CHAPTER 30 #2
He winces when I dig my nails into his skin during a particularly well-directed stroke of his thumb, shaking his head like it reconfigured something in his brain before he doubles down on the way his thumb works against my clit.
Two fingers slide into me and curl up on the way back out in a way that makes me shudder.
If an ax burst through the door beside me right now, I think I’d be more disappointed than terrified at this point.
Especially when Wes drops his mouth to my neck again, lips and tongue and teeth tracing across my skin, tempting more muffled sounds from my lips.
Everything that’s happening—what he’s doing, what I’m doing—it’s too much and just enough and genre-defying all at once.
I want to cry and laugh and scream and give a giant middle finger to that fucking psycho outside because See? You haven’t ruined everything.
Every now and then Wes lifts his chin to murmur low words in my ear that have me panting into his hand. The most replay-worthy quotes being: “I’m gonna have dreams about you in this dress for a long time. Taking it off you. Having you keep it on like this… Really vivid dreams, Jamie.”
Which makes it worth every cent of interest it racked up on my credit card.
“God, you’re killing me. You’re making me so—Just watching you. It’s taking everything not to just—Fuck… you’re killing me.”
I know. God, I know from the way I can feel him pressed against my thigh. I hope we can do this again. I really hope I can help him out with that next time.
“I can’t wait to learn every little thing about you.
I can’t wait to hear what you sound like when we’re alone without my hand covering your mouth.
Although…” He lifts his head to look at me after he says that.
The knowing tilt at the corner of his mouth akin to throwing kerosene onto an already raging bonfire. “You might like this, huh?”
Yep, I think I might. I think he has the ability to make me like things I’ve probably never considered.
And just when I think it can’t get any better, when I know I’m this close, his thumb stops circling. He just presses it against me, hard, consistent, unyielding, and that’s the cue. Roll the tape of rockets blasting off, waves crashing, fireworks igniting, atomic bombs exploding.
My back arches as his mouth rakes up my bared throat, and release flares through my body.
Sharp and violent. I shake against him, and for the first time tonight it isn’t from fear, as tension and terror leave my body in a rush.
All I’m left with is his breath on my face, his fingers stroking slowly, softly, between my legs, and the wet warmth of his skin against my mouth as I gasp into his palm.
His grip loosens over my mouth to slide around and cup the side of my face, my chest heaving as I drop my head back against the wall.
It’s like I’ve had a hand wrapped around my throat the last few hours, loose enough to let me breathe but tight enough to make it an effort, and now I’ve been pulled from its grip.
“Jamie?”
I open my eyes and everything is blurry. Wes’s voice is concerned. He goes to back away from me and I grip my fingers into his waist to stop him.
“Are you okay? Did I—?”
It’s then I feel the warm tears drip down my cheeks and they are…
very out of place, considering I definitely enjoyed what just happened.
If Laurie were here, she’d be able to offer some kind of logical explanation.
Chalk it up to a physiological reaction in response to external stimulation and then pin me with a wicked smirk as she let the double meaning of her conclusion settle like blood on vinyl.
But while Laurie’s and my relationship extends beyond normal boundaries, I would draw the line with her being present, let alone providing commentary, on what just happened.
And so I maintain my hold on Wes, nodding as I direct a teary smile up to him and try to get my breathing under control.
He keeps me propped against the wall, wiping away streaks of pink on my cheeks—the usual date night mix of tears and blush and blood—as he slips his other hand out of my underwear and slides it across to my hip, down my thigh.
His arm wraps around my waist after he pulls the hem back into place.
“Wes…” His name comes out of my mouth throaty and raw, but I don’t know what I plan on saying. I don’t know if my brain has enough oxygen to form sentences.
“Just breathe, baby.”
I follow his directions without too much protest. He is the first officer at the scene, after all, but the new term of endearment doesn’t go unmissed. If anything, it makes me feel like I might do that ugly laugh-cry-hiccup most Leading Ladies can get away with, but I know I certainly can’t.
“This might be—” he says, his lips falling upon mine in a savoring press before he pulls away and shakes his head, “—the best and worst first date I’ve ever been on.”
That pulls the ugly laugh-cry-hiccup from me. When I can feel my legs again, when my breathing evens out, I lift myself off the support of his thigh and straighten on unsteady feet. Wes doesn’t let go.
“Well, I don’t usually do that on a first da—”
I tense up when the realization hits me.
Like a sharp, discordant scrape of a violin when the audience can see the threat before the characters.
We’re still in the middle of a horror movie.
The only thing I know about Wes is that he’s a cop who’s good with his hands.
It was easy to ignore the rules, to reason they don’t apply to us in here, when we’d washed the blood away and locked the door, but now they’re coming back in full force and reminding me: “I don’t know your last name—” The hand around my throat is back. “I don’t even kn—”
“Jamie.” His palm moves from my cheek to prop against the wall behind me. The shift brings him just a fraction closer and everything behind him blurs like a vignette. I can’t see the safety posters, the shelves, the maintenance supplies. All I can see is him.
“Wes Carpenter,” he says. That soft, loaded gaze traces across my face and the pressure in my throat loosens, softens like a caress.
“Homicide detective. Badge number 21397. Taurus… apparently. I have two younger sisters—they’re the ones who told me my star sign is important—and if you made me choose between The Fast and the Furious and Miss Congeniality… Bullock would win.”
My shoulders melt back down into place, and I can’t help but grin. It’s personal, ordinary information unrelated to the life-or-death situation outside. He has a life beyond this. We have lives beyond this. We could still get back to them.
I take over wiping away the rest of the tears from my face before planting my palms on his chest, one right over his heart. His heartbeat speeds up just a little beneath my hand when I smile up at him and say, “Jamie Prescott, PhD candidate.”
He mirrors the curve of my lips and tilts his head down when I lift mine up to kiss him.
I lean away but he follows, our mouths lingering against each other as I disclose, “My student number is the one thing I’ve never been able to memorize.
I’m a proud Scorpio. I have an older sister.
You might think Laurie is like my sister, but she’s more like my wife.
” When I open my eyes, I catch the corners of his crinkling in amusement.
“That’s not going to change no matter who I date,” I warn, because he should know all the fine print before deciding if that’s how he’d like this to play out.
“And… Bullock always comes out on top.”
He kisses me once. “We would’ve covered at least that on our first date.”
Twice. “I don’t think we can count this as a first date,” I say before he sweeps his lips across mine a third time and then begins to untangle himself from our embrace. “More like a shared traumatic experience.”
One we need to escape if we ever want to go on a date with more traditional elements like dinner, a movie, small talk, rather than cardio, first aid, and bloodshed. The janitor’s closet gave us a reprieve, but as soon as we leave it’ll be like pressing play on a paused scene.
Wes’s gaze shifts to the side and I follow it, spotting the bottle of hand sanitizer with the red Flammable Liquid sticker that’s caught his attention.
He looks back at me, determination etched across his face, and if we were in a movie, his shirt would be—at the very least—artfully ripped to reveal the muscles of his torso.
It’s a real shame it isn’t, but my disappointment is short-lived.
Especially when he grabs the bottle from the shelf and gets back to searching the room, calling over his shoulder, “Let’s get through this night so I can take you on a real date then. ”