Page 51 of The Best Worst Thing

Persuasion

Nicole?” Logan was frozen at the top of his stoop. His workbag, dangling from his shoulder. His keys, jangling in his hand. His back foot, in midair. It was Tuesday evening in Los Angeles. “What are you doing here? I thought your flight didn’t get in until—”

She kissed him.

She grabbed him by the jaw and she kissed him so hard his head jerked back and his breath hitched and his hands dropped to his sides, then softly, steadily began to float up her burning, billowing ribs.

“I’m ready,” she said, blood roaring through her body, heart hammering through her throat.

Tugging on the neck of his shirt, she inched them backward until she was flush against his front door, then pressed her shaking hands onto his heaving chest and pushed her forehead against his.

Sunset whirled around them. “I don’t want to wait another second. I don’t—”

“Okay,” he said.

“Okay?” Nicole stared at him. Her pulse, now, a mallet. She had expected pushback. She had expected a discussion. She had expected, at the very least, that he’d pour her an extremely stiff drink. “Really? Now? Like, right now?”

“Yeah,” he said, taking a deep breath, then turning his keys in the door, locking it behind them, and carrying her upstairs and into his bedroom.

With one hand, he flicked on a floor lamp, then set her down a few feet from the edge of his unmade bed and kissed her again. The walls spun. “Right now.”

She swallowed, nodding, trying to steady herself, trying to see through the haze.

Speechless, she took in what she could of the place in blurry, dimly lit bits and pieces—a basket of unfolded laundry here, an ant farm perched atop a stack of magazines there—while he shoved a half-opened suitcase into his closet, smoothed out his rumpled jersey sheets, then kicked whatever else remained directly underneath his bed.

Smirking, he slid off his sneakers and looped his arms around her neck.

“Sorry about the mess,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting you up here until this weekend. I would’ve unpacked. I would’ve made the bed.”

“No, it’s … it’s perfect,” she said. “I like it up here. I like all your clutter. It suits you.”

He laughed onto her neck; his lips, wet.

His fingers, grazing the edges of her shirtdress—a gauzy, linen little thing already unbuttoned to her sternum—right where its soft, short hem skimmed her thighs.

He began working the fabric up her hips ever so slightly, ever so slowly, ever so lightly, until Nicole’s throat was hoarse and his fingertips were feathers on her tingling skin.

Her mouth moistened and her stomach curled.

“Nicole,” he said, her lips parting at the crack of his voice, at the sound of her name.

A few streaks of dripping pink sky slipped through the drawn slats of his blinds.

He pushed back her collar with his nose, then took slow, soft bites of the skin along her shoulder while his hands crawled higher and higher up her legs.

“Every single time you have said my name or laughed at my dumb jokes or looked my way, I have wanted you. I have wanted this.”

Nicole closed her eyes. He kissed her throat, her neck, her ear. He grazed her hip bones with his thumbs. He whispered all the ways he’d been dreaming of her into the waves of her hair.

“I have never wanted anyone,” he said, “the way I want you.”

“Me neither,” she said between short, nothing little breaths.

His tongue was tracing her wrist, and her fingers were skimming the curve of his jaw as he lifted her against him.

Their hips met. Nicole inhaled. Logan let out a long, low groan, then pulled her closer.

Blood rushed between her legs, leaving the rest of her lightheaded. “This whole summer. That first night.”

“You don’t know,” he said, her fingers in his mouth; her hips, arching into his hands, clinging to him. Already, she was a magnet, shaking but sure. “You don’t know what you do to me. When I finally kissed you, you could never understand …”

“I could,” she said. “I think I could.”

He shook his head, then took a few steps back toward his bed— a bit of a mess, but soft-looking and clean and so, so him.

With steady hands, he lifted his shirt over his stomach, past his shoulders, and above his head until it was off and he was standing there, staring at her.

His torso, tensing then releasing as a hot, wet ache flooded Nicole’s already-boiling bloodstream. She tried to breathe.

“Come here,” he said.

Nicole nodded, taking one, two, three silent tiptoes toward him.

He stepped out of his jeans, then got onto his knees, pressed his mouth onto her ankle and began to kiss her, began to—slowly, so slowly—drag his warm, soft lips up her shins, her knees, her quads.

He didn’t miss an inch, moving from leg to leg, stopping to study her, to touch her, to tell her what he’d been dying to do to her.

She steadied her fists on his shoulders, kneading out the knots beneath his skin while his mouth moved higher and higher up her thighs and his forehead pushed her dress farther and farther up her hips.

As he approached the delicate hem of her underwear, his kisses grew slower, sloppier, more sure.

And the second his tongue slid over the stitching—slid onto her—she threw her knuckles into her mouth and let out a high, quick gasp.

“This okay?” he said, his hands wrapped around her ass, her dress hiked up around her waist, his mouth beginning to draw warm, slick circles over the open lacework of her nothing little thong—ivory and flimsy and, by this point, dripping wet.

“Yeah,” she said. Her hands were twisted into his hair and her eyes were closed. “Just … yeah. Really good.”

He let out a focused, satisfied groan, then kissed her again and again and again—an endless stretch of damp, deliberate mouthfuls that left her heart racing and her body bracing.

And just when she’d finally dropped her shoulders and steadied her breathing, he slipped his tongue beneath the seam and began to tease her with long, soft swirls so close her eyes rolled to the back of her head.

She tugged his hair by the fistful and moaned.

Logan—forehead, damp; eyes, wide—glanced up and grinned. And when he met her gaze, when he took in her burning cheeks and her shaking head and her sheepish glare, he simply floated his free hand up to hers, gave her a little squeeze, and disappeared back between her legs.

Nicole could barely breathe. Already, she was beginning to lose it.

And when she let out her loudest gasp yet, Logan responded with a low, muffled growl, then grabbed the lace that lay on her heaving hips with his parted lips and slowly worked the fabric down her trembling thighs with nothing but his teeth and his tongue.

“You’re still shaking,” he said, his mouth on her calf, her thong dropped around her ankles.

“I’m just really nervous …”

He stood up and kissed her. “Do you want me to slow down? Do you want me to stop?”

“No, not at all. I just …” She took a deep breath. “There’s nobody else, right?”

He pulled her tighter into his arms. “There’s nobody else. You know that.”

She nodded.

“This summer, Nicole. I had this whole plan. I wanted to change everything. I had this whole plan, and then …” His mouth was on her neck, and he was swollen against her dress.

Nicole moved closer, dropping her hands to his waist and then beginning to trace him over the thin cotton of his boxers.

His eyes broadened and his bottom lip twitched.

“And then?” she said.

“And then you showed up at my door,” he said, easing her onto the edge of his bed, where he stood between her knees, harder than ever. “And everything changed.”

She nodded, kissing his stomach as he massaged the nape of her neck. Her tongue, finding his waistband, then exploring the skin beneath it, soft and slow.

“That night,” he said, his chest, rising and falling. She slid her underwear off the tops of her feet with her toes and stared at him, mouth wet. He cupped her face. “You turned my whole world upside down.”

She muttered, then inched the elastic down his hips until he was throbbing in the palms of her hands, until he was in her mouth, until he’d closed his eyes and slid his fingers between her lips and let out a low, perfect groan.

“Holy shit,” he said, over and over as she teased him, toyed with him, tasted him.

He glided his hands up her thighs, softly nudging her hips back against his bed while she shook her head, fought him forward, and worked him harder.

He exhaled again—a delightfully thick, head-rolling, neck-cracking release—then finally, after a few more minutes of letting her have her way, pulled himself back.

“Please,” she said. “Let me—”

“Lay down,” he said.

She lowered herself onto the mattress. He rolled back his shoulders, then climbed on top of her and kissed her.

His hands began to unbutton her dress. His mouth began to slide down her sternum.

Nicole, thoughts twisted and tongue tied, couldn’t do a thing but reach for him as he peeled back the frilled edges of her bralette and traced the curves of her breasts with his tongue.

He cradled her head with his left hand while his right skirted down her barely fastened dress, along the goose-bumped skin of her stomach, and then—slowly, carefully, curiously—between her tensing thighs.

“I’ve been dying to touch you,” he said. “Every night, I think about this. About you. About taking my time. How you’ll feel. How you’ll sound.”