He kisses me again as if he likes me a lot.
Our make-out acts like dynamite to a dam. Once we start, we can’t stop. It takes us upward of twenty minutes to make it half a block. We don’t make it more than six feet at a time before one of us pulls the other into an embrace, and then it’s all lips and hands and tongues until one of us pulls away with a We should keep going.
Make out, walk, repeat. Make out, walk, repeat. Until finally, Dax pulls away.
“I’m another two blocks. As much as I’m enjoying every single second of this, I’d really like to get you back to my place at some point tonight.”
“Ah yes, the bearskin rug. Well, what do you say we make a run for it?”
Dax eyes me like he thinks I’m not going to do it. I take off in a sprint, as fast as my sandals will allow. It’s half a block before his long legs catch up, and he once again grabs me by the hand and doesn’t let go until we reach the front door of his three-story walk-up.
We make out in his front lobby. He presses me against the wall, leaning his hard body into mine. He nibbles and licks and kisses my neck from my jawbone to my shoulder while his hands grip my ass and pull my hips to his. He’s so hard. I’m so turned on, and, apparently, we’re also both loud, which is why his elderly neighbor is standing in her doorway, giving the pair of us a dirty but completely understandable look.
“Apologies.” Dax tips the brim of a hat he’s not actually wearing. He grabs my hand, and we take the steps two at a time until we reach the third floor. I’m pulling his shirt from his jeans as he fits his key into the lock. I’ve got it completely out by the time he opens the door and flips on the lights.
My only objective is to get Dax naked, but I pause in shock at the sight of his apartment.
I’ve been to my Dax’s apartment easily a hundred times. It’s the same one in this timeline. A spacious one-bedroom with parquet floors and a kitchen that hasn’t been updated since the late seventies. But this place looks so different.
I always joked that Dax’s place was decorated to look like it walked off the pages of a Crate & Barrel catalog. In my timeline, he has a tan leather sofa that he agonized about for a full six months before buying. He’s so in love with his carpet that he refuses to let me drink red wine in his living room.
This room is meticulously neat, like the one in my world. But the couch is faded and worn, as if he bought it secondhand. The furniture, although tasteful, shows the scars of many years of scratches and dents and cups left without coasters. Dax’s big screen is nowhere to be found. His carefully curated art is missing from the walls. The room looks half-empty.
“It’s not much, but it’s home.”
I flip my attention back to Dax, who is watching me take everything in.
“It’s great,” I lie, knowing my poker face is shit and that Dax can see through my words. I want to explain that there’s nothing wrong with his place at all. It’s just different from what I was expecting. But I can already tell from the way he’s avoiding my eyes that I’ve screwed up and offended him.
“Hey.” I cross the room and wrap my arms around his waist. “I’m like a cat. It takes me a minute to get oriented in a new environment. Your place is great. Most importantly, you have a couch that looks big enough to make out on.”
I reach for Dax’s belt, pull the end through his pant loops, then use the fact that it’s still on his waist to pull him over to the couch. With a light push, he falls back and sinks onto the cushions. I straddle him, knees on either side, and abandon his belt for the buttons of his dress shirt, only getting distracted when he reaches up and brings my face to his.
We have done a lot of kissing tonight. From sweet pecks to horny, hungry ones, we’ve pretty much covered the bases. However, this kiss is slow and deep and lacks the urgency of our earlier ones. It’s as if it melts away the room around us, leaving only Dax and me alone in our own little universe.
At some point, my hands remember how to function and manage to finally resume their quest to remove his shirt. With Dax now top-naked, I’m able to run my hands over his smooth skin, his chest, his arms, parts of Dax I’ve never explored before.
He pulls my dress up over my head, undoes my bra with an impressive single hand, slides the straps off my shoulders, then shoots it like a slingshot across his living room. I laugh as it lands on top of his lampshade, then gasp as he takes a nipple into his mouth, his hands finding the ticklish spot below my ribs.
It all feels so good. The kissing. The ease we have together. I wonder for the millionth time why we haven’t been doing this all along. Not this Dax and me, but my Dax. Was I so obsessed with Stuart that I failed to see what was in front of me? I don’t remember ever feeling this way about Stuart. Like I’m on the edge of a cliff and about to fall and 100 percent okay with it.