Chapter Three #2
He tips his head toward mine, and I try again, this time with a gentler advance.
He meets my bottom lip tentatively, like he’s ready to retreat to protect his teeth at any second, but…
it’s good. The way his silky lips travel across mine, the trails of heat that sparkle down my throat, my chest. He surrounds my bottom lip with his own, and I moan a little into his mouth.
Shit! That’s embarrassing. The kiss has barely started, and I’m already moaning?
But the sound seems to do something to him, flip some internal switch to yes.
His hands travel up my ribs and flex there, pulling me into his big, delicious chest. His mouth slides over mine more fully, and it’s all warm, slick delight.
So, this is what a kiss should feel like…this. I try to memorize the slow, lush tilt of his mouth against mine, to decipher the sensations against my tongue into concrete physical actions. Is that a lick? His tongue or his lip? I wish I could study each component.
The kiss deepens, seemingly all on its own, picking up momentum and speed.
Each sweep of our lips raises my heart rate, and somehow, I know, I know it’s going to happen this time.
I moan again, the warmth in my chest now sliding down my core, all the way down.
It’s incredibly intimate, the way he tastes me, the way I welcome it. All the bacteria exchanged.
He pulls away slightly, breathless, those rich hazel eyes drinking me in.
“I guess I do remember,” he says, more to himself than to me.
One side of his mouth curves in a small half smile as he raises a hand to cup my face, his thumb lightly tracing over my worry lines, eyes inspecting mine. “Maisie. What are you thinking?”
“That people trade over eighty million bacteria in a single kiss.”
His thumb stops, his face going blank in surprise, and my heart drops like a brick thrown down a well.
Why do I do this? Scare people with all the strange and terrifying statistics about this dangerous world we live in?
The anxiety that clawed its way from my mother’s DNA into my own demands the knowledge, craves knowing just how bad things are, how bad they could be, the odds of every single risk, so I can live as safe a life as possible.
But how many times do I have to estrange normies before I remember that the average person prefers to live without lifting the half-rotted log in the forest to see all the teeming, terrible truth beneath it?
But Everett’s face breaks into a soft, playful smile. “Oh, we can do better than that.”
He lifts my chin and dives into my lips with perfectly tooth-free gusto, how does he do that, and true to his words, by the time we part again for breath, he’s held nothing back, and neither have I.
“As incredibly hot as it is”—he pauses to run the bridge of his nose along my jaw—“to be pinned against a door by an unfairly gorgeous woman”—he nips at my ear, and I release a shuddery breath—“maybe we can relocate somewhere a bit more comfortable?”
“Yes,” I say to the ceiling on a shaky exhale as he works his lips around my neck slowly. It feels so good, I can’t think clearly. “The bedroom is at the end of the hall.”
He pauses, lifting his eyes to mine, the startled look returning. “Are you—sure? We just—”
“I want to have sex with you tonight, as many kinds and as much of it as you can manage. Is that okay?”
His eyes grow wider as he straightens over me, a stream of unreadable emotions crossing his face as his brain processes my direct proposition. His hands, back on my ribs, slide up and down slowly, almost unconsciously. “That was blunt.”
I shrug, though I’m beginning to tremble. If he walks out now, I will be viciously aroused for the rest of this new pandemic, and furious about it. “I’m blunt when I know what I want.”
“And that’s me?” His eyes trail down to his thumbs, which have strayed from my ribs to the tops of my breasts.
His breath stutters as he runs them slowly over the tightened buds of my nipples, down, just hard enough for them to flick back up when he passes over them.
“You want me?” he asks between tight, controlled breaths.
“Yes,” I say, more breath than word, and he pulls me to him, until my belly presses against the stony ridge of his erection and a hot knot of pleasure tightens between my legs.
He swallows back a groan, his voice almost bewildered. “Do you have condoms?”
Exhilaration floods my body. This is finally, finally going to happen.
“Don’t worry.” A triumphant smile curves my lips. “I’m prepared.”
T Minus Fifteen Minutes
Until Shit Hits the Fan
Everett
Maisie, cheeks flushed all peaches and cream, lips swollen from crushing them against mine, runs one small palm down the front of my pants, over my aching erection, as if to fact-check its existence.
“Wait for me in the bedroom?” she says, not quite lifting her eyes to mine. “I’ll get my family planning supplies.”
I’m so far gone, even the words “family planning” have zero effect on the hardness of my cock. I kissed her. I actually, really kissed her.
She shoos me away, then disappears into the bathroom, the door cracked behind her.
I pause outside her bedroom door and press my hands against the wall, breathing deeply, trying to regain a heart rhythm that doesn’t feel like unbridled panic.
I didn’t expect to like the woman Sandeep catfished for me, and I really didn’t expect to come home with her tonight.
It’s fair to say I didn’t expect Maisie at all.
Her direct comments are as blunt as they are vulnerable.
As if she’d hide if she only knew how, but she doesn’t, so she has to brave being her unadorned, slightly bizarre self instead.
Her complete and shocking lack of pop culture exposure.
The fact that the tactical belt she’s wearing around her jumpsuit has a knife holster…
Was she raised in a cult?
“How many do you think we’ll need?” Maisie calls from the bathroom. “Is five reasonable?”
I choke on my own spit. “Um, not really?”
She pauses. “Okay, I’ll get more.”
Oh, god, what if she was raised in a cult?
Maybe she escaped, and that’s why she’s so anxious.
What if she was slated to be some old polygamist’s child bride and ran away from the family compound, like the fifth season of Fargo?
Or maybe she busted out from an underground-bunker doomsday cult like Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt?
I press a palm to my galloping heart. I love Kimmy Schmidt.
That same rush of protective energy when I saw how nervous she was for our date floods my bloodstream again.
So what if she’s a little weird? Whatever she’s running from, she’s not a part of it anymore, and all that remains is this sweet, emotionally vulnerable oddball who desperately wants to have “as many kinds and as much” sex as possible tonight, with me.
Oh, god. Am I actually going to go through with this? Sex?
No. I can’t. This is moving way too fast, and the last thing I need to do is start a sexual relationship with someone when I haven’t experienced an actual emotion in ages.
You did tonight, a knowing, smiling voice in my head says. One I haven’t heard in real life in three years.
Louise.
You felt things tonight, Everett. You like her.
It’s not an accusation, but it feels like one anyway. I blink, pressing my palm even harder to my chest, but it’s doing nothing to slow my escalating heartbeat. Am I having an anxiety attack? Complete numbness for years, then suddenly every emotion at once?