again, what had Remi in contemplation.
“This album has been playing a lot,” I said.
“It’s a good one,” he responded.
I resisted in pushing him further, but just barely. “It is.”
Remi rested his hand on my leg as he turned onto the road.
It was good how natural it was to be touched by him.
I hummed “ . . . Baby One More Time” by Britney Spears off key, smirking at the memory of Remi doing the loosely ass smacking dance move she did in the music video earlier that night.
This time, I hadn’t had to watch him smile and dance from across the bar, I’d been in the mix with all his friends.
This place was pulling me in, and it’d be easier to resist if not for Remi.
“Your Spears’ impersonation is pretty fucking good,” I mumbled.
He chuckled. “Yeah, I’ve got all her moves.”
“How did I not know?”
“I was such a scared little boy when you knew me. It’s a lot more fun to not be afraid of whether or not I’m man enough.”
“Oh, baby”—again, with the fake sexy voice—“you’re man enough.”
“I know that voice is a joke, but it’s fucking working.”
“God you’re easy,” I retorted.
“Are you calling me a slut?”
“Would you be into it if I did?”
He tilted his head, then said as if surprised, “I don’t think I would.”
“Holy smokes, did we just find a turnoff?”
“Well, I’ve had my slutting it up time in the past, but definitely not in the last few years.” He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. “I think I just like you.”
Warmth unfurled in my stomach, tickling through me. Electricity zinged down my spine. It was anti-climatic and an absolute understatement to say I liked him back, but I did anyway. He squeezed my leg as we pulled into his driveway.
Laying my head back on the headrest, I closed my eyes. “I might have to go back to Chicago, so I stop drinking so much.”
I didn’t think anything of the quiet inside the car, filled with only the sounds of the wheels on the gravel coming to a halt, until Remi cleared his throat. “Might have to?”
“Hmm?” I asked opening my eyes.
“You might have to go back to Chicago?” He put the car in park, and turned in his seat to meet my eyes, but it was too dark for me to read anything from them. “You don’t know for sure?”
My jaw hung open for a few moments as my brain sloshed drunkenly back to the words that had come out of my mouth. “Well, I mean, I will be staying . . . for the vote . . . you know?”
He looked out the windshield again, a muscle flexed in his jaw, and he slipped his hand off my leg to turn the car off and grip the steering wheel in both hands. “Gotcha.”
I rubbed my suddenly sweaty palms on my jeans. The blood rushed in my ears. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he said, his voice a bit too light. Forced. “I’m okay.”
The option to drop this conversation was right there, he was offering it to me. And I was scared to say what I had to say. I strung the syllables together saying them as quickly as I could. “Wouldyouwantmetostay?”
The words were thin, they’d break under any pressure, but there was no going back now.
He cleared his throat and swallowed. “I want you to do what you want.”
There was a thud that rang inside my head, like a hammer on a nail. Like a coffin sealed. A door slammed shut. I was too shocked to speak, to think, to run away inside of my apartment. I’d been afraid to say anything out loud, but I had actually thought . . .
“And I want to be there with you, wherever that is,” he continued, dragging me out from under the darkness of my thoughts and feelings with such forcefulness I was dizzy.
“I wasn’t lying. I still want everything I wanted with you.
I’ll go to Chicago. I’ll stay here. I’ll move to the fucking moon, if you’re there. ”
“I don’t want to go to the moon,” I said around a watery laugh.
“Me either, but I don’t care where we are.”
“I don’t either.”
“I love you.” His smile looked so light he could fly away. I felt like I might fly too.
“I love you, too,” I whispered.
There was no way to know who moved where or kissed who first. We weren’t and then we were. Slipping our arms free of the seat belts across our chests to hold and touch and pull closer. With nothing held back, nothing unsaid. Nothing but endless possibilities with the man I loved desperately.
Remi kissed along my jaw and down the slope of my neck to the tops of my breasts, his hands cupping to give him better access. I remembered that we were steaming up the windows of his car, at the same time that I recalled the barrier of trees all around the property. No one could see us.
“Remi?” I breathed.
“Hmm?” He answered. Undoing the top button of my sweater, he pulled it to the side to scrape his teeth on my nipple over my bra.
For a moment, I forgot what I was going to say before recovering. “If we went to the moon”—he cut my words off with the flick of his tongue, and I gasped.
He glared up at me through his light brown lashes. “We’re not going to the moon.”
“But you said—”
“I know what I said.” I could feel him smile against my skin as he repeated his attentions to my other side. Heat pooled at my core, my hips shifted instinctively. One of his hands trailed to press between my thighs. “I’ll get you to the moon.”
“Are you talking about your ass?”
His shoulders shook, and he looked up again and hummed Major Tom.