“I have two,” she said, sounding breathless as he continued ministering to her breast with his mouth. “Not three. And how do you know that, anyway?”
He pushed the bra up, pressing warm, openmouthed kisses to every inch of skin he revealed. “I’m starting to know you, Lauren,” he said. “You’re very practical. But not always. Like, when I do this . . .”
He flicked her nipple with his tongue, and she arched into him, her knee digging in his crotch. He was so hard it was almost painful, but a good kind of pain. He’d just cupped her ass to bring her closer, wanting to kiss and lick and suck her perfect breasts, when there was a knock at the door.
“Have you seen—” Kiki said, swinging the door open before hurriedly shutting it again with a gleeful “Whoops.”
Lauren sprang back from him like she’d been administered an electric shock, drawing her shirt protectively around her body. “Oh my god,” she said. “Oh my god.”
He ran his hand through his hair, still feeling hot and flushed. “Sorry. I would’ve locked the door, only I didn’t know . . .” I didn’t know we were going to pick up where we left off last night. “I think she might’ve been looking for you. Did you tell them you were coming to talk to me?”
Lauren’s eyes were wide and panicked. “I told them I was going to the bathroom.”
Asa knew it wouldn’t help the situation to point out that she’d been gone for almost twenty minutes, that the end ing credits had probably started to roll and his housemates would’ve rightly started to wonder if she was okay. It definitely wouldn’t help the situation to tell her how cute it was, that she’d thought to slip away on such a flimsy pretense to come see him in his room. How hot it was, that she’d apparently come with the express intention of seducing him. Not that he needed much seduction.
“I’m the rudest person on the planet,” Lauren said. “Kiki invited me over to watch a movie, and I just bailed on it.”
“Hey.” He tried to reach for her hand, but she’d moved too far away. “Kiki doesn’t care.”
Lauren had already adjusted her bra and was starting to button up her shirt.
“And,” he added, “for what it’s worth, your back was to the door. I don’t think she saw anything.”
“She saw us together,” Lauren said, “doing . . . that.”
Cold washed over him. He couldn’t tell if Lauren was just freaking out because she was embarrassed to be caught in the act—which, fine, having housemates had inoculated him some to that kind of embarrassment, but he could understand if that was where she was coming from. Or was she specifically freaking out that Kiki had caught her with him? He’d thought that the change in venue meant they were no longer operating under a what happens at Cold World rubric. But what did he know?
He shifted in his chair, wishing his body would catch up to the change in circumstances a little faster. “We should talk about what this is,” he said. “Because I don’t know about you, Lauren, but I—”
“That was my first instinct,” she said. “To come in here and talk to you about it. I should’ve listened to that voice, instead of the one that said this was an open loop that needed to be closed, that I would be able to move on once things were even, at least . . .”
He stood up, not caring when the chair banged against his desk and sent several pencils rolling to the floor. “What are you talking about? What do you mean by even?”
Her cheeks were pink as she struggled to get the last button in its hole. The entire shirt was misbuttoned, the hem hanging lower on one side, but if she didn’t notice he wasn’t about to point it out now.
“Wait,” he said, her earlier words clicking into place. “Is this back to the fact that you came and I didn’t? Because sex doesn’t have to work that way. Give-and-take doesn’t mean it has to be a transaction.”
She gave a little growl, but whether it was at him or at her shirt, he couldn’t tell. She’d clearly just realized her mistake and was starting to redo each button to make them straight again. “I know that. But I also don’t want you to see me as some kind of charity case.”
Charity case? The very phrase made him irrationally angry, and he didn’t even know at who. Anyone in the past who’d made Lauren feel that way, himself if he’d contributed to it in some way without knowing . . . Lauren, for not giving herself or him more credit than that.