Page 82 of Show Me
“I keep my business to myself.” Ansel lifted one shoulder and maintained his cryptic smile even when Nate shoved him.
* * *
“It bothersme that I don’t remember kissing you,” Sam said as we brushed our teeth and got ready for bed later. “Though the first time we kissed, which I guess was technically our second kiss, something felt familiar. I got the tiniest sense of déjà vu. I couldn’t place it, I just knew I liked it. Did you have the same feeling?”
I tore off a piece of dental floss, handed it to him, and he murmured athanks, babythat went right to my fucking heart and melted it from the inside. I loved that he just slid into the endearment and fully embraced it. “I wish I did, but I don’t. At all.”
“Maybe we weren’t standing up.” Sam waggled his brows at me.
“You could be right. Nate said something about you hugging a tree. Maybe we were sitting against it. Which reminds me”—I untwisted the floss from my finger and tossed it in the trash—“we need to do some more outside stuff, probably. I mean, assuming you still want to make videos?”
“Fuck yeah I want to, unless you don’t want to.” Sam paused in his flossing, eyes cutting to mine in the mirror. “Then we won’t.”
I shook my head rapidly. “I still want to do them. I love doing them with you.” I loved exploring fantasies with him and the thrill that doing so on camera provided.
Sam smiled shyly. “Okay, good. Because I really like doing them with you, too.”
“Do you think we did anything else that night we kissed?” I asked a second later. The thought had been circling around my mind.
“Considering we were both that slammed, I’m not sure how…functional either of us were.”
“The spirit may have been willing, but the flesh was very definitely—”
“Flaccid.”
I curled my lip. “Gross. Never say that word again. It belongs in the retch closet with all the other words we do not ever speak.”
“Like what?”
“Like moist. And lickety split. Snatch. Broth.” I ticked them off on my fingers and made a gagging sound as I shuddered.
Sam spit out the water he was swishing with and grinned shamelessly. “I thought moist was a good thing. I like getting certain parts of you really moist.”
“Please don’t force me to break up with you before we’ve really gotten started.”
Sam pulled me in close and pushed a hand down the back of my pants, fingers following the curve of my ass. If he spread his fingers, he could probably grip the whole thing. The thought had me rubbing needily against him. “Maybe we just need to retrain your brain. Replace the current association with a much more pleasant one.” He laid a string of sucking kisses up the side of my neck as he pressed a finger between my cheeks, and my head fell back like rag doll’s. Then he licked a spot just under my earlobe, and my entire body broke out in goose bumps the way a peacock’s feathers suddenly shot up.
“Okay,” I said faintly, already convinced he’d change my mind in under five minutes.
But I’d make him work for it.
EPILOGUE
Jesse
“How we doing?” Sam charged into our tiny galley kitchen with a towel thrown over his shoulder and came to a stop behind me, peering around me into the various pots I had on the stove. “You need me to get anything? Table is set, I got out all those fancy dishes you wanted. Oh, and I went ahead and did a load of laundry and put it away. I found that sock you’d been looking for, too. The one with the stripe. It fell behind the washer. Shit, I need to put that beer and wine in the fridge, I for—mpppph.”
He melted into the kiss I twisted around and laid on him, and I could feel his heart speeding up beneath the bit of his shirt I’d clutched in my hand to bring him down to my level.
The only reason I had no regrets about cutting the kiss short was because it meant I got to see that goofy grin spread over his face afterward like sunlight creeping across a forest floor, warming everything in its path.
“What was that for?”
“Because I love it when you get more keyed up than me.”
“It’s our first Friendsgiving. Chet’s Mr. Fancy Law Student. Eric designs fucking bridges or whatever. Nate’s working for a senator, and Mark…well, Mark has a big fat trust fund, even if he is going to be a teacher. I design workouts and meal plans.”
“Your competitive streak comes out at the strangest times.” It was especially fun when it came out in the bedroom, but Sam did have his keeping up with the Joneses moments where he felt like he was low man on the ladder of life achievements—which was both ridiculous and ridiculously endearing to me. “You don’t just design workout plans. Remember that guy who lost a hundred pounds? You help people become stronger and healthier. You help them build or rebuild confidence. That’s not nothing. And, you should totally show everyone the blueprints for Fuel.”