Chapter 43 Food
I’ve never felt like this before. I keep saying that. It keeps being true. Like I can levitate. Like a sorceress. Like I could conquer the world.
Sex has always been a thing that happened to me. That I was there for. Tonight I happened to sex. I wanted it with this man, and we made it happen. I was in full control, and he was in full control, and it was more than I could ever have imagined sex could be.
I let the sex goblin take control and wow, that bitch is confident. She’s the coolest version of me I’ve ever met. I’ve never told anyone I wanted them. I’ve never wanted to.
“Two burgers, two Caesar salads, the charcuterie board, two Sprites, two bowls of uncooked rice, two waters, a banana split, and two baked potatoes, please.”
My stomach grumbles excitedly as Reed talks to the hotel employee on the other end of the line. It’s been way too long since we had an actual meal. We didn’t get doggie bags before we left the wedding. We’re famished.
I’m in underwear and his trench coat. He’s in royal-blue boxers with yellow stripes, black sweats and nothing else, and I’m staring at him from my spot among the pillows on the bed closest to the window.
He’s pacing as he listens to the phone. I watch his stomach muscles move as his weight shifts. As he breathes.
This man is my boyfriend.
I feel his attention shift to me like static over my skin as he says goodbye and hangs up the phone.
“What are you doing?” he says playfully.
“Admiring you.”
“Staring.”
“I think you like it.”
He drops his head back to smile at the ceiling.
“I definitely do. My stomach is full of fucking butterflies. I can feel your eyes on me the whole time.” He looks me up and down.
“Why are you half naked in that jacket?” He crosses his arms, staring at me, hunger in his eyes.
“What are you trying to do to me, Rikki, I’m fucking weak in the knees. ”
He picks up a T-shirt off the back of the desk chair and moves to put it on.
“Reed, put down the shirt.”
He turns and cocks a brow.
“It’s a crime for you to put on that shirt right now. The people want to see you.”
He grins. “The people?”
“I’m the people.”
His eyes flash as his mouth knots up.
“How much time before the food is here?”
“Forty minutes to an hour,” he says.
“Lie down.” I point to the space next to me.
He obeys, lowering down next to me on his side.
I watch as his body contracts and shifts to accommodate his movements, and I climb over him.
The goblin comes back full force. Desire coalescing, gaining mass and momentum as our skin makes contact because he’s beautiful and considerate and kind and funny and smart and mine, and I’m leaving tomorrow. I need more before we part.
So much more. I feel like Bella the first time she slept with Edward and couldn’t compute how on earth she could go back to a regular life when she knew there was this. When I know there is sex with Reed. A different dimension of solid, hot, liquid, molten bliss.
I lower over him. Trace the deep ridges of his abdomen with my tongue. Kissing. Licking. He’s spectacular. Such art.
“Rikki,” he breathes.
He shivers as I slowly make my way down. Knot my hands in his sweatpants, maneuver them down, and take him in my mouth.
He convulses and groans, and I bring him to the edge before he pulls me up and flips me over.
“I want to feel you,” he demands, and it lights up my every cell again as he grabs a condom from a box he left on the nightstand, and he pushes into me.
Stars burst for the second time in the last hour as perfect puzzle pieces snap together.
As we dance against each other, letting go completely, feral, screaming for each other, as we flip into that other plane.
Our phones are in rice.
We’ll see how that pans out. We’ve devoured our room service. Friends is playing on low on the TV. We’re tangled up in the bed—clothed. Reed’s in a Mathematics Tour Ed Sheeran T-shirt and boxers. I’m in shorts, a tank, and the trench.
“Have I told you how you smell amazing?” I inhale near Reed’s neck.
I feel the vibrations off his chest as he laughs, but I can’t catalog his specific facial reaction, because from this vantage point I don’t get that view.
“Yes, and I now own every product that scent has to offer.”
I smile. “Did I tell you you smell like the forest became a person and went to the beach with a book after like, a long day of work?”
His chest rumbles under me. I shift slightly off his chest, and he takes the opportunity to turn toward me and prop up his head. “The problem with snuggling like this is, I don’t get to see your face when you talk.”
It’s so wild when he says things that I’m thinking like that. He’s literally been doing it since the moment we met.
I prop up my head, smiling. “Reed, you have such a great face—it’s so weird that you never show it on your Instagram grid.”
Reed snorts.
“For real, why is there not one face in any of your pictures? Your grid looks like a hipster’s account from the year 2012.”
A laugh bursts out of him. “I’m fine with that. 2012 was a great year. No one wants to see pictures of a face. So mainstream.”
A pfft sizzles out of me.
His grin kicks up sideways. “So you like my face?”
“You have a face for the mid-1800s.”
He eyes me dubiously. “You have a thing for Civil War–era men?”
“I do now.”
His head falls back with a laugh.
“Your face gives I’m an 1860s war hero, there’s a statue of me in the town square. What do you think my face gives?”
He beams, shaking his head. “I don’t know, I’ve never considered this. Early 2000s?”
“You can’t pick early 2000s. That’s when I’m actually from.”
He snorts. “Fine, your face is giving 800 BC.”
“Excuse me? BC? I give before Jesus?”
“It gives Vikings.”
“I’m not even blond!”
“You look blond to me.”
“My hair is bronze, Reed.”
“We’re talking face, not hair. You have fierce, light features. It’s giving Scandinavian.”
I roll my eyes. “All right. I’ll take it.”
“I love looking at your before-Jesus face.”
I flop backward onto the bed, smiling at the ceiling. “So. Is that usually what sex is like for you?”
He leans over me, grinning. “Did you not hear me when I said you fucked me into a different dimension I didn’t know existed?”
“Just making sure you weren’t just being polite.”
An abrupt laugh barks out of him. “In what world?” He grabs my thigh and hitches my leg over his hip. A wave of heat pours through me as I wiggle closer.
“That was the most magnificent merging I’ve ever experienced,” he says.
“Merging?”
He arches a brow. “Just trying to be polite.”
A laugh hisses out of me.
“Was it not for you?”
“Oh, it definitely was.”
His lips press into a pout. “Lived up to the chapter?”
I arch a brow. “Blew the chapter out of the water. Well done.”
His head lolls back. “When do you leave tomorrow? How much time do we have before you head back east?”
“Are you asking me how many times we can have sex before I leave?”
“Among other things.”
“I leave tomorrow night.”
“Can I drive you to the airport?”
I smile, tugging his Ed Sheeran shirt to close the distance between our faces, and kiss him deeply.
“Is that a yes?”
“Yes, Reed. I would let you drive me anywhere. You could murder me right now, and I’d be upset because there are a lot of work things I’m excited about, but also I would die happy.”
He tugs me closer, pulling my leg higher over his hip. “What’s your week look like?”
I swallow, my heartbeat speeding up without permission as he shifts under me. “I’ve got the podcast recording Monday . . . I’ll be framing the picture of us with Regent Fallow and hanging it next to my bookshelf when I have a free second—please, Lord, ensure that it made it to the cloud.”
Reed smirks. “We can only hope.”
“I’ve got the monthly pitch meeting for The Minute on Wednesday, Etsy cards Thursday, last passes for this week’s article, first draft of next week’s.”
He nods, his finger now drawing shapes across my thigh.
“I’ll be changing my phone background to a picture of your Civil War–era face.”
He chuckles.
“And then WWU Sunday at three. Favorite part of my week.”
“Still waiting for the QR invite to the WWU but honored to be a part of SFAU.” A smile tugs up my cheek: Sluts for Adventure United.
I shift, rolling over him and pushing up onto my knees. “The SFAU is quickly becoming my favorite club.”
My hair falls around us in a sheet as I lean forward to meet his lips. He flips us so I’m on my back. He hovers over me, searchlights flaring in his eyes. “So when did you step off, Renee?” he asks.
I purse my lips and stare at him, feeling suddenly shy. “I don’t know.”
He grins, like he expected this response. “Yeah, I don’t believe you.”
He pushes up my shirt, exposing my stomach, and kisses over my belly button.
Between my breasts.
Over my hip.
On my underwear line, before sliding off my shorts and tossing them in the corner. He hasn’t even touched me, and my heart is beating out of my chest. My body is a ticking time bomb under him. He spreads my legs, and my breathing hitches.
“This is blackmail,” I bleat.
His lips land in the crease at the top of the inside of my thigh.
“Reed,” I breathe.
“When?” he says. His mouth brushes against me, and I can’t handle how turned on I already am.
“At the beach.” The words are barely a whisper as I writhe against his static lips.
He starts moving his mouth again.
Stardust implodes, swirls, coalesces, explodes again. The process restarts, sensation growing, building.
“Which time, Renee?”
I rock into him. “Don’t stop.”
“When,” he demands.
I exhale, exhale, exhale, trying to focus, dying for him to continue, keep going, electrifying me. “When you answered the question.”
“Which question?”
“What is love to you?”
He gets back to work, and my world dissolves and explodes in bursts. Kaleidoscopes of euphoria.
When he’s done, he collapses next to me. I’m a boneless pile of human, blissed out, adoration for this man filling every corner of my being.
“I stepped off when you answered the same question.”