What Happens in Amsterdam

Chapter Fourteen

Fourteen

“How—do you stairs—drunk?” I slur, my head spinning and the hall seeming to grow tinier and tinier until it’s almost the size of a pinprick. My shoes are impossibly heavy. I let out a long sigh as I cling to the railing. “How many more flights?”

Wouter places a hand on my shoulder to keep me from backsliding. “Just one. Can you make it?”

“No,” I say honestly, and before I can even register what’s happening, he’s bending down, slipping one arm beneath my knees, the other supporting my back, and it’s with a ridiculous amount of ease that he’s able to lift me.

And then my husband is carrying me up the stairs.

I wrap my arms around his neck, hugging myself closer than I probably need to. His tea-and-citrus scent. The thudding of his heart. I’m not sure if he had more to drink than I did, but he seems a hell of a lot steadier.

The rhythmic sound of his exhales as he carries me up, up, up might be enough to lull me to sleep if every one of my other senses weren’t dramatically heightened.

“Thank you,” I say when he places me down on solid ground, feeling somehow wobblier than I did before.

He gives me a goofy little salute, a gesture I’ve never seen him do sober. “Door-to-door service.”

As usual, George Costanza acts as though we’ve been gone for four months instead of four hours, his tail a blur as he leaps to me and then to Wouter, letting out a garbled little cry of joy. Both of us bend down to give him the love he deserves, and Wouter even gets on the floor to have him roll over for some belly scratches—his favorite. The way they interact is always so pure. Give any man a small dog and he instantly becomes ten times more attractive.

“I know, I know, your parents made some bad decisions tonight,” I tell him. “Nightcap?” I ask Wouter as we breeze into the kitchen.

He shakes his head. “No, no, no. We are getting you some water.”

“Water. Wouter.” In my inebriated state, this is hilarious to me. I repeat it a few more times just to make sure, and yep, still funny. “What does your name mean anyway?”

“It’s the Dutch form of the English name Walter. ‘Ruler of the army.’ And my last name means…‘from Leeuwen,’?” he says, passing me a glass of water. “Or ‘of the lions,’ whichever you prefer.”

I take a long sip and then wave my glass, pointing it at his chest. “Ruler of the army of lions.” God, he’s tall. So very tall.

He gazes down at me, hazel eyes bright. “That’s me.”

George scampers into the living room, where he curls up on the blanket on the couch, despite the presence of his bed in the corner, and I notice a familiar sock tucked underneath the blanket. A few pairs of mine have gone missing, but he’s too cute for me to steal them back.

It’s late, much later than I’ve been out in a long time, and yet zero part of me wants to go to sleep. Given the way Wouter lingers in the kitchen, pouring himself a glass of water and leaning back against the counter, I imagine he feels the same.

“That was fun, with your friends.” I place my glass on the counter opposite him, a little steadier now that I have some nonalcoholic liquid in me. “I really like them.”

“They loved you. Evi already texted asking when they can see you again.” He grins, rakes a hand through his hair. Somehow this only musses it more. “You know what I remembered the other day? That game we used to play. ‘One day, when we have our own apartment…’?”

“Ah, yes. Our domesticity kink.”

One day, when we have our own apartment , one of us would say, and the other would finish the sentence with something we couldn’t do at the time but desperately wanted.

We’ll play music as loud as we want.

Kiss in every room.

Fall asleep next to each other every night.

“Is it everything you dreamed of?” he wants to know. “Our own apartment?”

Of course, nothing could live up to the fantasy. I mean, we wanted a Jacuzzi in the bedroom and one cabinet entirely devoted to chocolate. “Sure,” I say. “At least for the next ten months.”

This makes his giddiness falter. I watch his throat as he swallows down another sip of water. So fucking hydrated, this man. From what I can tell, he drinks at least four whole glasses when we’re at home, probably that many or more at work. Then there’s all the tea. And sure, maybe that’s the amount you’re supposed to drink, but I’ve never actually seen someone execute it, and it’s a testament to my current mental state that I find this deeply fascinating.

“I know it was different back then,” he says. “But what we had when we were seventeen—it was good, wasn’t it? Even though it had to be a secret?”

This surprises me. Maybe he turns self-reflective when he drinks. Back then, I’d been so certain we were on the same page. Those first I love you s— ik van hou jou s—seemed entirely without anguish on both our parts, and maybe it was teenage recklessness, but I never once stopped to question my feelings. I knew in my bones that I loved him, so I said it.

“No. It was great. You were so kind. No one had ever made me feel interesting before you,” I say. “I never wanted to tell you this because I didn’t want you to think I was too obsessed with you, but I could have watched you draw for hours.”

“I quite like the idea of you being obsessed with me.”

“You’re a very honest drunk.”

He tilts his head, as though looking at me through some new lens. “You know I was obsessed with you, too. Completely smitten. This gorgeous American girl, with her slang and her driver’s license. You were so glamorous to me.”

This makes me bark out a laugh. “I was not!”

“You were,” he insists, laughing too. He takes a step closer, and he must be warm, because he’s rolling his sleeves up past his forearms, exposing those muscles that knew exactly what to do with me when I was face down in his office. “Now I have to know. You wore those little shorts just to get me to notice you, didn’t you?”

I take an innocent sip of water. Press my lips shut. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You didn’t have to do it.” A final roll of his left sleeve to get the two of them even. “I’d already noticed you. I felt so tortured, having this crush on my host parents’ daughter, who was such a fucking knockout.”

“I hope I didn’t peak back then.” Sober Dani pretends she doesn’t need compliments. Drunk Dani craves them.

“No. She’s even more beautiful now,” he says. “I’d get so riled up, knowing you were sleeping right across the hall.”

“And I was feeling just as riled up.”

God, I love this honest version of him. Now that we’ve broken the seal on our history, it’s suddenly all I want to talk about.

I need to be eye level with him, so I plant my hands on the counter and hop up onto it, pushing scattered Post-its out of the way, aanrecht and fruitmand and fornuis .

“We were so innocent, though. Back then,” he says. I lift my eyebrows at him, and he laughs. “Okay, maybe not always. So young is maybe what I meant.”

“We were,” I agree. But maybe innocent wasn’t wrong, either, because there was a wholesomeness to experiencing all those firsts with him. Every touch felt like it opened up a brand-new universe, every one of his sighs like we were discovering a new star.

He changed his mind about you once , logic reminds me. What’s to stop him from doing that again?

“If it’s my turn to be honest…” I continue, because I left logic behind half an hour ago and the tipsiness makes me bold. “You set the bar way too high for my future relationships.” All those bad hookups—men who were too aggressive, but I pretended I didn’t mind because I loved feeling desired. Men who thought casual meant a complete lack of common decency. It was always rushed, rarely tender. “No one has ever touched me like you did.”

The blush that spreads across his cheeks is an almost indecent shade of pink. “Oh?” he says, and there’s a hint of pride in that single syllable. “How did I touch you?”

The alcohol pounds against my temples, reminding me that I was supposed to be different in Amsterdam, and yet here I am, desperate to fall into bed with a man I’ve already slept with.

It’s been exhausting, pretending this attraction is nothing more than residual teen infatuation amplified by sheer proximity to the person who loved me during the most self-conscious time of my life. It’s something new, I can tell. Something electric.

How did I touch you?

“Like you weren’t just biding time until the main event,” I say. “It felt like you wanted to know how I reacted to every single thing. Like you were memorizing all of it.”

“I remember.” Without dropping his gaze from mine, he steps toward me. Braces himself on the counter, one hand on either side of my hips. His voice is rough as gravel. “The way you’d hold yourself back sometimes, like you wanted to be quiet even though we were the only people in the house. The way you moaned into my ear—it was my favorite sound. You even bit me a few times, and I think you were shy about it, but I fucking loved it. That probably wrecked me for the next five years.”

All the words that don’t go straight to my heart land between my thighs with a pulsing want. I bring one leg around his waist to draw him closer, watching the way it plays across his face. A fluttering of his lashes. A heavy exhale. Yes. This.

Some of his hair has fallen into his face, and I reach out to push it back, the soft strands slipping through my fingers.

“Bedankt,” he says. Slowly, one of his hands inches toward my thigh, dipping into the crease at my hip. The other hand follows, until he’s gotten enough of a grip to drag me forward along the counter. The breath stills in my lungs as he pulls me flush against him, my center at his navel, both of my legs wrapped around his back now.

The very first time he touched me, hand inside my underwear, he let out a gasp before I did. I’ve never been able to forget it. I had my forehead pressed against his shoulder, overwhelmed by the sensation, and he was the one gasping—at least until my vocal cords started working again.

“Do you still do that?” He brings up his hand to rest a fingertip on my collarbone. Gently, as though he’s still in full control of his body, he traces the column of my neck. Up to my ear, along my jaw, and then back down. “Bite someone’s ear when they’re touching you?”

“I…don’t know.” An honest reply. A shaky breath. “Maybe it was just for you.”

He swears softly, maybe in English and maybe in Dutch. In this moment, I can’t tell the difference. Suddenly it feels as though I haven’t been touched in ages. Haven’t been kissed. Haven’t been properly fucked. My body doesn’t care about our history, only the throbbing desire between us, buzzing at the surface of our skin.

When he dips his head, his mouth lands on my neck, warmth and pressure as he follows the path he just charted with his finger. He might as well be scalding me with a match, dragging the tip of it along my skin. A moan is trapped in my throat, one I’m too afraid to let out because Jesus , he’s still barely touching me. His other hand finds my wedding ring, his middle finger circling the cool metal.

I can sense all the ways he’s trying to hold back, because Wouter is not someone who lets himself have good things. He’s been so immersed in work that he’s denied himself simple pleasures. He’s stayed away from art. From sex.

He gives and he gives, the physiotherapist who teaches people to feel good—and just this once, I want him to take .

My hands go to his hair again, but this time they dive into it, hard and eager. When I sigh at the heat of his lips on my jaw, I can feel the way it affects him, the effort of his muscles holding himself back. An immovable object taunted by an irresistible force.

I imagine ironing out his tightest spots. Finding all the places that make him moan. I want to know him all over again, use my mouth to map that flash of ink on his shoulder, and I’m no longer sure if it’s the alcohol or the illusion of these fucking rings or the way he’s looking at me.

He pulls his head back for only an instant, gaze burning mine before our mouths collide.

And this is what it’s like to kiss him after all these years:

Inevitable.

We’re remembering and learning at the same time, a honeyed urgency as we crash into each other again and again. Hands in hair, already breathless. The groan in his throat tells me exactly how good it feels to give in like this, and I tell him the same thing in the way I part my lips for him. He tastes my sighs. Swallows my gasps. I drag him closer by the collar of his shirt while his fingertips dig into my hips—because even with his body aligned with mine, he’s not close enough. More , I beg with my teeth on his lower lip, and so he bites me right back.

This is nothing like the way we kissed in his family’s backyard, a wholesome production that didn’t mean anything. This one means something—I’m just not sure what.

With all of him pressed against me, I can feel his hard length through his jeans, a delicious friction as he rolls his hips to mine. There’s no self-consciousness, just the rawness of that base instinct, the confession that he doesn’t merely want to kiss—he craves relief the way I do. Mouth on my neck. Stubble scraping my skin. I spread my legs wider and rock against him, matching his want in every way I can. Chasing the ache only he can soothe.

Suddenly he draws back with a sharp breath.

“Danika… fuck .” He grits his teeth. Pushes out a sigh, drops his hands from my hips and puts more space between our chests. Like he’s going to drag us both away from that cliff’s edge even if it kills him. Even if his mouth is still wet and swollen. “We shouldn’t—not while we’re drunk.”

Are we? Is that the buzzy, electric feeling in my veins, or is it idiocy and unbridled lust?

“I’m not—” I start, unable to finish the sentence with that drunk because it’s decidedly untrue.

“And I wouldn’t want to…it’s been so long…”

He wouldn’t want to…what? Take advantage of me? Do something we’d both regret? Because he’s not, and I wouldn’t.

Unless he’s the one who would.

“I—okay. Okay.” This return to reality has my head spinning. He doesn’t want me, or he’s being a gentleman, or some combination of the two. Except I can only focus on the first option, the devastation of finally having him so close before he ripped himself away.

And yet neither of us moves, as though we’re engaged in a silent challenge. Which one of us is going to break, give in, reach for the other?

Our breathing is still rough, his chest heaving with it in the semidark. His glasses are crooked. Hair mussed. That splash of maroon across his cheeks—I’d die to put my mouth on it. Beneath his belt, it’s extremely obvious his body wants something different from his brain. He must have an astonishing amount of self-control.

Well, I can do that too.

With shaky limbs, I try to lower myself from the counter. But without anything to hold me up, I stumble, losing my balance.

“Careful.” Wouter reaches for my arm, and the room tilts again, because evidently being this close to him is the equivalent of downing a half dozen tequila shots. “I can help you to your room, if—”

“Yeah—might be good,” I mumble, slouching against him as we shuffle down the hall. He keeps his arm around my waist to steady me, bending in what must be an uncomfortable position for him given his height.

The exhaustion hits me as we reach my room. I slump onto the duvet in a sitting position, glancing back up at him. “I shouldn’t sleep in jeans,” I say, popping the button but struggling to do much more than that.

There’s a flicker of tension in his jaw. Slowly, he inches forward. “Do you want—?” he asks, because we are only cut-off questions and awkward pauses now.

I nod.

He kneels down. Places a hand on either side of my hips and tugs. He’s so close to me again, that heady scent of him, and once the denim is in a puddle on the floor and I’m in my underwear and a sweater, he makes every effort to keep his gaze above my waist.

“This, too?” I hold up my arms. Gently, so as not to stretch the fabric, he pulls at the sleeves, removing the sweater and folding it on top of the dresser. The bra I’m wearing is basic nude cotton, my underwear similarly casual if far less sexy: a pair of briefs patterned with tiny hedgehogs.

The moon and streetlamps cast shadows across his face, this cinematic dusky light making him look like he’s from another era. In a way, he is.

With my last functioning brain cell, I force myself not to drag him down onto the bed with me. “You can look,” I tell him. Softly, so as not to spook him.

“It’s not a good idea.”

He peels back the duvet for me to slip beneath it, and it’s cozy and warm and bed . At first I think he’s going to slide in next to me—but of course, he doesn’t. My head is pounding and I’m going to feel like shit tomorrow, but Wouter van Leeuwen is tucking me in, and somehow that makes all of it worth it.

“Slaap lekker, Danika,” he says, pulling the duvet all the way up to my chin. When he bends toward my face, his mouth lands on my forehead. Lingers there for only a moment before he backs away and leaves the room.

I hear the sink turn on and off. The hum of his electric toothbrush.

Then the house goes quiet, and I’m all too aware of the fact that he’s on the other side of the wall. The first few nights here, I could barely sleep, worried about how much he might be able to hear. Then it became a comfort—I might have been thousands of miles from home, but I wasn’t alone.

Now the knowledge of where he’s sleeping makes me wired. Everything in me is tightly wound, craving release. I half expect him to rush back into the room, the top button of his jeans undone, shirt already tugged off. My hedgehog panties would be on the floor before he reached my bed.

But there’s only a piercing silence and a closed door, no light coming from underneath it.

A frustration starts at the base of my spine and curls low in my belly, almost a physical thing I could snap with my fingers. I trail a hand down my neck, replaying the way he touched me. Measured at first, and then more reckless. I let my head sink into the pillow as I pinch one aching nipple and then the other. With my other hand, I push aside the fabric of my panties, already damp. When I find the slickness between my thighs, I let out a silent moan. I’m already close—he could have so easily tipped me over.

That’s when I hear something on the other side of the wall.

A squeak of mattress springs. A rustle of bed sheets.

And then: the unmistakable sound of skin against skin.

My eyes fly open, my hand going still. There’s another metallic squeak, followed by a bitten-off groan that drags my pulse into a manic rhythm.

I have no idea if he heard me and that’s what made him reach for himself, or if he thinks I can’t hear him, or if he wants me to hear him—but it’s suddenly very, very clear what’s happening in his room.

I imagine him sprawled out on his bed, muscles in his abdomen straining as he reaches downward, past that deep V. His hand on his cock would be an instant shot of relief, one that feels a little wrong at first, knowing I’m nearby, but too good to make himself stop. I want him to give in to every impolite urge he’s ever had. Every dirty thought. I touch myself the way I’m desperate for him to touch me, circle my fingers closer and closer, not too fast, not yet .

A breathy gasp falls from my lips, one I’m almost certain he can hear.

And—maybe I want him to.

Maybe I want him to know exactly what I’m doing.

The next sound I hear is his. A low groan comes from somewhere deep in his throat, and I swear it makes my bed tremble. It’s so fucking sexy, that sound. Raw. Needy. He must be beautiful when he’s touching himself, no inhibitions as he surrenders to his basest instincts. I want to know if his free arm is triangled behind his head or resting on his chest. If his mouth is open, if his eyes are shut. If he likes it fast and rough or prefers to draw it out, making the pleasure last as long as possible. Just like the way he massaged me, stretching and stretching until I was right up against the edge.

I don’t hold myself back as I picture him picturing me. I cup my breasts harder, tease myself with wet, insistent strokes. In his head, I hope I’ve never looked filthier. My panties are lost somewhere in the sheets and my thighs are shaking, a tight bundle of nerves slowly unfurling.

With every shred of self-control I can muster, I force myself to pause—I don’t want it to be over just yet. It’s the headiest surprise to hear his breaths slow down, too. His strokes must have turned languid, sweat glistening on his chest.

I’m not sure if he’s waiting for my signal or I’m waiting on his, but when we start back up again, we keep pace with each other. There’s a frantic slap of skin from the other side of the wall as he matches me breath for breath. Gasp for gasp. This is the only way he’ll let himself have me, and right now that’s enough.

He urges me faster. Shallow breaths now, neither of us shy about the noise we’re making. My mind loops through all the ways I wish he would fuck me, with his hands and with his mouth and with his cock buried deep inside me. Until I’m begging for it. Until he is, too.

I’m dizzy and drenched, bucking against my hand like I’ve never wanted anything more. Back arched, chest heaving, that sweet release only seconds away. A whimper of bedsprings. Gritted teeth and hands fisted in sheets. We’re so close— so close —

Then, two desperate syllables in the dark:

“Dani.”

Oh—oh fuck.

I collapse into stardust the moment he does, loud and unapologetic as a gorgeous moan tears from his chest. That sound alone might be enough to push me over again, but there’s nothing left in my body.

I am utterly, blissfully spent.

We’re still breathing in sync, softer and slower—until we fall asleep, together, with the world’s thinnest wall in between.