Good For You

I lower my voice and step closer, narrowing the gap between us. “I’ve changed since I’ve known you. Not because you made me into someone else—but because you showed me a path I’d never paid attention to, and I chose to fol ow it. And yes, I’ve asked myself over and over can it be that easy to just choose to be a better man? Can it be that f**king easy? ”

She flinches and I take her hands from where they have her opposite elbows in a death grip, pry them loose gently until our fingers intertwine. “I’l be more careful with that word. I’m not trivializing this.” She raises her eyes, wide and dark and wet. “I know exactly what I’m saying. I’l wait, if I have to wait. I’l do whatever it takes. But I want you, and wil continue to want you, and I should warn you—I don’t see it ending. I’m al in, Dori. And I won’t be holding back this time.”

I’ve laid my heart in front of her like an offering. I’ve made my case and rested it. There’s nothing more to say. We stare at each other, both so silent that I hear her dog’s nails tap arthritical y across the floor to a large oval cushion where it flops down and regards us both with a sigh. Our hands are locked between us, and hope is there between us, too, because she isn’t pul ing away.

Pushing up onto her toes, she presses her lips to my chin and along my jaw. I release her hands to grab her up, wrapping my arms around her while her arms twist around my neck and her fingers shove into my hair. “Reid,” she gasps, her dark eyes on mine. “I do… want you.” My hands slide over her hips and when I lift her, she wraps her legs around my waist and fuses her lips to mine. I moan into her mouth and she responds in kind.

I stride to the stairs and go up, releasing the bottled up need in one long, breathless kiss. I can’t get enough of her.

“Where?” I say when we get to the top. She points down the hal , and I obey, no sounds but the greedy hum from her throat and mine, our mouths working in perfect concert, and the thump of my decisive steps on the ancient floor.

I lurch into her room—watery blue wal s and fish swimming in a school across the ceiling and nothing out of place. Kicking the door shut behind me, I move to her bed and press her down on it. There’s no contemplation or circumspection because she’s pul ing at my shirt and kissing me harder than she ever has and we’re frantic, like it’s been years since we touched each other. Yanking buttons through buttonholes and stretching fabrics and unzipping zippers is al done in the few seconds in between kisses when we come up for air, because al I want to do in this moment is worship her with my eyes, hands and mouth.

Trailing her nails down my back, she arches into me, stil ing the breath in my lungs. She protests when I pul back, but grows mesmerized as my fingers slip over and around and under and through, and I fol ow the path with my lips and tongue. I kiss her stomach, flick the bel y ring with the nail of my index finger, and she gasps.

“Please,” she whispers, and because of what has just occurred to me I’m thinking godfuckingdammit but have enough sense not to say this aloud.

“Dori… as much as I seemed like a man on a mission when I showed up here, I didn’t plan for… I didn’t think…” I rest my forehead against her ribcage. “I don’t have a condom,” I confess.

“There are some in my bag,” she says, so quietly that I barely hear her. I glance up in surprise and her ears go pink. She’s lying alongside me wearing nothing but her cotton panties and she’s mortified that she has condoms in her purse?

“Oh?” I say, reaching to unloop the strap of her huge, familiar bag from the headboard where it’s hooked over the smooth post cap.

“Aimee and Kayla—the quack shack on campus was handing them out last week. They grabbed like a year’s supply and insisted I take some.”

I thrust my hand into her bag and root around amongst al manner of odds and ends, hearing the crinkle of square cel ophane packets when my fingers brush them. I grin, arching a brow. “There’ve got to be at least a dozen in here.” I drop a handful onto her bedside table, watching as the blush spreads to her face and descends down her neck. Her heart hammering beneath my palm, I kiss her.

“They’l be put to good use, I promise.” My voice is heavy and predatory, and she shivers under my hand.

I remove the last bits of clothing from us both, stroking and kissing her slowly and deeply until I can’t hold back any longer. Rol ing onto my back, I lift her on top and tel her that she’s in charge—this time.

*** *** ***

Dori

“I should probably ask when your parents are returning,” he murmurs into my ear. I can’t believe he can stil make me bury my face in his neck after what we’ve done, but apparently my sense of propriety survived intact. “Because I will win them over eventual y, and I assume I’d be starting at less than zero if the moment they realize I’m back is the same moment they walk in on me satisfying the hel out of their daughter. For the third or fourth time.” He’s lying on his side, propped on one elbow and tracing patterns across my skin. The sunlight flooding my room when we began has filtered to the ruddy, muted light of sunset.

My fingernails rasp across the light stubble on his chin and his eyes close. “Have I satisfied you?” I whisper, and he growls and kisses me.

“No. I think I’l need consistent access to you for some interminable amount of time to even begin to get ful of you.” His touch feathers across my bel y and climbs upward.