Chapter 46
Tyler
I woke up to chirping birds, hazy slices of clear blue morning, and Katie Caruso sleeping in my bed. There was a pillow between
her knees, and the waves of her hair were everywhere. My clothes, loose and effortless on her perfect, peaceful body.
I was also hard as a rock.
I carefully began to roll out of bed to handle this, to take a long, hot shower and get my shit together, but the second I
moved, she pulled me into her arms and kissed the back of my neck.
“You,” she said, “have had that all night.”
I stared at the framed quilt on the wall very intently, sure my eyes were bulging out of my head. Her lips were wet at the
top of my spine, and her hands were falling down my chest. “Did I, now?”
“Yep,” she said as her fingers dipped to my stomach. I counted the squares on the patchwork beneath the glass: one, two, three.
I was half sure I’d seen this thing on loan at the Whitney at some point. Americana. Pretty nice.
“Katie . . .”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Katie.”
“We’re not . . .” Another kiss. This one, with the help of her tongue, which grazed the edge of my shoulder blade. She’d peeled off my shirt, and I could not tell up from down. “Going to do anything about . . .” Her hands dropped another inch. “That.”
“Okay, because—”
“Yet,” she said, and then she was on top of me, tickling me like a child, under my arms, beneath my knees, laughing and laughing,
morning light bathing the cottage, salt and dew and summer in the air, her eyes so bright and her smile so blinding I could’ve
died right there, being attacked by this absurd, gorgeous little creature, who, despite everything, had not forgotten how
to play.
When it was all too much, when I was wheezing, crying, kicking, screaming, begging her to stop, she sat up, kissed me on the
mouth, then studied the tent in my boxers and said, “Go take care of that.”
I muttered.
“Now,” she said, biting her bottom lip as I stumbled out of bed, searching for my glasses. “We’ve got quite the day ahead
of us.”
“Do we, Katherine?”
She rolled over and steadied herself on a single elbow. My shirt rode up her rib cage, revealing bronze, smooth skin. I wanted
to climb back into bed and lick it.
“Yeah,” she said, and now she was looking me up and down, tracing the curves of her stomach. The waistband of my underwear
was loose and slung unfairly low on her arching hips. Her eyes were twinkling. “You’re taking me on an extend-a-date. I want
a boardwalk sequence. I want you to win me a giant fucking Pikachu.”
I had my hand on the doorknob to the bathroom, and I was squeezing the metal between my clenched fingers. My knuckles were
white, and my cheeks burned.
“I gotta, uh . . .”
She waved me off, laughing.
“Hey, Tyler?” she said just before I locked the door.
“Yeah?”
“Easy does it.”