Chapter Eight Julian #2
My fingers find the back of her head, the curve of her neck, and the kiss opens up, deepens, expands until it’s all consuming, open ocean, no land in sight.
The feel of her small body lying on top of mine is the most comprehensive pressure I’ve ever experienced, calming me, grounding me, the spiraling tentacles of my ever-reaching anxiety receding into my body quick and vicious, like one of those stressful tape measures handy types use.
The soft wet of her mouth sliding against mine makes my cock ache and strain, and she’s begun to rock gently against it.
I groan into her, pulling her tightly into me, and a sigh of pleasure escapes her lips before we crush together again.
Our mingled breath fogs the lenses of my glasses, but I can’t stop staring at her face as it slides through expressions of longing and pleasure, like I’m watching her get off behind the steamed glass of a shower.
Oh, God, Nomi in a fucking shower?? My good hand slides from her head down the arch of her spine, resting in the curve there, until she grabs my hand and drags it lower, under her dress, and presses it against her ass.
I grip her, feeling madness at the information my fingers send to my brain, the rounded wedge of flesh between panty and leg visible in my mind as I anchor her to me, turning her gentle rocking into a rough, grinding punishment that I’ll crave now for the rest of my life.
“Nomi,” I moan, my voice cracking, loud enough that everything stops.
Nomi’s eyes open. She blinks down at me and gasps, seeming to remember it’s a’ me, Julian!
cue Mario Bros music. In one heartbreaking instant, she scrambles up my torso, grabs the vibrator, and rolls off, leaving us both panting on our backs, lying side by side.
The whole interlude felt like hours, but in reality, was probably less than a minute.
Only one minute of kissing her—that’s all I get? I want to cry.
Oh, shit. I can see my hard-on without lifting my head.
My eyes shift to her just as her eyes shift to me, down there, then sees me seeing her see it.
“Oh my God.” She covers her face with both hands. “What were we thinking?!”
“That that was amazing?” I roll onto my side, staring at her in bleary-eyed wonder. “That that felt better than anything I’ve ever experienced?”
Nomi shoots up to sitting. “It’s the pot’s fault. Some kinds make people horny, that’s all.”
“It does?”
“Yes. Does your body feel, um—” she pauses to swallow, “extra sensitive to touch right now?”
I nod vigorously.
“Well, that’s why,” she says, her voice strangely high-pitched.
“Nothing to do with us or our feelings whatsoever.” She pulls her dress’s hem down, then lurches to standing, grabbing all the hastily dropped first-aid supplies and depositing them on the bed.
Then, she throws a towel at me, a T-shirt, and after a beat of digging around her drawers, a pair of sweatpants, too.
“You should shower to clean off all those cuts, then you can put those on, we’ll eat, and I’ll call you a Lyft home. ”
I feel strangely evicted from our kiss, hurt in a way I can’t explain. “It was just the pot?” I repeat, frowning as I try to process this. “But it felt so real.”
Nomi, hearing the hurt in my voice, sits back down and awkwardly pats my leg.
“Yeah. But it’s okay. Sometimes cannabis makes you chase pleasure, that’s all.
I promise you, tomorrow you’ll realize what a crazy idea kissing each other is, and you’ll understand.
” Her eyes dart toward my massive erection, then back to mine as she quickly withdraws her hand.
“Trust me, okay? You are very, very stoned right now, and I’ve been smoking, too. ”
“Okay.” I yawn, my eyes feeling delightfully heavy, if sad.
Since starting work at the ER, sleep has become a utilitarian act, devoid of any pleasure.
Two hours here, five hours there. Maybe a full eight on a rare weekend off.
My body is trained to fall asleep the second my eyes close, then wake up from a period of dreamless black, like a battery dinging when recharged.
But right now, I feel like a cat languidly lying in a puddle of sunlight, eyes squeezed closed in little satisfied diagonals.
I stretch luxuriously across Nomi’s down comforter.
“Yell if you need anything.” She eyes me suspiciously, then shuts the door, which is so weird because she immediately starts knocking on it again. “Julian? Are you decent?”
I blink at the door as she slowly opens it. She sighs, exasperated for some reason. “You didn’t shower yet?”
“You just left.”
“Twenty-five minutes ago.”
“Impossible,” I murmur as she marches inside, forces me up and out of her bed and into the bathroom. I sniff the air like a bloodhound. “The pizza’s here!” Also like a bloodhound, I feel like howling about it.
“You can’t have any until you shower.”
“Aww, Nomi—please? Please, I’m so hungry.
” I hear myself whining like a small, dejected child.
A truly pathetic, starving child. To Nomi Wyeth.
First for kissing, and now for pizza. And yet, I continue to do it without an iota of shame as she unbuttons my tattered shirt swiftly and throws it in her hamper.
I can’t stop thinking about the pizza, about Nomi holding it to her mouth, biting it, cheese stretching—
Oh damn. The boner’s back.
“Jesus, Julian!” She throws her hand over her eyes.
“I think it’s from the pizza!” I wail. “A slice will make it go away!”
And that’s how I end up naked eating pizza in Nomi Wyeth’s shower, her hand holding a slice beyond the curtain to my face while I dutifully wash all my cuts.
It may have taken a lot of negotiation to get me into the shower, but it takes almost as much to get me out.
I like arguing with Nomi too much—always have.
Ultimately, I use up all her hot water before I’m willing to leave the haven of girl-smelling steam I’ve created from using all her products.
But the cold water hits me like a slap in the balls, and shrieking, I finally step back out and wrap myself in the giant fluffy towel she left for me.
I huddle within its luxe terrycloth embrace, smiling dazedly as I exit the bathroom like a lavender-scented Sith Lord fresh from the spa.
Nomi glances up from her floor, where she’s sitting cross-legged with a plate of pizza, and laughs.
“Why are you doing that thing with your face?” She makes a swirly gesture at her own mouth. “That… smiling thing.”
“It’s just, everything’s so nice here.” I nuzzle in the towel. “Your comforter, your towels, this bed.” I heave myself onto it in a running jump, then groan happily. “It’s like a hotel made of you. I’d never leave if home was this nice.”
Nomi shrugs. “Creature comforts are how I get by.”
“What do you mean?”
“I… don’t get out much,” she finishes suddenly, as though she almost said something else but changed her mind. “Home needs to be special when you spend so much time in it.”
Nomi dabs Neosporin on the long scratches on my back I can’t reach, which I try not to get a boner about.
I cannot develop a Pavlovian boner response to the smell of antibiotic ointments in my profession.
Then, when I get stuck because of my bum arm, she helps pull her fresh T-shirt over my head.
It’s super soft, like everything in her world, and fits me skintight.
She sucks a breath in when she sees my left arm.
“Julian… is your arm supposed to be that color?”
I glance down at the angry purple streak painting my forearm. “Hmm,” I muse, noting how big it’s grown since I took the shower. “Nope.”
Nomi winces. “Should we call Dr. Appa?”
“That stoner?” I snort. “Nah. It’s fine.”
It’s definitely not fine. But it doesn’t really hurt and also…
I just don’t care? My head feels thick and pleasant, my stomach ravenous, and my entire body, inexplicably, the shade of pink.
And all that matters right now is being here and eating pizza and mmm.
Nestled next to Nomi on her couch, housing my sixth slice, and talking animatedly about every random thing that pops into my brain feels like life on an alien planet and yet simultaneously, like an inevitability my entire life has been moving toward.
I feel good. I feel happy. And, judging by the way Nomi’s laughing against my side, not at all disgusted with my company, she feels the same way, too.
My God, Eric was right.
That intelligent bastard was a hundred percent right, I should ask Nomi out! The kiss alone is proof there’s something magical between us, and stoned or not, this has been the best night of my life.
“Julian?” Nomi pokes me in the side. “You okay?” She’s been watching me closely, taking care of me through my drug-fueled stupor, and when she ribs me, it feels playful and kind.
Is this what dating Nomi would be like? Nights on her plush couch, watching TV with the volume low so we can talk over it, eating pizza and laughing and—and—
Getting high?
The thought punches me straight in the stomach.
“I can’t,” I blurt out.
Nomi frowns. “Can’t what?” And fuck, even her frown is beautiful.
The gentle furrow between her brows, her sharp, inquisitive eyes, the quiet demand she places on the universe to explain itself because she has a right to know.
She looks at me like she wants to understand me, and dammit if it doesn’t make me feel like the most important man in the world.
But I can’t throw everything away to sit on this couch, even if Nomi’s sitting beside me on it.
“I can’t—eat any more pizza,” I finish lamely, which is a lie, but I force myself to abandon the slice. When was the last time I let myself have pizza? An eight-pack of abs ago?