“Pants off,” I tell him, lifting up while he shoves them down his thighs.
“You, too,” he says, and I stand.
I’m so wet the air feels cold as soon as he pulls down my shorts and underwear.
“Fuck, Logan, look at you.”
Everything in me bottoms out when his fingers slide up the inside of my thigh and he sucks in a breath—I’m wet to my thighs—and looks at me like I’m a meal and he’s deciding what to bite first.
Luke makes a guttural sound, and it vibrates down into my bones when his eyes meet mine. Brown sugar. Burnt sugar. Caramel.
“I can’t wait until you let me kiss you here.” His fingers slide over me, dipping inside, mimicking the movement his tongue would make against me. His other hand smooths up the back of my legs and he kisses my stomach, my ribs, just below my belly button.
“Condom?” I ask, and after a tiny pause, Luke nods against my skin, reaching down to find one in the pocket of his discarded jeans. I watch while he tears open the foil package and unrolls the condom over his length.
“Come back here,” he says, holding the base of his cock in one hand and guiding me over his lap with the other.
He leans in and sucks on my breast, teasing my nipple with his teeth and moaning around it. I sink down slowly and he pulls off with an audible pop, sitting back against the cushions to watch where he’s disappearing inside me.
“London.”
“Shhhh.”
“God. You’re so hot.”
I move over him, slowly. “Shhhh.”
“What?” he says, running his hands down my ribs and stopping at my stomach. “You expect me to be quiet right now?”
“You talk too much,” I say, laughing into his mouth.
It’s like he has some sort of superpower and already knows exactly how I like to be kissed. Open mouth, soft at first with just a hint of tongue. Biting kisses that move from teasing to frantic in the span of a few seconds. He pulls away for a breath just when I want him to, sometimes blinking up to catch my eyes or even just to look at my mouth. He kisses me like he still can’t believe he’s doing it.
I adjust the position of my knees and we both gasp as I bottom out, my ass coming to rest on his thighs. He’s so deep like this. “Oh my God,” I say, and press my forehead to his shoulder while I catch my breath.
His palms smooth down to my waist and he presses his thumbs into my hip bones. “I want you in my bed,” he says through a grunt, moving me, rocking me faster and then slow again. There’s a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead and down his chest and I can feel the tips of each individual finger where he grips me. “I want to see you better, spread you out under me. I like the way you look. I like the way you smell. And fuck, Logan, I love the way you feel.”
“Such a poet.”
“You want poetry? I could write a fucking sonnet about the way your tits are bouncing right now. I want to burn the way they look into my brain.”
He leans in to bite me, and I can’t help laughing again. “You are such a boy.”
“Because I like the way you look naked?”
“Among other things,” I tell him, kissing his lips. “Shh. You’re distracting me.”
“I’m trying to have a moment here.”
“With my breasts?”
“Your breasts.” He sits up, nips at my neck before sucking gently. “Your neck, your mouth, your whole body.” His lips trail closer to mine, brushing across. “You.”
We kiss for long minutes and my movements narrow into small rocks forward and back, just feeling him inside me. I try to keep it together, try not to moan into his mouth or cry out when he reaches down and his thumb starts moving in practiced circles over my clit. I’m trying to keep this about sex, but the way he’s looking at me, the way he feels—it’s no longer that simple.
I dig my hands into all that thick hair, steering his mouth back to my breast and watching as he captures my nipple with his tongue. He bares his teeth, sliding them over the sensitive skin and I cry out, feeling him twitch inside me
“You like that.” It isn’t a question, it sounds like a revelation, like relief.
I nod, breath trapped in my throat and eyes locked on his expression of hope, like he wants to please me. Like it means everything to him right now.
“Can you feel it all the way down to your clit when I suck you here?”
I nod again, gasping at the tightening in my belly when he licks and sucks harder, growling around my skin.
His cheeks are pink and he’s flushed all the way down his neck. He’s watching me, watching us, the way we move together and the place where our bodies connect. I follow his gaze and look down between us, the way the muscles of his flat stomach clench, where the beads of sweat have collected in the hollow of his collarbones. I circle my hips and he groans, tightening his grip where he holds me.
“Jesus Christ. Do that again,” he says, and I do, moving over him and using the back of the couch for leverage. I could get drunk on his sounds, the moans and whimpers when he thinks he might be getting close, the shaky breaths when he holds off to wait for me.
Luke smacks a hand against the cushion before he throws his head back. “I’m so . . . I’m . . .” he says between short lungfuls of air. His fingers return to my clit with renewed enthusiasm, and he looks up at me. “Like this?”
I can only nod, eyes closed as I try and chase down this feeling, like a cord has been wrapped around my spine, connected to my nipples and where he fits inside me. It tightens with each rock of my hips, each thrust of his.
Tighter.
Tighter.
“Oh, God,” I say, the feeling spreading outward.
Tighter.
Luke pulls me down so our foreheads meet and it’s so intimate, I’m not sure whether I want to wrap my arms around him, or push away.
He changes the tempo of our movements and I want to scream but he’s suddenly so deep and I’m so close . . .
“Fuck, I can feel it. I feel it,” he says, eyes suddenly wide. “Yes. London.”
It’s like my muscles stop working as my orgasm twists through me. My skin is too hot but covered in goose bumps, my nipples hard and just shy of sore. I can’t think. Luke must sense the moment it happens because he takes over, grip tightening to the point of pain. He presses up into me, hard and fast and over and over until he’s coming with a long, helpless groan against my shoulder. When the haze finally recedes, I open my eyes to find him stretched out beneath me, arms splayed across the back of the couch, chest rising and falling and his torso slick with sweat.
I feel like I’ve just been on a run with Harlow, the kind where she makes us keep going and going until I can’t feel my legs and even my fingers are numb. My muscles feel wrung-out and my heart is pounding in my chest, echoing in my ears. I can’t catch my breath.
He reaches a weak arm up, brushing my hair out of my face. “Stay over.”
Nothing sounds better than falling into his cool sheets and not having to move again for another eight hours, but awareness pricks the back of my neck, tripping the heavy pounding of my heart: I like Luke.
I hear his phone buzz on the counter in the kitchen, and it’s like he’s opened a window, let in an icy breeze. I register that it’s been buzzing on and off the entire time we’ve been in here, but it just didn’t matter.
I climb off his lap and fall back to the couch, forcing myself to sit and search for my clothes.
“Hey,” he says between breaths. “Did you hear what I said? Stay with me.” He reaches for my arm and even the touch of his fingers against my skin is too much right now. “I’ll even forget those codes and let you kick my ass at Titanfall.”
“Let me.” I grin over at him, but I know it doesn’t look genuine. I am a mass of knots inside. I stand, slipping into my underwear. “Sorry. I really need to go.”
He pushes himself to sit up, and groans. “Oh my God, my abs. How is it that I was on the bottom and I’m this sore? I’m taking ninety-five p
ercent of the credit on this one.”
I stand to face him. “You wish.”
He pauses with one hand dug into his hair. “You know, one of these days I’m going to get my feelings hurt with this little Nail and Bail thing you have going here.”
“‘Nail and Bail’?” I repeat. I reach for my shorts, but Luke stops me, taking my hand.
“I’m serious.” He releases my hand but reaches forward to frame my hips, thumbs stroking the sensitive skin there. “Stay.”
My voice comes out a little shaky when I try to deflect. “I snore. It’s bad.”
A wry smile twists his lips. “Fine.” Then he gives me the real smile again, the one that makes his expression the warmest, sweetest one I think I’ve ever seen, and drops his hands. “I’ll let you go this time,” he says quietly.
He watches as I step into my shorts, stays quiet while I pull on my shirt. I feel his attention on my fingers as I button it from the bottom to the top.
When I’m done, he wipes a hand across his mouth, asking, “Do you want to get together this weekend?”
Fuck. Slowly, slowly he’s chipping away at my shell.
“Let’s just play it by ear, okay?”
Luke closes his eyes, exhaling a tiny, frustrated breath, before pushing to stand. He’s still naked, sweaty . . . perfect. I lean in when he wraps his arms around me, and inhale the mix of sex and sweat and soap on his skin.
“Sounds good, Dallas.” He bends, reaching up to cup my face and kisses me, slow and warm. I can feel his cock stir against me again, already.
But for once, he doesn’t press. He takes a step back, bending to pull on his boxers, and then walks me to the door. He doesn’t say anything else as I walk out, down the steps, along the sidewalk to my car, but I feel his eyes on me the entire way.
“Still fun,” he shouts from behind me. I turn to see him leaning against the doorframe, practically naked. The porch light overhead throws shadows across his body, accentuating the width of his shoulders, the planes of his stomach, the definition of his hips. His boxers hang so low I can see the suggestion of hair, just above his waistband. Lucky neighbors.
“What was?” I ask.
I can see his smile from here when he answers. “You.”
Chapter SIX
Luke
I’M ELBOWS-DEEP IN a legal brief I can barely understand when my phone buzzes on the table at my elbow.
Beeeeeeeeeers, the text from Dylan reads.
I look up at the clock. Shit, how did it get to be six already? Where?
New place, on Island and 10th.
I groan—I fucking hate going downtown during the week.
Anticipating this, Dylan adds, Most of the team is coming. Jess broke up with Cody. We’re helping him drown.
I blink a few times, staring in shock at my phone. My former water polo teammate, Cody, has been with his girlfriend, Jess, since high school. In the best of moods, Cody will drink until he’s crawling. I can’t imagine how tonight will go down.
Still, weeknight or not, I can’t say no. Cody, Dylan, Andrew, Daniel, and I have been tight since freshman year when the seniors on the team locked the five of us on the pool deck for an entire December weekend in nothing but our Speedos, with a vending machine full of food as our nourishment, though no money. You don’t get through something like that, and go on to win two national championships without sticking together.
Be there by eight, I reply, putting down my phone and packing up my desk.
* * *
THE GUYS HAVE taken over two tables as close to the dance floor as one can get and reasonably remain seated. Not five feet from where Daniel has done a complete one-eighty in his seat is a group of girls dancing suggestively, pretending they don’t notice the six-foot-eight water polo player turned fitness instructor staring at them.
“Sorry I’m late,” I say in greeting, pulling out a chair and sitting down. I’ve never been to this club—it’s new but the décor wants to fool you into thinking it’s been here since the seventies. Looking to Cody, I ask, “You good?”
He puts his empty beer glass down next to another one. “No. But don’t feel sorry for me. I’ve been a dick to her lately. I think she might be doing this to scare me straight.”
I feel my brows lift. “Well, okay then.” I can’t tell if he’s being truly honest with himself, or if he’s in complete denial. Even if he’s wrong, and Jess is actually done, I wouldn’t blame him for wanting to stay in a hopeful place a little longer. He’s been with her for nearly six years.
Six years . . . it’s such a huge portion of our lives, and still, it’s shorter than the decade I spent feeling like I belonged to Mia. We grew up together in nearly every way possible. From eleven to nineteen she was mine.
The first time I was with someone else it felt like a distraction. Two weeks after we’d broken up, and I didn’t want to think too much about how I felt. I hadn’t needed to dig deep to understand why I was constantly nauseous and wanted to sleep half the time: I was fucking heartbroken.
But then I got drunk, and kissed Ali Stirling. She took off her shirt, then mine. One foot in front of the other: I got hard. That night, I fucked her three times in her aunt’s condo in Pacific Beach. Turns out, sex was still fun.
Until the next morning when I visited Mia at her dorm and broke down. We weren’t even technically together anymore but there I was, confessing, because that’s what we did. All of the air left the room the second the words “I slept with Ali last night” came out of my mouth.
Mia had stuttered out a quiet “Wow,” and we both felt it end, like the crack of a gunshot. We were sitting on her bed and had gone completely still, like a photo of us ripped in half straight down the middle. We’d agreed to break up, but I knew neither of us had felt it yet. Until that moment we didn’t really even know what broken up looked like. No one had ever touched me besides Mia, and suddenly that wasn’t true anymore. I wasn’t the guy who had one love. I wasn’t the Luke half of the one-word phrase, Luke-and-Mia. I was the guy with an ex-girlfriend. I was the guy who had sex with other people now. I moved on from our first love with a hard shove.
I shiver, blinking back into the present, asking, “Remind me why we came all the way downtown for after-work drinks when none of us work downtown?”
“I do,” Cody says.
Silence rings out at the table before Andrew finally can’t take it anymore. “Cody, you work part-time at Starbucks.”
“Yeah,” Cody says. “Starbucks downtown.”
“Actually . . . I work downtown,” Dylan says quietly and we all turn to look at him, confused. Dylan has a way of carrying on three lives, two of which remain completely unknown to us. I’ve known him since we were freshmen, but if you asked me what he does all day, I would guess he reads, surfs, goes for long walks, and gets lost.
“Wait, what?” I say. “Since when do you have a job?”
He shrugs. “Since, like, Sept—”
“We came here tonight,” Andrew begins, interrupting us, “because you, Luke, banged the bartender where I wanted to go, and—”
“Wait, hold up,” Daniel says, finally turning back to the table. “Luke banged the bartender at Mighty Brew?”
I groan. “She wasn’t the bartender. She was a—”
Dylan cuts me off. “I think Andrew means that you slept with the bartender at Fred’s,” he says, more quietly. I can hear the question embedded there: Did you fuck London, Luke?
Andrew shakes his head, confused. “Luke banged the new bartender at Fred’s? I was talking about the redhead at Stone at Liberty Station.”
Dylan gets up with a huff and heads toward the bathroom. Cody groans, saying, “Pretty soon we won’t be able to go anywhere without someone crying in the bathroom over Luke.”
“Jesus Christ.” I rest my head in my hands and Andrew slides a half-finished beer into my line of sight.
“Here. Drink this.”
“Can I get you guys anything else?” a voice asks at th
e far end of the table.
“Two more of these,” Andrew says, and then points to me, saying loud enough for our server to hear, “Luke, you’re not allowed to bang this waitress. They serve Ruination here and I’ll be pissed if we can’t come back.”
“Okay,” I mumble, closing my eyes and keeping my head down. Is this a conversation that would have made me laugh a week ago? Right now it makes me feel faintly sleazy.
“She’s hot,” Daniel says a few seconds later, “in that single-serving kind of way.”
“Dan—” Dylan starts, having returned surprisingly quickly.
I hold up my hand for him to wait, leaning in so I can hear Daniel better, repeating, “That ‘single-serving’ kind of way?” What the fuck is he talking about?
“You guys,” Dylan says with more intent.
But Daniel continues, turning and planting his elbows on the table. “That thing you have, a little treat, that fills you up but you forget it pretty quickly. A Twinkie, a bag of chips. An energy drink. Cute girl, nice body . . . single serving.”
In spite of myself I laugh at this shit—Daniel can be such a dick—finally lifting my head and taking a sip of my beer. But straight across from me stands Dylan, hunched over the table, wearing a shut the fuck up expression. He looks at my face and then widens his eyes when he looks over my shoulder, meaningfully.
I turn, and see that the waitress is right behind me, her back to us as she writes something down on her pad. Her wheat-colored ponytail brushes her shoulder when she straightens, takes a deep breath, and sticks her pen behind her ear. When she turns to us, smile plastered on her face, my heart immediately bottoms out.
“Two Ruinations. Anything else?” she asks, her dimple poking into her cheek as she swallows.
The table falls silent, but my heart is now somewhere under my chair.
London.
London is our waitress.
Her eyes meet mine, and I can’t tell. I just can’t tell at all if she heard, and if so, how much. Did she hear the part about my apparent penchant for female bartenders? Did she hear what Daniel said? And, oh shit, did she hear me laugh?