He does. “You said I didn’t have to sleep on the floor last night, but I stayed there because I wanted the alternative too much. Tonight, I told myself if you said it again, I’d ignore it like I did last night.”
“Why?”
“Because I want it too much,” he repeats. “And after Vegas, we modified the truce—”
“Yeah, well, I think the truce is broken.” We crossed a line earlier. Or maybe we stepped into a bubble where we aren’t who we were ten years ago. We aren’t even who we were two weeks ago. “I needed that earlier. The yelling with you, I mean. But I . . .”
“Tell me.”
“I’m nervous to say it,” I admit. Even that feels like too much.
“Tell me,” he repeats, softly this time. “You’re not doing it alone.”
“It made me need this, too.”
“What’s this?”
He’s pushing me, but the timbre of his voice is tight. It’s as if he already knows the answer, and it’s the same as his. “You, here in this bed. Us, letting whatever’s happening between us just . . . happen. We’re both in a place where we need that, don’t you think?”
His voice drops low, singing down my spine. “You know why I’d need it. Besides the physical attraction, why do you?”
“Too many reasons to count,” I say, and he breathes out a laugh. I close my eyes, pushing aside every responsibility and decision and conversation that’s waiting for me back home. We have nine days left. The thought of really sinking into it, of not overthinking or worrying, is the pressure release I desperately need. “We don’t have to name it. It can be whatever we need it to be while we’re here.”
“And my granddad?”
“If we don’t have concrete expectations, will he?”
“Maybe.” He pauses. “But possibly less so if we’re chill around him.”
“I wasn’t planning on dry humping you in the van, so . . .”
“Were you planning on dry humping me in other places? Just curious.” His teeth flash, almost predatory. “Besides hotel hallways in Vegas, I mean.”
Remembering that—and the way he kissed me—has me sliding toward him. His features start sketching themselves out as my eyes adjust to both the darkness and his ever-increasing closeness. Finally I’m near enough to see his face in stark relief. His expression is stripped down to the naked need I feel. Whatever’s in me is reflected in him, and it removes the fear.
I hold my breath when our legs brush. The heat of his skin is unreal, and so is the feel of his hand snaking over my hip. I press my hands against his chest, gratified to feel his heart beating as hard as mine.
“What are you looking for tonight?” he murmurs.
“Just you. That’s as far as I’ve gotten.”
His thumb grazes over the high plane of my cheek, and he presses the softest kiss to my forehead. I sigh out a breath. His fingers dig into my hip as he pulls me close, one heavy thigh covering mine.
“No sex,” he whispers, his lips pouting over the words, barely grazing my mouth. “Not saying you want that, I just don’t want to get caught in a compromising position if my granddad wakes up. But kissing . . .”
“Beyond encouraged,” I breathe out, closing my eyes as his lips brush over mine.
His hand slides down my hip, and he moves his leg so his fingers can drift down my thigh, then cup the back of it. “Can I touch you?” he asks, burning a whiskered path across my cheek, to my neck, where he gently bites.
“Mmm,” I sigh out.
“Hmm?”
“Yes.”
“You can touch me, too,” he says against my ear. “Do you want that?”
I fist my hand in his shirt. It’s so quiet I hear a seam groan. I want to rip the whole thing off. “Yes, I want that.”
“Fuck, I do, too,” he says just before his mouth covers mine. I still taste that fuck on his tongue when it slips against mine, and I gasp into his mouth when he wraps an arm around my waist and pulls my body tight to him, like he’s planning to keep me for a while.
His hand moves up my side, fingers winding into my hair as we fall into an endless kiss. I press my palm against his lower back, feeling the surge of his spine as he rolls halfway on top of me.
The feel of his body is incredible. I’ve been watching it for days, striding down dirt paths and scrabbling gracefully up inclines, over massive boulders. I’ve secretly traced the contour of his thigh while he’s driving, wondered how much the muscle arcing up toward his hip would give under my fingers if I gripped him there. I’ve watched the line of his biceps extend and bunch when he stretched his arms over his head with a rough groan after a long drive. I’ve studied the whole of him behind my camera lens. His body is all angles and planes and hard curves I’ve wanted to explore with my hands.
I do that now as he groans almost silently into my mouth, his tongue silky against mine, that slow, dirty give-and-take. I cup his cheek with one hand, letting the other explore the heat of his skin beneath his shirt, the softness of it stretching over lean muscle that shivers under my touch.
He takes my bottom lip between his teeth, then licks it to soothe the sting. I like the way he makes it hurt; it takes me out of my mind. It’s the way we’ve always played with each other—a little rough, because we can take it. That he thinks I’m unbreakable enough to grip my hip that way, to grab my ass and yank me against his body makes me moan into his mouth.
“Your sounds,” he says on a laughing groan. “You drive me so fucking wild, Noelle.”
That wildness from him saying my name ricochets into my body, and I sink my fingernails into his skin until he hisses at the bite of it. I turn it sweet, skim my palms down his back, just so I can make it wicked again when I grip his ass in my hands, pulling him against me so tightly that for a second the breath leaves my body. He’s hard everywhere, but especially between my legs, and I feel the pulse of him there.
Theo props himself up above me after a few minutes of drugging kisses, leaning all of his weight onto one elbow so his other hand can travel down, palming the curve where my neck and shoulder meet. There’s no pressure there, but now I feel him everywhere—pressed against me from chest to ankles, measuring the fierce throb of my pulse with his thumb as he kisses me hard, deep, rough. The way I like it. The way I need it.
“Please,” I gasp out.
He nips at my bottom lip. “What?”
“I don’t know,” I moan with a laugh. It’s too much, not enough.
He rocks against me, exactly where it’s too much. Exactly where it’s not enough.
“You asked if you could touch me,” I challenge. “So do it.”
“I am,” he laughs, scraping his teeth along my jaw.
“Not there.”
He makes a noise in his throat. “Where?”
I could say it out loud, but I’d rather show him instead, so I reach up and grab his wrist.
He rolls off me, readjusting himself on his propped elbow. He doesn’t stop kissing me; in fact, it intensifies as his fingers skim over my collarbone, down my breast. He shapes it with his hand, runs his thumb over my nipple, tipping his hips against the side of my body with a groan. It’s a short detour to my stomach, where he stops, his pinky finger flirting with the waistband of my shorts.