That doesn’t change that we’re here. Together.
My pulse skips rapidly when I sit up, as if I’ve surprised myself.
Wiping under my eyes, I push the sheet and blanket off myself, standing with a light-headed sensation that is not entirely unpleasant. It feels almost like an out-of-body experience, except somehow I’m hyperaware of my skin, the brush of his T-shirt against my thighs. The cool air against the bends of my elbows and knees.
My hands are shaky, trembling at my sides, as I start past the edge of the couch. I’ve never understood that phrase, your heart in your throat, until right now. My heartbeat now resides just below my tonsils, keeping me from fully swallowing.
An anticipatory shiver dances over me when I imagine his big, warm hands on me, and I slip down the hallway, the chilled air skating over the already heated and aching place between my legs, heightening the sensation.
The door is mostly closed, open only a few inches. I’m not sure if that gap is for Bitsy or if, as my heart tells me even now, he’s keeping an eye—or an ear—out for me.
I don’t knock, just widen the gap enough for me to step inside. In the very faint light from behind me and the moonlight through the uncovered windows, I can just make out the shape of Eric’s bed in the center of the opposite wall. My eyes adjust quickly, and then I can see him, shirtless and propped against the pillows on the right side, his dark hair tousled against the lighter pillowcase.
Bitsy, on the pillow next to him like a little queen, sits up, her tags jingling, and she barks once.
Eric shifts, and he sits up. “Calista? Is everything okay?” he asks, his voice raspy.
He reaches for the light on the bedside table. “No, don’t,” I say quickly.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
“Did I wake you?”
“No, I was just…” His words trail off as I approach the opposite side of the bed. “Calista.”
I pick Bitsy up, pillow and all, and put her on the floor. She gives a woof of discontent but doesn’t otherwise move.
Eric is watching me, and I can feel his dark-eyed gaze on me like heat on my skin.
Peeling back the covers, I slide between the sheets.
“Calista, you don’t have to—”
“Shut up,” I say softly and scoot toward him.
The warmth radiating off him reaches me first, but the initial skin contact—my leg against his—steals the breath from my lungs. He’s so hot. Literally—and figuratively—in this case.
Ducking under his arm, I curl up against his bare chest, shivering at the contrast between his skin and the cooler air.
He automatically pulls his arm tighter around me, and my nipples tighten almost painfully in response to the press of his body against mine.
“What are you doing, Calista?” he asks with wariness.
“What does it look like?” I slide my hand across his chest, and he jumps.
“Damn, your hands never get any warmer, do they?” he murmurs, but he catches my fingers and presses them against his skin.
“All my blood is busy elsewhere,” I say, leaning over to kiss just above his flat, brown nipple, which has perked to attention. He’s warm, and he smells good, like Eric, whatever combination of deodorant, soap and skin that is. It’s as familiar to me as the scent of my own shampoo, only more comforting and a lot more exciting.
I nuzzle down the center of his chest, tasting his skin, like I want to brand that flavor on my tongue forever.
He sucks in a harsh breath. “Are you sure? I don’t want you to regret anything.” His voice is rough with want, but pain and uncertainty are mixed in there as well.
I hesitate for a second—wrestling with my desire and my self-confidence to follow through, but it’s Eric—before clasping my fingers around his and leading them between my legs.
“Warm enough for you here?” I ask.
“Jesus, Callie,” he says with a sharp exhale. He rolls to his side, facing me, and strokes me between my fingers until I get out of the way.
His hand slips beneath my panties, and I gasp.
“Any more questions?” Though it comes out more like a breathless moan because his hand feels so much better than my own, his fingers bigger, warmer than mine. He’s toying, tracing a path from my clit to my entrance, but without penetrating.
And it’s killing me. I push my hips up, begging without words for him to push in, but his hand moves back, avoiding.
“How are you so wet already, Callie?” he murmurs, leaning over to kiss the side of my neck. I arch my head back to give him more access.
“I was thinking about it … about you…,” I say, closing my thighs around his hand. “For years.”
He groans and pulls free to tug my panties down my hips and over my ankles.
With shaking hands, I grab the back of his neck, pulling him closer, and he settles his weight partially on me. His erection presses hard against my hip, which makes me squirm to try to twist into him, to center him over me. I ache with a throbbing emptiness that feels like it might never end. I need Eric.
But he resists. “We don’t have to hurry, Callie.” His hand cups me, his middle finger just barely penetrating. I am going to lose my mind.
I slide my hand from his neck, over his chest, and before he can stop me, down the front of his boxer-briefs.
His erection is even more impressive in my hand, hot and tight beneath the fabric. It makes my mouth water. I run my fingers over the length of him, squeezing just a little.
His eyes close and his breath escapes in a rush, his hips moving convulsively, pressing into my palm. I love the muscle that jumps at the back of his jaw.
In response, his finger pushes inside me, and I arch up into his hand with a cry. The relief, temporary as it is, is a rush.
My hips work up and down, seemingly without my conscious choice. “Please.” It’s not enough, not even close.
When his eyelids flutter open, his dark-eyed gaze is glassy, and that sends a thrill through me. I flatten my hand over him so that the top of his boxer-briefs slide down and I can briefly feel the press of his heated flesh. It sends a delighted shiver of anticipation through me; I want that heat and hardness in me.
He makes a low noise in the back of his throat. “Shirt off.”
I struggle upright enough to free the fabric from beneath me. As I’m pulling it over my head, he shifts position. A second finger presses into me, tight, wonderful, still not enough, as his mouth closes hot over my breast.
I can’t move for a second, sensations rioting over my whole body, my brain short-circuiting temporarily.
He pauses, releases my nipple with a soft pop, and the cool air where his mouth was makes me shiver. “Calista? Callie?”
“I’m okay,” I manage, muffled by the fabric of my shirt still.
Eric’s leg slides between mine, and he pulls his hand free, replacing it with the heat and pressure of his thigh. I whimper and press against him. It would take a stronger person than I am not to wiggle for that small relief of friction.
Then he helps me finish pulling my shirt over my head, releasing it where it was caught behind me.
I blink up at him, the flushed spots of color high on his cheeks, his lips puffy from kissing me. The dark stubble across his jaw. The faint spray of freckles across his nose that I can’t quite see but know are there just from studying him over the years.
I love him.
My heart swells, and my eyes grow damp in spite of the clamoring of my body. “Hi.”
His smile flashes in the dim light. “Hi. You okay?” A flicker of something that looks like wonder crosses his expression, like he can’t believe we’re here, that this is happening.
I nod and push myself up on my elbows to brush my lips over his. It’s not the deep intense kisses of a few minutes ago, but gentler, slower.
Touching the side of his face lightly, I run my thumb over the familiar shape of his cheek, trying to tell him without words how I feel. Love, not just lust. Our history com
pacted into a single gesture, every moment, every touch and hope in that movement.
He catches his breath and kisses me back, just as slowly, deliberately, his mouth and tongue soft over mine.
Somehow the slowness accelerates the need in me to a fever pitch even faster. Bracing myself on one elbow, I reach up and trace the lines of his chest and stomach over me, dipping beneath the waist of his boxer briefs to wrap my fingers around him.
I stroke my fingers up and down his length, and his mouth goes slack over mine for just a second. And when he resumes, there’s nothing gentle or soft about it.
His mouth ravages mine as he thrusts into my hand, and I feel the dampness of his excitement at the tip of him. When I touch there, circling him with my thumb and forefinger, he tears his mouth from mine, and his arm, braced against the bed by my head, trembles. “Callie.”
“Take these off.”
The words are barely out of my mouth before he pulls away from me, and when he returns, we are skin to skin and the sensation makes me dizzy with desire.
He moves to kneel between my legs, and I widen my position to accommodate him, my thighs trembling a little with excitement and too many workouts this week. Eric braces himself, hands planted on either side of my head, and then presses against me.
He groans. “You are so wet,” he says, rubbing against me, and I press back in counterpoint.
The tip of him pushes into me, and we both go still. Temptation flashes across his face, the same temptation I feel. I had every test known to mankind before, during, and after rehab, and I’m on birth control—have been since I was fifteen, my mother was taking no chances with contraception or my complexion—but in the moment, even the possibility of a baby with his black curls and dark eyes, a connection to him forever, doesn’t utterly terrify me as much as it probably should.
But he shakes his head and reaches across me to the nightstand and fumbles in the drawer. “Condoms.”
He straightens up with one caught between his fingers, and I reach down to touch his erection, caressing him until he shudders and pulls away to roll on the latex.
When he returns to me, he grabs my wrists and pins them gently over my head with one hand.
His one free hand does its best to drive me crazy, pinching one nipple and then the other while I gasp, following with his lips and tongue to soothe and suckle.
Until I’m straining against the grip of his hand, trying to reach his mouth with mine, trying to raise up to force him to take me deeper into his mouth.
He lifts his head at one point. “Am I hurting your arm?” he asks, his forehead creased with a worried frown.
I shake my head. “No, no. Keep going.”
He returns his mouth to my breasts, but then I feel the sweet pressure of him at my entrance as he pushes that first inch inside. It’s tight, slow going, and I feel the stretch, but it feels … God, it feels so good.
My head rocks back against the mattress, my chin tilting toward the ceiling. Yes. “Eric. Please.”
He pulls back and presses forward again, that first inch moving smoothly this time and then deeper. In spite of myself, a moan escapes.
I buck against him, meeting his thrusts until he’s all the way in. Filling me, making me feel tied to him in a way that my imagination failed to adequately convey.
Then I lock my legs around his hips, holding him in place.
He stares down at me, the heat in his expression making me wetter around him.
But I’m not giving in, not letting go.
He retreats as far as my locked legs will allow and slams forward into me in a short, digging thrust that sends a shockwave of sensation through me, stealing my breath and snapping my eyes shut. My fingernails curl into the side of the hand that holds me captive.
“Callie?” he asks, his voice low and rough.
“Don’t stop!”
He resumes, our position making him work that much harder, and every grunt of effort from him makes something inside me curl tighter and tighter. It’s a building feeling, one I recognize from nights alone in my bed, but my fingers are no match for Eric above me, the dampness of his sweaty skin, his bare chest rubbing mine, his cock buried deep inside me.
But the enormity of the impending tidal wave that just won’t crash yet—why won’t it crash?—is a little scary, even as much as I desperately want it.
I open my eyes. He seems focused inwardly, his own eyes heavy-lidded and his mouth a tight line of concentration. That muscle that I love at the back of his jaw is taut and standing up beneath his skin.
“Eric?” My voice cracks with the pleading question, and I don’t even know exactly what I’m asking him to do. I just need more.
His gaze snaps to mine, reading something in my face.
“It’s okay,” he says, emotion softening the planes of his face. He releases my wrists. “I’ll get you there.”
He pauses for just a second, bracing himself on the mattress, and then his big hand slides between us, coasts over my abdomen and down to my clit, pressing it back against me gently.
Pleasure spirals through me, and I suck in a desperate breath. I love you. I love you, I love you. The words are bubbling up in me, and I can’t stop them.
“Don’t freak out,” I manage, my hands on his sides, where I can feel his muscles working. “But I need to…”
He looks up at me, his gaze fierce. He’s willing to give me anything. “What do you need?” And God, that makes me love him even more.
“I love you,” I say. And a second later, everything goes tight and still in me, while ripples clutch all around him, sending that tidal wave rushing over me. I gasp.
He groans, dropping his head down to my collarbone. “Not freaking out,” he says through clenched teeth.
Then when my legs go slack, he plunges inside me with renewed vigor, thrusting a few more times until I feel him pulsing inside me. “Definitely not freaking out,” he says.
22
ERIC
When I slide beneath the sheets after disposing of the condom, Calista gives a throaty laugh that sounds utterly sated and seductive. It hits a pleasure center in my brain, and I want to do anything and everything to hear it again.
“What’s so funny?” I ask, bending over to scoop Bitsy off the floor from where she’s come around to beg to be picked up. She gives Calista a baleful look and then settles at our feet with a deep, disgruntled sigh.
“We are the worst role models,” Callie says, sounding so relaxed, almost lazy with pleasure. I’ve never seen her like this before. And it sparks pride in me to have made her feel that good.
Propping myself on my side, I smirk at her. “Speak for yourself.”
“Not that.” She lightly taps my chest in remonstration. “I just mean, ‘Demon Baby.’” Her expressive eyes go wide, and she watches me expectantly. “Don’t you remember?”
It takes me a second. And then I groan.
During the second season, the network had some kind of weird initiative to show the consequences of drinking for teens. Every series with main characters under the age of 21 had to include a storyline illustrating the dangers.
Most shows went with dream sequences or found a way to tie it in to the current storyline that made a little bit of sense. But Starlight, under the guidance of our brand-new and overeager showrunner, the same dude who later brought in zombies, decided to go for broke.
Lilah, one of Skye’s few female friends on the show, gets sloppy drunk and, as a result, has unprotected sex with one of the angels from the cadre sent to help Brody with his mission of protecting Skye. She ends up pregnant with a demon child. Talk about consequences.
Calista’s eyes dance with mischief and laughter. “‘But Skye!’”
“‘It was only for a few minutes!’” we finish together, and Calista’s shoulders tremble with laughter against me.
“Oh, my God, Harper hated that scene,” I say, shaking my head against the pillow. The actress portraying Lilah was thirty at the time, p
laying seventeen. And apparently, as she put it, a stupid seventeen.
“Who could blame her? It was ridiculous. And insulting.” Calista sniffs.
“Well, considering we were brother and sister, I’m pretty sure they would have dreamed up worse consequences for this.” I gesture at our naked bodies. “Probably demon twins,” I say solemnly.
That sets her off in another fit of giggles, including a fucking adorable snort, and she shifts to her side, curling up against me, her back pressing against my chest.
Neither of us mentions what she said. And other than that Harper reference, we don’t discuss that we very nearly had unprotected sex, something I’ve never done in my whole life—not with Katie, not even during my drunkest, highest nights. Something that even now sets off a surge of desire, a longing to bury myself in Calista with nothing between us.
She holds nothing back from me. She never has. And I want that closeness, even if I can’t make myself say it, can’t make myself say the words that she so freely and generously gave me. I’ve never said those words to anyone.
Calista’s breathing slows, her body softening into mine. I wrap my arm carefully around her waist, keeping her pressed against me. I want to keep her.
* * *
When I wake, the sun is shining, and cool fingers are questing below my waist, tracing lightly over my painfully hard cock.
“Callie…” I squeeze my eyes shut.
The sheet rustles away, letting the almost frigid air-conditioning access my skin, but before I can protest, her mouth brushes over the tip of me.
My hips arch helplessly, and she lets me push past her lips into her hot, wet mouth, working her tongue against the underside. Then her hand wraps around my base, squeezing and sliding.
I moan.
And she releases me with one last long lick. “Too soon?” she inquires, and my eyes snap open.
Forget what Starlight casting said—Calista is the angel, kneeling next to me, the early morning light spilling through my window, her hair golden and lit by the sun, her expression heated and filled with shining affection that I probably don’t deserve.
“No, not too soon,” I say gruffly, leaning up to guide her head back down.