Page 28 of Want Me

“Yeah. You already knew that, though. You just like to hear it.”

He shrugged, his mouth quirking up. “I’m a pretty well-established glutton.” After picking up his coat from the back of the desk chair, he slid it on. “Have we done anything you were uncomfortable with, anything you didn’t want to do?”

I bent over to help him shuffle together a pile of papers that had fallen on the floor. “Nope.”

“Well, then. I think you can figure the rest out for yourself.” I wasn’t sure if Eric meant what I thought he meant, but before I could even consider what I’d say next, he cleared his throat and continued, flashing me a vacant smile as he tipped his head toward the door. “I’ll go down first. Give it a few, then come on. I’ll hang near the entrance to the ballroom and distract if I need to.”

I nodded woodenly. “Sounds good.”

“Have fun cleaning up.” He could have meant the party or myself.

I scraped a nail across my neck where a bit of his jizz had dried. He turned and started for the door as I tackled the buttons on my shirt, an emptiness settling in my core at how adept we were at segregating ourselves from the past half hour and officially returning to our own lives. It was fucking lonely, and I couldn’t stand it another second.

“Hey.” I called out the brusque alert as I walked toward him, and when he turned back, that smile he’d given me was already gone, like he’d never meant it in the first place. I witnessed his surprise as it was born in the small flinch of muscle that sparked the rise of his brows and twitched along his jaw.

And then I smothered it with my mouth.

I kissed him to answer his unspoken question. I kissed him because he was always right about me. And I kissed him because I couldn’t take one more second of not knowing how the mouth that did such wicked things to me felt under my own. He’d had his fingers and cock in my ass, he’d fucked me sideways and turned me inside out. But the sensation of his lips pressed to mine trumped all that.

I’d never kissed another guy, never done anything besides get off. This was different—a sweet heat, a tang that was distinctly him and so fucking intense. Eric grunted and took a backward step to keep his balance as I barreled into him. Then his hands closed over the collar of my shirt and pulled me deeper into the thrust of his tongue against mine.

I let out a muffled groan because there was so much in that damn kiss—all the pent-up confusion about my feelings for him and, I thought, from him as well—a desperate edge in the way we clung to each other, in the pressure of my body against his. Eric let go of my collar to place his palms on either side of my neck, tensing there to keep me from moving. When I tilted my head aside for a breath, he panted against my chin, his forehead resting against my temple.

“Fuck. Just…fuck.”

And because I thought I knew what he was trying to say, I replied with another kiss, cupping his jaw and tilting his lips back to mine. For this moment right now, in this tiny pocket of space and time, Eric was mine.

Our tongues warred, pushed, teased, tangled. Devoured.

And then, after one last bruising press of his lips, he pushed me roughly away, opened the door, and walked out.

* * *

I didn’t get homeuntil a little after three in the morning, exhausted and running on the few beers I’d had while helping with cleanup. Mark and I parted ways at the staircase. He looked half-dead stumbling toward his room.

As I walked up the stairs, I wondered how things had gone for Marty, if he’d ended up with Ashley. I yanked my tie out of my pocket and tossed it and my coat into my bedroom when I passed on the way to the bathroom, then tackled my shirt. After taking a piss and brushing my teeth, I started down the hall again, my steps slowing until I stood in front of Eric’s door.

Maybe he’d locked it. If he’d locked it, I would turn around and go into my room and I would never do this again, never stand here and stare at a piece of painted wood and metal hinges like they were some portal to a different dimension, and never again entertain the crazy notion that had me reaching out a hand to try the knob.

It turned easily and quietly. But I think I’d known it would.

A thin shaft of light pierced through a couple of missing window-blind slats and fell across my legs as I shut the door behind me and locked it.

Eric lay spread out on his stomach, one arm curled around the pillow he’d buried three-quarters of his face in. He didn’t move as I walked to the end of the bed, dropped my pants, and climbed in. I had zero fucking clue what I was doing when I slid beneath the top sheet, but just when I’d convinced myself this was a stupid idea, I felt the soft trip of his fingertips over the top of my ass on their way to anchoring across my lower back, an echo of his touch earlier in the night when I’d been bent over the desk. A quiet demand. I told myself I’d stay for ten minutes, maybe twenty, then go back to my room.

Instead, I fell asleep next to him.

4

Show Me

Iwoke out of a dead slumber with a jolt, my eyes flying wide and automatically wincing against the assault of morning light. Confused, I fumbled to get my bearings, fingertips brushing against soft cotton and then bumping up against warm skin as my vision adjusted. My heart beat wildly in my chest, and I wasn’t entirely sure why until a knock sounded and I jumped all over again, fight-or-flight instinct lacing my sense of bewilderment.

A warm hand slid over the center of my chest and splayed, pressing me back into the mattress as Eric’s voice came low and soft. “Relax, it’s locked. I made sure earlier when I came back from taking a piss.”

His fingers trailed in a sluggish caress over my skin, a heat he took with him as he slid off the end of the bed and ambled toward the door, shoving one hand lazily in his boxers as he went. In my still half-asleep state, I did the only logical thing I could think of: I flail-rolled myself off the other side of the bed, landing heavily on the floor, out of sight of the door just as I heard the lock pop as Eric opened it. I twisted around and rested my head on my forearm so I could peer around the bottom of the bed like I was back in fucking high school hiding from some girlfriend’s parents. It’d happened a couple of times.

“Why bother with an alarm clock when there’s your ass,” Eric groused, and I had to silently agree with him; why the hell were people in this house such early risers? But when I glanced over my shoulder at the clock on the bedside table, I was surprised to find it read 10:00 a.m.