Chapter 12
twelve
SLOANE
As I lie in bed, I can’t stop thinking about his mouth.
It’s almost midnight, Ivy is asleep, and my eyes are open. Because every time I close them, I’m back in Bellamy with his hand on the side of my face, kissing me like he’d been thinking about it as long as I had.
With a sigh, I roll over and stare at the wall.
The Halden Girl would not do what I’m thinking about doing, but she also wouldn’t have told Rowan about the incident. And it’s his reaction that tips me over the line, because he clearly cared when he’d asked me what I needed.
Nobody has ever done that for me before.
I pick up my phone. Ivy shifts in her sleep across the room, mumbling something that sounds like no more tequila, and I almost laugh but I’m too wound up. I hold the phone, trying to talk myself out of what might be a bad idea and feels like such a good one.
Then I text him:
Are you up?
He responds, faster than I expected.
Rowan: Yeah
I hesitate, then type.
Sloane: Can I come over?
The dots blink, hover, vanish, come back.
Rowan: Do you want me to come to you?
I laugh and respond.
Sloane: I live with your sister.
Rowan: Good point. See you soon.
He texts me his address next, and I’ve still got a smile on my face as I get out of bed. As quickly as I can in the cold, I grab jeans and a sweater, then — before I lose my nerve — I open the drawer where the things I never wear are, and I dig out the one nice lace set I own.
It’s the one I’ve never had a single occasion to wear.
Tonight is the occasion.
I dress in the dark, the lace cool against my skin. Once it’s on, I check my reflection. My hair is the kind of messy that would take an hour to fix, my cheeks are too pink, and my eyes are too bright.
The Halden Girl is, very clearly, not in attendance.
I put the rest of my clothes on, then head out. I take the stairs, and outside the air is sharp enough to bite straight through my sweater — the first real cold of the season. But I’m walking too fast to feel it for long, and Ridgeview is only across the bridge.
Halfway across the bridge I almost stop. Turn around, call it a night, be sensible about it.
The voice in my head sounds like my mother.
But then I think about the way he pulled his hand back from my breast in the library, not because he didn’t want to touch me but because he wanted to ask first. And that’s enough to confirm that this guy is different.
I keep walking.
When I get there, I knock and he opens it before my hand drops back to my side, like he’s been standing just on the other side of it. He’s wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants, his hair sticking up on one side like he’s run a hand through it twenty times waiting for me.
Then he gives me the cutest damn smile a boy on earth has ever unleashed. “You walked here in a sweater?”
I feel a shiver, which seems perfectly timed. “I made a series of poor choices on the way to this very excellent choice.”
He holds out his hand. I take it, and he pulls me inside. Before I can say anything else, there’s a blanket around my shoulders, and his hands are rubbing my upper arms through it, and he’s steering me toward a sofa. Like always, he’s solving a problem.
“You’re an ice cube,” he says.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re shaking.”
He drops onto the sofa beside me, wrapping the blanket tighter, and pulls one of my hands between both of his, pressing my fingers between his palms until they’re warm enough to pull a small, involuntary noise out of me.
I smile. “You’re doing the solving thing.”
“The thing where I keep my date from getting hypothermia?”
“Date, is it?” I say. “Come closer…”
He looks at me with that careful, steady focus that is the most attractive thing about him and the most exhausting thing about him in equal measure, and he decides to sit a polite distance away from me.
I give him a small smile. “You can come closer than that.”
Suddenly, all mirth is gone, and he’s serious. “The last time you trusted someone with something serious, you got hurt, so I would rather you tell me twice than not at all.”
God.
God.
My chest goes warm, my eyes sting, and I cannot afford to start crying right now because if I start, I will not stop, and that will totally ruin the cute-underwear reveal, so instead I lift the corner of the blanket and hold it open.
“Get in.”
He hesitates for a second, holding my gaze, then scoots under the blanket. His arm goes around my back, and I tuck myself into his side, his thigh warm against mine. I press my forehead into the side of his neck.
“I couldn’t sleep,” I say into his collar.
“Me neither.”
“I kept thinking about the library.”
“Me too.”
He’s quiet for a long second, and then his hand finds my waist over the sweater. And it’s… nice. Like it belongs, like he belongs. But I can still feel the held breath in him, the way he’s holding still on purpose, because he’s worried I’ll flinch and flee if he moves too fast.
I sit back enough to see his face. “I don’t want to get hurt again.”
“You won’t.” His thumb moves against my waist. “Ivy would kill me.”
I let out an ugly laugh, but this time I don’t bother trying to hide it. “Okay. Good.”
Then we’re on each other. It’s not the library kiss. This is… different. My hand is on his jaw and my mouth is open against his, and I don’t have to wait for the feeling. It’s already here, the thing that never came before with Mason.
For one full second I feel him holding back, that careful Rowan check-in, is she sure, and I bite his lower lip and tug, and the holding back stops. His hand at my waist tightens, and we drag the kiss deeper, and whatever caution I walked in with goes with it.
The blanket slides off my shoulder, but the room is warm enough without it.
The room is warm because he is.
I climb on top of him. Well… sort of. More like I get one knee onto the sofa, awkward, my jeans pulling tight, and he catches my hip and helps and the next thing I know I’m in his lap. My hands are on either side of his face, and his are on my back, and we’re looking at each other.
“You okay?” he says against my mouth.
“If you ask me one more time—”
“Got it.”
I shimmy out of the jeans without getting off him, which requires a brief graceless negotiation with the denim that he has the decency not to comment on, and his eyes are on me as much as his hands are, hungry and curious.
He kisses me again, slower, deliberate, his hand drifting down my spine and pulling me to him. And I let out a little gasp when I feel him press against me through the sweatpants, hard and obvious.
I’m already wet — I’ve been wet since before I left Sterling, if I’m being honest — and through the thin lace and the cotton there is almost nothing between us. I rock my hips once, and I feel exactly how much he wants this.
He makes a sound.
It is a very good sound.
“Sloane.”
“Mm.”
“You came over here for a reason.”
“Yeah.”
He gives me a coy grin. “What’s the reason?”
I smirk at him, leaning back and pulling my sweater over my head.
His mouth opens.
The grin dies.
The lace bra is black, sheer enough that he can see my nipples through it, and cut low enough that the tops of my breasts spill over the edge. And beneath me I feel him get harder still, the pressure of his cock against the wet lace making my breath catch.
“Sloane.”
“Yeah.”
“You—” He shakes his head once. His voice is rough. “Jesus Christ.”
I try to bite back the smile, but can’t totally smother it. I’m sitting on top of the most composed boy in the state of Vermont and I have made him forget the English language, and he is looking at me like I’m something he’s not sure he’s allowed to touch.
“You can take it off,” I say, trying to be nonchalant. “Or you can leave it on.”
“Leave it on,” he says, with no hesitation, as his thumbs trace the lower edge of the lace.
I shiver, and his mouth follows his hands, gently claiming my neck, my collarbone, and the swell of my breasts above the lace. The whole time, his stubble drags against my skin, and I arch into him and grip the back of his head, and I am not quiet about it.
I pull at his T-shirt, and he sits up enough to let me drag it over his head, and then his chest is under my hands and oh, oh — I’ve been watching him in jerseys, but now the muscle under my palms is real and his breathing changes when my hands explore.
He reaches behind me. The bra opens. One hand. No fumble.
“Show-off,” I say.
He slides it down my arms, and then his mouth is on my breast — tongue flat against my nipple, then circling, then the edge of his teeth, and my vision blurs at the edges — and his hand is palming the other, thumb rolling slow, and I’m grinding down on him.
I moan.
I could come like this.
I almost do.
But I want more.
I slide sideways off his lap, pushing him back against the cushions, and then lean down and tug his sweatpants and boxers low enough to free him. I pause, because he’s hard and flushed and big, but then I lick a slow stripe up the underside of his cock, base to tip.
The sound he makes — guttural, startled — is the best thing I have ever heard in my life.
I take him in my mouth and take him deep, and his hand comes to my hair, not pushing, just holding on, and his hips lift off the cushion and push him deeper into my mouth before he catches himself.
“Sloane — fuck—”
I circle the head with my tongue, and his hand tightens in my hair, and then his other hand slides between my thighs from behind, pushing the lace aside, and his fingers find me — wet and swollen — and I moan around his cock and feel him twitch against my tongue.
We find a rhythm. My mouth on him, his fingers working. Every stroke of his fingers sends a current through me that makes me suck him harder, which makes him groan, which makes me wetter, which makes his fingers slide easier.
“Stop,” he says, his breath turning ragged, pulling gently at my hair. “Or I’m going to come, Sloane.”
I pull off, but slowly — after one last drag of my tongue along the underside — and look up at him. “Would that be so bad?”
His head falls back against the cushion, undone. “It would be over too fast.”