Page 19 of Square Waves (Big Fan #2)

XVII

After we climb into the car, Leon slips a hand into my lap, but the parking lot setting kills the vibe enough for me to bat him away. I don’t want to come with half of my mind on what people can see through the window. Especially not when we have plenty of privacy in our future.

We spend an agonizing hour on the road. When we get back to the store, either Willa notices that my hair is tangled and salt crusted and she keeps it to herself... or she’s too distracted that the bathroom sink is clogged to pay us any attention.

Knowing she’s in her own world is like a hall pass for Leon and me to drop our act.

We brush up against each other every chance we get; each time our eyes lock, one of us smirks.

It’s embarrassing and thrilling and stupid, and when we leave two hours later, I’m too wound up to do anything other than ask Leon to remind me of his address.

Walking through the front door, it’s the first time I’ve seen his house in the light of day; it’s nicer than I had imagined it would be before.

There’s the same jumble of shoes in the entryway, but the floors are swept clean.

There are vintage furniture pieces in the living room, the kind of Craigslist finds people brag about scoring.

When we pass through the kitchen, the sink is empty and gleaming.

“How many people live here?” I ask.

“Three. Well, four if you count Ryan’s boyfriend, who’s like, a semipermanent resident.”

“Four.”

Leon pushes the door to his room open. “Yeah, well, it’s a lot of rent.”

Do I have to always sound so fucking judgmental? “I didn’t mean—”

“I don’t really care what you meant,” he says, and then he’s kissing me again.

I’m desperate to get my hands on the skin I could only look at earlier, and we’re both immediately pawing at each other’s clothes.

I shed my top, and I get his jeans pushed halfway down his thighs before he eases me back onto his bed, unbuttons my pants, tugs them off me, and slings them over his desk chair.

He’s already kissing his way down my body, drawing one of my legs over his shoulder, his intent perfectly clear.

“We should—” I say. “You should—” But then his mouth is on me, hot and slick and consuming, and the rest of my words are lost in a guttural groan.

Leon holds my hips tightly, pinning me to the bed while he covers every inch of space between my legs with his tongue, his grip on my thighs firm, authoritative.

If I felt exposed before, shivering in my underwear on the beach, it’s nothing compared to now, when he has me completely naked, spread out like a feast. His right hand releases its hold on my leg, and I feel his thumb press against my clit, moving in a circular motion.

My thighs begin to twitch, and I shake in his grasp.

There’s a buzzing between my legs, a shimmering, pulsing sensation that moves up my torso, building with each steady flick of his tongue, each stroke of his fingers.

“Leon,” I say, calling his name like I want him to do something other than exactly this.

I can’t turn away from him again, and I don’t want to.

Whatever this is, I’m giving myself over to it completely.

He pushes two fingers inside of me, making a motion that creates friction against the most sensitive part of me, and I am catapulted.

My head thrashes on the pillow; my hands flex, grasping at nothing. “Fuck, fuck, oh my—”

I come apart, pleasure rushing through my entire body so hard that all I can do is tremble my way through it.

I press my palm to my cheek, as if to steady myself. It takes both of us a minute to catch our breaths. Leon eases the rest of the way out of his jeans.

“You really—you really like doing that, huh?” I roll over to cover his body with mine.

“Especially to you.” He reaches up to cup a palm to the underside of my breast. I reach down and take his dick in my hand, where I can feel his pulse is running ragged, just like mine.

“You said that the first time too. It seemed like maybe... you’d thought about it before.”

I give him a purposefully coy look and start sliding my hand up his shaft. Leon flings his free arm over his face. “At some point, I thought about it every day. You were always so in control, and I just—I’ve wanted to see you let go so badly.”

I smile. “And? Now that you’ve seen it?”

He shakes his head. Pinches his lower lip between his middle finger and his thumb. “You’re still driving me crazy, Cass. I mean, have you ever tasted yourself?”

My heartbeat picks up, and I realize I’m feeling something more than pure lust. Behind the want running wild in my veins, there’s something deeper—almost tender. As if I need Leon to know me and like me. Really like me.

I push the thought away and kiss him. Deeply, hungrily. Until we’re both panting again, his hips angling toward mine, his dick agonizingly hard and pressing against me where I’m so soft and wet. I slide myself back, then forth over his length.

I have no idea how he drags himself out of bed to get a condom; all I know is that I feel the loss of his body under mine like it’s something essential to my existence.

I roll onto my back and watch him, the assured lines of him and the places where he’s vulnerable too.

When he comes back and covers my body with his, his expression is calm but hyperfocused, fixed on me.

He grips my hair in his fist, and I tilt my chin to align my gaze with his.

He slides into me with our eyes locked, and he keeps me there, like there is nowhere else to be.

He fucks with the same slow, steady rhythm as the first time, and it’s just as maddening.

Then his thrusts turn stronger, rougher. The bedframe knocks against the wall, and I press my palms behind me, both to brace my body and to try to soften the noise.

“Leon,” I muster, “what if—”

“Probably not home,” he responds. “And anyway, that’s what headphones are for.”

He pins my wrists over my head, and I gasp, shifting my body lower and trying to get him deeper.

The first time we did this, I hid in the shadows and attempted to pretend I wasn’t feeling as much as I was.

This time, I’m throwing my whole self into it.

My jaw goes slack, my eyes roll back against closed lids, and I clench around him, coming again, this time more slowly so that I feel every inch of it: the hollowing out of my lungs, the steady pulse of my walls squeezing around him.

Warmth spreads through me as he comes, the throbbing of him inside of me matching my pumping heart.

I lap up every detail: the final stutter of his hips.

The way his mouth falls open and his eyes squeeze shut.

He’s usually so graceful, but just in this moment, he’s inelegant, wild, and it’s stunning. Fuck.

He kisses my shoulder and then settles himself at my side.

The silence is comfortable. I examine myself for signs of regret or shame, but there’s nothing. Just the sweet satisfaction of an afterglow: half well-fucked fullness and half anticipatory hunger to do it again.

Leon rests a hand on my thigh, both casual and proprietary. “Are you going to bolt again?” he asks.

“I wouldn’t say that I bolted .”

“Please. You were out of here before I got the condom off.”

“I didn’t want to wear out my welcome.”

“You didn’t want to admit how much you liked it.”

I can’t argue, so I bare my teeth at him; Leon bares his back. Then he nudges his nose against mine and kisses me, full and sweet.

“I think you knew how much I liked it,” I say, catching my breath.

“I liked this time, not having to wonder, much better.”

It’s dark out by the time we stumble down to his kitchen.

We’re both starving; Leon says he’ll make something.

From a counter stool, I watch him chop garlic and ginger into perfectly uniform tiny cubes, rinse rice, and get the cooker going.

I like observing him work here just as much as I do at Willa’s.

The easy competence of his body, the fluid way he moves through space, his lack of a recipe—it’s all hot.

Now that I’m less distracted by imminent sex, I turn back to how I felt in Leon’s bedroom.

How I’m feeling now, to be honest. That there’s more than just chemistry and sexual tension between us.

It turns out that fucking someone I like enough to even try to be friends with is very different than a one-night stand with a guy I despise.

And I have too little actual dating experience to have considered that until right now.

Did we just graduate from one-night stand to easy fling or something. .. else? Something more?

The thought makes my chest tighten. A familiar sensation of panic starts to vibrate just behind my breastbone. This is your fear of commitment , the well-therapized part of my brain says.

This is your right mind, telling you not to trust Leon Park!

!! screams the rest. It starts cataloging his faults as he cooks for us, sautéing chicken and cabbage and toasting sesame seeds in another skillet.

Just because he’s charming—and sensitive, and open, and good at taking care of people—does not mean—

It’s easy to tell myself that I’m being afraid for no reason. I’ve logged enough hours with Tilly to have mastered that. It’s much harder to actually fight fear when it comes at me like this. The warning bells ringing through my body that something is wrong, wrong, wrong .

I soothe myself with a familiar mantra: I’m leaving so soon. There’s no chance for this to really grow into... whatever. I can be with Leon while I’m here. I do have a future to worry about, but it has nothing to do with him.

He slides our meal across the kitchen island to me on ceramics that look very familiar. “Did Willa make these?”

“I did.”

On second look, that’s actually pretty evident. Willa paints her pieces with wobbly, colorful stripes that have a human touch; Leon finishes his with a bold, clean, almost machinelike grid.

He grabs a half-full bottle of wine from the fridge and two cups that match the plates. “They’re porcelain. Nice to drink from.” He winks. “It’ll feel good in your mouth.”

I’m about to say something indecent back when the front door bangs open and two of Leon’s roommates walk into the kitchen together.

“Hungry?” Leon asks, settling into the stool next to mine.

“No, we went out,” one of them says, a guy with a closely shaved head and an earring dangling from one lobe.

“It was getting a little loud up there,” the other, taller with piercing eyes, adds, smirking at Leon and then me.

“Sorry.” Leon tries to hide his smile and look cowed. “Also. This is Cassidy.”

And here’s where my hard-earned shamelessness comes in handy. I hop off my seat and reach out to shake each of their hands. “I tried to tell him,” I say grinning. “But you know Leon. He’s stubborn.”