Chapter IV
IV
My apartment is only a fifteen-minute walk from the bookstore, but each block feels agonizingly long.
I’m hyperaware of the way Reid’s body navigates space, the relative distance between his and mine.
With each passing crosswalk, I find myself inching closer to him; when we reach First Avenue, his fingers entwine with mine.
By the time we make it up the three flights to my place, my skin feels like it’s on fire, like the stroke of his thumb against the back of my hand might launch me into space.
Nisha is out, so I lead him directly into my bedroom and shut the door all the way.
The backs of my legs press against my bed, and I wait for Reid to finally use the weight of his body against mine.
But he doesn’t. Instead, he just leans against the door, hands behind his back.
His eyes rake over me. I wonder what he sees there—the quickening rise and fall of my chest, a wild glint in my expression?
The corner of his mouth twists into a smile.
It’s the cockiest he’s ever looked. Heat pools and aches between my legs.
“Come here,” I say, quietly.
He runs a hand down his face, letting it come to rest on his chin. “No.” The grit in his voice is the only indication that his control might not be as tethered as it seems. “You come to me.”
I cross my arms, unsure of how to navigate this demand. “Why?”
“Because if I lay you down on that bed,” he says, each word deliberate, “I’m going to fuck you.”
My throat catches on a sound halfway between laughter and disbelief. “Reid,” I say, carefully. “That’s exactly what I want you to do.”
He clasps his hands behind his back again, and he shakes his head, like I’m not getting something. “If that happens right now, I’m . . . I want to take my time and enjoy this.” He blows out a breath. “Just come here. Please.”
When I step in front of him, he immediately drops to his knees, and his hands brace gently behind my legs.
I want to ask him what he’s doing—no one has ever handled me this way—but I close my eyes and trust him instead.
Trust the way my body responds to his movements, how my hands lift to his hair, running through the thick strands, tugging at them gently.
He likes that, I think, judging from the satisfied sound that escapes from his throat.
He slides the straps of my dress down my shoulders, one at a time, then wriggles the dress down over my hips and onto the floor.
He sits back on his heels for a moment, looking up at me, then takes my breasts in his hands and rubs the pads of his thumbs over my nipples, sliding the flat of his tongue over each one, coaxing them to tight nubs.
A sound comes out of me that I’m not sure I’ve ever heard before, choked and desperate, and he offers a deep, pleasured groan in return.
The reverberation of it vibrates against my skin.
I think that I might come like that, with his head against my chest, the feel of his tongue stroking my skin. The pride he takes in my pleasure.
His hands move to my hips, his fingertips toying with the seam of my underwear, then hooking along the sides. He fists the fabric in his hands.
Reid looks up at me again. “Can I touch you now?” he asks, his voice threatening to break.
I nod. “Please take them off.”
Instead, he turns me so I’m leaning my back against the door, then pushes my underwear to the side.
“Wider.” He breathes the words against my skin. He wraps a hand around the back of each of my thighs.
I don’t have time to think about being so exposed, being positioned in a way that makes us both so vulnerable.
The force of my desire quiets my inner monologue, and when Reid licks me once—insistent, searching—thoughts evaporate entirely.
I give myself over to his eager mouth, his probing fingers.
His need for me unlocks an entirely new dimension of my need for him.
When his thumb begins to rub circles against my clit, I orgasm, my entire body trembling above him, boneless and liquid, but Reid maintains his hold on my hips to keep me upright. I tug at his hair again, already anticipating the hitch of his breath.
“I’ve never come from that before,” I admit once I regain control over coherent thought.
In the past, I’ve always been too self-conscious to let go entirely, and much too shy to say what I want. And that’s on the rare occasion I’ve been with someone who dared to go down on me at all.
Reid drops his head, almost bashful. When he looks back up at me, a small smile plays at his lips. He looks gratified, wrung out. Still a little cocky.
“If I told you how good that makes me feel, would that make me an asshole?”
I laugh. “Definitely not.”
“Good,” he says. Then he stands to his full height, presses his body against me, and leans down to melt me into a deep, slow kiss. I feel the weight of his cock against my bare thigh, and I wriggle against him to lodge him between my legs. He lets out a long, pained groan.
“OK,” he says in my ear, exhaling a laugh. “This is when you get on the bed.”
Reid needs to leave my apartment the next morning at an ungodly hour so he can head back to his uncle’s apartment, shower, change, and get to the office by eight.
Before we’d fallen asleep, he’d set my alarm clock to 4:30 a.m. But when it springs to screeching life, I’m already awake, and have been the entire night.
How could I sleep with Reid in my bed—his arms around me, his skin against my skin, his breath against my ear?
I’d stayed awake, constructing futures from the raw material of his proximity.
We would split pastries on slow weekend mornings, lick the cream and the sugar off each other’s fingers.
He would pick me up from class, his tie undone, his suit jacket flung over one shoulder, and I would witness, in real time, the way his thoughtful expression breaks open with joy when he sees me.
I imagine all the blissful mundanities of partnered life that I’ve never experienced before—had observed in other people, in books and songs and smitten passersby.
Had simply considered as an abstract, faraway thing that maybe, one day, could be nice to have for myself.
I know that I’m anticipating scenarios that will probably never exist. But I can’t stop myself from thinking of them. It just feels too good to stop.
Reid rolls over to face me. In his semiconscious state, his expression is unguarded, soft. For a moment, I wonder whether he’ll be happy to find himself here, waking up next to me. Or whether he’ll retract and bolt, like most twentysomething guys.
“Hi,” he says. He folds the sheet down over me, uncovering my naked body, then takes my breast in his hand—an instinctive, almost possessive action, at odds with the sweetness of his smile, the gentleness of his tone.
I move closer toward him. “Can I make you breakfast?” The question surprises me as I ask it—I’ve never cooked anything more complicated than noodles with jarred marinara sauce. But the urge to nourish him feels elemental.
He laughs, a mixture of surprise and shyness. “I think this is an offer I can’t refuse.”
“Do you doubt my breakfast-making skills?”
“Not at all.” He pauses, calibrating for honesty.
“I’ve just never had a girl make me breakfast before.
It’s strange.” When he sees the way I retreat, suddenly embarrassed, he gently tugs at my wrist, prompting me to face him again.
“Not strange in a bad way. Strange how normal it feels for you to be the one to ask me that question.”
Normal. I’d never thought the concept of normalcy could make me wet. And when my hand drifts down his chest, down to his cock, I find him hard.
Reid’s hands bracket my waist, pulling me on top of him so our torsos align. His eyes go soft when I open my thighs around him, and his hands grip me tighter when I begin to rock against him.
The sex we had last night had been rushed and feverish, clumsy in our desperation to get inside each other’s skin.
There’s no less urgency now, but there is a delicious laziness in Reid’s movements, in the satisfied way his teeth press into his lower lip when I release a moan. He’s taking his time with me.
Trying to, anyway.
I lift my hips high enough for Reid to graze a finger between my legs. A whispered fuck when he feels how slick I am. My hips buck against him, not quite full enough.
Reading my movements, he presses his mouth against my jaw. “You want more?”
I nod, my exhale breaking into a moan when he slips himself inside me and he finally, finally, fills me up entirely. I want him to move so badly, but he just holds himself in place, like maybe that will stop time from spinning away from us.
In the pause, I wonder, again, what the hell we are doing here. How I have made this person materialize in my life, and how quickly I know he is going to dissolve.
I can’t take the stillness anymore. I glide against him once, enough to snap his control and start fucking me for real, steady and insistent.
I let myself believe in this. I let myself go.
Eventually, we go to the bodega down the block and pick up a carton of eggs, a sleeve of white bread, and to-go coffees in Greek-key cups. He laughs when I dump two pods of cream and three sugars into mine.
“That’s not coffee,” he says. “That’s a milkshake.”
I point to the steaming black liquid he lifts to his mouth. “That’s not coffee. That’s motor oil.”
At home, I take a stab at making over-easy eggs on the only burner that works. When I bring his plate to the table, Reid pulls gently at my hair, tugging me down for a kiss.
I love watching the way he arranges each forkful, neatly stacking each bite onto the tip and sliding it down the tines. At one point, he stops, drops his silverware, and gives me an amused look.
“What is it?”
With my chin, I gesture toward his plate. “Enjoying yourself?”
“I am. Are you enjoying critiquing my neuroses?”
“I’m not critiquing. I’m admiring.”
The look he gives me—devilish, conspiratorial—makes my thighs clench.
He picks up his fork and knife and slices his last over-easy egg into four evenly sized pieces.
One by one, he puts them in his mouth, chews, and swallows.
He maintains eye contact with me throughout this performance.
I feel my face flush, my heart kick into double-time.
“Were you aware,” he says, dabbing his mouth with a napkin, “that you had a neat-eating kink?”
I take a sip of water. “I don’t think I have a neat-eating kink,” I say. “I think I have a Reid kink.”
I brace myself for his response. Lili before Reid never would have said such a thing.
But he sits back into his chair, crosses his arms, and gives me an appraising look.
“That works out nicely,” he says. “Because I think I have a Lili kink.”