Chapter 27
Tucker
Tonight’s different.
Tonight it’s not awkward. We aren’t doing everything we can to avoid each other.
Tonight we’re two people—together—who are getting ready to go out.
She comes out of the bathroom, freshly showered, pink and dewy, in only a towel. I can’t look away, and apparently that’s okay because she raises her gaze to mine, and it’s full of tease. Full of Like what you see?
I nod, unable to hide my smirk.
She smirks back.
My body tightens.
There’s a promise here. Of what’s going to happen between us later tonight. And everything either of us does between now and then is foreplay.
The way she lets me catch a glimpse of pink lace panties before she tugs them on under her towel.
The way she turns away from me and drops the towel, showing me the long, sweet line of her back, the curve of her ass under lace.
Then looks back over her shoulder at me as she settles her tits into the cups of a bra I can’t see but can’t wait to take off her. The smug, secret smile she gives me.
The tutting uh-uh-uh she utters when I stride toward her.
The We won’t have time to get ready if you start that now.
My body hardening like she’s said yes instead of no.
It’s all fucking foreplay.
I’ve never lived with anyone.
I’ve never had a relationship that lasted long enough, or that felt strong enough, to want to do it.
Which means I’ve never had the experience I’m having right now, of watching the woman I’m with get dressed for a night out.
Obviously two nights ago, she got ready for the welcome party while I was in the room. But we were still negotiating a peace treaty over our shared space. We were avoiding each other’s naked bodies. We weren’t…intimate.
Now I’ve felt her body clench around my fingers; I’ve felt her whole body tighten and shake with pleasure.
Beyond that, though, I didn’t know her before.
I knew she wasn’t happy but not why she wasn’t.
I knew she claimed to be happy, that her whole brand—her whole sense of self—rode on that claim.
But I didn’t understand why she’d invested so much of herself in that happiness.
Now I think I do, and everything I’ve learned about her has only made me want to know more.
“Why prom?” I ask her, trying to focus on my own getting-dressed process—layering my tux shirt over my T-shirt, tux trousers over gray boxer briefs.
Her eyes follow my motions, making the whole process harder, pun very much intended.
I smooth a casual hand over my cock, thick for her under two layers of fabric, and I see the small ripple of pleasure that moves through her.
I have to resist the urge to wrap my fist, to squeeze, to press the pleasure back to a manageable amount.
This time she takes a step toward me and I tut her. “We won’t have time if you start that now,” I remind her. “Wouldn’t do for the maid of honor to go missing. And you didn’t answer my question. Why have a bachelorette prom?”
She heaves a sigh and finishes smoothing thigh-highs up her legs while I watch the soft pale flesh ripple under the elastic and wish I’d let her touch me. But also, I love this game of subtle edging. I would play it with her for days.
“Summer missed her own prom, senior year, because she was in treatment for depression. It was the one time I saw her cry, when she realized she was going to miss prom and graduation.”
Autumn’s own face is tight. I think of her saying I’m the one who holds it all together for everyone else.
I want to take that off her plate. I want to hold the world together for her.
“I had this idea I could give her the prom she’d never had.”
She bites her lip. Hard.
“Hey. Don’t hurt that mouth. I like that mouth.” I take her jaw in my hand and smooth my thumb over the bitten spot.
“You’re good people,” I tell her.
She turns away, embarrassed.
“I’m gonna do my hair and makeup,” she says. “You, um, mind if I do it out here?”
I shake my head. I’ve never watched a woman do her hair and makeup. I’ve never wanted to watch a woman do her hair and makeup.
I didn’t grow up with great role models.
My own dad died when I was too little to remember him.
Supposedly he and my mom were really, truly in love.
Supposedly he was a good guy. But the guy who came before him and the guy who came after him were assholes, which is why my brothers have had to fight to find a way to see love and marriage as good things.
I get it. I remember my mom primping for Hanna’s dad, only to have him not show up at all. I remember her going out with him, only to come home crying. And I remember when he went away and didn’t come back at all.
So you’d think there’d be nothing for me in this.
But I can’t take my eyes off Autumn as she dries her hair and carefully presses big round curls into it, as she pins up part of it with a flower barrette. As she, hand steady, draws black onto her eyelids, brushes it onto her eyelashes. Pink onto her cheeks, red onto her lips.
“This can’t be that fun to watch,” she says shyly.
I don’t have the right words to answer. It’s like magic feels too big, but it’s close to what I would mean.
When she’s done with her hair and makeup, she goes into the bathroom, taking her dress with her, and shuts the door.
In the meantime, I button and tuck my shirt, tie my tie, buckle my cummerbund, and fasten my pants. And open the refrigerator.
And then she opens the door and steps out, and it’s like looking at the sun.
She’s wearing a dress that shouldn’t even exist. It clings to every inch of her—well, the inches that it covers, which are…
few. It quits at mid-thigh, scoops low to cup her pretty tits, crisscrosses her back in two thin strips, and leaves her slim arms bare.
It’s black, but the fabric is shot through with sparkles so she glitters all over.
All I can manage is “Autumn,” but I think she gets it because her smile grows huge.
“You’re not so bad yourself,” she says, her eyes wandering all over me, big and avid in a way that makes me hard again. Foreplay.
And then her gaze settles on the box in my hand, and her eyes get huge. “Tucker!” she says.
I open the box and pull out the tight red rose.
“When did you have time…?”
Because of course we’ve been together twenty-four seven. But a guy has his ways when he’s motivated.
Carefully, I pin it on her, letting my hand brush the side of her breast. She shivers and arches toward me.
“Hold that thought,” I tell her.
“Holding,” she says, and she makes it sound like the dirtiest thing in the universe.
Pretty sure this is going to blow the doors off all the other prom nights that have ever happened in all the universes.