25 #2
The walk takes eight minutes, and he carries me for half of it because I’m not walking fast enough, apparently.
We don’t talk, and I’m laughing almost the whole way, because he can’t seem to wait.
The lobby is empty. He looks at the elevator and takes the stairs, and he carries me all the way up three flights while I laugh because I can’t believe he’s this strong, and my heart flaps around like a bird in a cage with every step closer to his room.
Rafe is still at the party, so we have the room to ourselves.
The door shuts, and he puts me on my feet, and then we’re just on each other.
His hands are on my face and my back hits the wall.
I get my arms around his neck, and he lifts me again and carries me four steps and puts me down on his bed.
The mattress is a slab. The blanket smells like him.
My dress is somewhere around my hips, and I don’t care.
“Kylie.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve been thinking about this since this morning.”
“Only since this morning?”
“Since the laundry room,” he says, and kisses me before I can say anything about that, which is probably smart.
I get his hoodie off over his head and throw it somewhere, and then I reach for the hem of his T-shirt, and his hand closes around my wrist. “Leave it.”
For about half a second, everything in me goes still, because I’m lying under him in the dark in his bed, his hand is around my wrist, and I know exactly what’s under that shirt.
I saw it on Greeley’s driveway. I saw the shiny, melted-smooth skin, the faint netted pattern, the purple at the edges in the cold.
He isn’t looking at me. He’s looking at my hand, and his shoulders have gone tight, and he means it.
“Okay,” I say, dropping it.
I don’t ask. I take my hand back, put it on his shoulder on top of the fabric, and pull him down. Something changes in the way he kisses me for about three seconds. It goes slower and deeper and sweeter. Then it’s gone, his hand slides up the back of my dress, and I stop being able to think at all.
We don’t get anything else off. He reaches between my legs, and I’m already wet, and he slides a finger into me, then another, and drags them up to my clit, and my whole body tightens around him.
“Nash,” I moan.
He rubs me until my hips come off the bed, and then he says, “Fuck, condom,” and pulls back to dig one out of a bag inside a bag in his things, like he hadn’t planned on needing it.
He comes back with it on, and instead of taking off my thong, he pulls it to the side.
I lock up for one second, knowing there’s no going back after this.
He stops.
I look him in the eye. “Fuck me,” I whisper.
He rips open the condom, glides it on, and then presses an inch into me, and then another, and I feel myself stretch for him and arch to meet him.
He kisses me through it, and my head falls back into his pillow.
He isn’t gentle once he’s in. He moves like if he doesn’t go this fast, he’ll fall apart.
He bites the top of my shoulder, and I remember what Paige said.
“Your dick feels so fucking good,” I say, and the words tumble out slow.
He holds my thong to the side and drives into me and grabs my knee and bends it. “Your pussy feels so fucking good,” he says back, and heat rolls all the way through me.
I pull him down to kiss me. I keep my hands on top of his shirt, holding his shoulders. He puts his mouth on my collarbone, and I get my fingers in his hair and pull, and he says fuck against my throat. For a second, he rests his forehead against mine, breathing hard.
“What do you want me to do?” I ask, with my hand on the side of his face.
He pushes all the way in, and I slide up toward his headboard. “You’re perfect,” he says.
I kiss him, and after that, he doesn’t hold anything back.
I didn’t know he could go faster, but he does, and I come apart under him, moaning, completely helpless.
He knows I’m close, because he puts his big hand between us and rubs me until my vision swims. He moans my name against my lips and comes with me, and then he slows until he’s heavy and slack on top of me.
I run my fingers through his hair and let him rest. He kisses my forehead and pulls out.
While he takes care of the condom, I sit up and fix my clothes. My thong is stretched out, and I’m swollen, so it’s uncomfortable. I stand to fix it, look around for my boots, find them, and pick one up.
“What are you doing?” he says.
“Leaving.”
“Why?” He’s standing over me. I look at his shirt, and I know I’ll never forget that he kept it on.
“Because I’m going to my room to sleep.”
“Why?”
I put the boot down, annoyed and confused. “Because I live right there.”
“So?”
I sit on the edge of his bed with one boot in my hand and genuinely don’t know what to say, because that isn’t how this works. I know how this works. He told me over text two weeks ago, when I asked about Jules: fuck buddies. And fuck buddies don’t linger.
“Are you asking me to stay?” I say. “Do your other girls sleep over?”
He licks his lips.
“Your—” I gesture vaguely at the room. “Do they stay?”
“You’re not my other girls,” he says.
An enormous heatwave goes through my chest, and I hold onto my boot.
He walks around and gets into bed. “Come here.”
I look down at the boot, and my head is spinning, and his voice is so easy.
I drop it.
He throws back the blanket, and I climb in next to him, and he gets an arm under me and pulls me in until I’m against his side with my cheek on his chest, still in his T-shirt. His arm comes around my back and settles. His hand moves up and down my spine.
I’ve never hooked up with anyone before.
I’ve only ever slept with Evan, so I’m a little giddy that I just had my first hookup.
I slept with somebody because I wanted to, for no other reason than that.
There’s no next year in it. There’s nobody’s mother in it.
Nobody owes anybody anything in the morning.
I’ve spent years hearing people talk about hooking up like it’s something sad.
Why would you sleep with somebody you’re not in love with?
Why would you wake up next to somebody who isn’t yours?
Because it feels like this. Because there’s nothing heavy in it and no history sitting on top of it.
It’s just a body that feels good, and a person you can’t stop wanting, and none of it has to become ordinary, because nobody’s asking it to last long enough to get ordinary.
Nash is nearly asleep while my brain overthinks the entire thing.
I try not to focus on the part where I’m still here in his bed.
It might not mean anything. His breathing has gone long, and his hand has stopped moving on my back and rests flat between my shoulder blades.
I think about moving it. I don’t. I shift a little closer instead, because his chest is warm and the room is cold and my arm is going dead.
He makes a low sound, and his arm tightens around me.
I lie there in the dark in Nash Kennebeck’s bed and listen to his heartbeat.