CHAPTER THREE

It was a delicious kiss, the kind that started slow and tentative then grew deeper and deeper until I needed to pull back and snag a breath. For a heartbeat, I stared at him, my mouth hovering over his, the light reflecting off his glasses so I couldn’t read what was in his eyes, but he didn’t give me enough time to speak or think any further. He put his hand on the back of my head and erased the space between us, and for some reason it mattered to me that he didn’t pull me to him, he came to me. It wasn’t a lazy kiss, a hey, baby, give daddy some sugar, kind of lame, puckered-lip sloppiness.

This was like when you went tubing on the river and you drifted along, eyes closed, face turned up toward the sun, relaxed, warm and cold at the same time, aware of every sensation, fingers trailing behind in the murky water. Like each moment mattered, time caught in a mental camera roll¸ captured in sparkling perfection, time slow and easy, yet disappearing faster than you could have ever imagined. Jonathon kissed like that, his tongue teasing the inside of my mouth, his fingers massaging the back of my head, his legs and arms forming a warm circle around me. It was like he had nowhere to be and nothing to do except this, and he didn’t grind or grab or push my hand onto his junk.

It was like he could kiss me indefinitely, and I could hear my breathing grow ragged, could feel my body growing hot, heavy, eager. When he briefly pulled back to study me, smiling a little, I saw that I had fogged up his glasses. I gave a soft laugh.

“What?”

“Your glasses are steamed up.”

I expected him to smile or laugh with me, but his expression was serious, intense.

“It’s because you’re damn hot,” he said, his voice low, before he pulled my bottom lip into his mouth and sucked on it.

“Oh,” I murmured, leaning on him sideways, my hands around his neck. My response wasn’t meant to be an agreement, it was just an involuntary reaction to the sensation of him sucking on my flesh, the tugging echoing at all the warm spots of my body. I squirmed a little as he dipped down and nuzzled along my neck, amazed at how turned on I was from so little contact. My fingertips dug into his shoulders and he eased me back onto my bed.

“Can I take your sweater off?”

That he asked me instead of just tearing at my clothes stunned me and I just nodded. Something about him made me speechless, and it felt bizarre and confusing, yet arousing. I didn’t need to chatter away to keep his interest, and I didn’t feel like he wanted the porn star partner Nathan had always craved. This was slow and easy, and as Darwin stripped my sweater off carefully, making sure he didn’t accidentally pull my hair, I didn’t feel the need to pose or pout. Instead, I reached up with one finger and pushed his glasses up since they had slipped, and it felt natural to do that.

“Thanks,” he murmured.

He kissed me again, a deep, sexy kiss that had me rubbing my leg over the back of his calf, straining to meet my hips to his.

His hand rested on my hipbone, heavy and large, as his tongue slid across my lower lip and down my neck. I shivered. “Oh, God.” His fingers jerked a little on my hip.

My bra strap had fallen off my shoulder and he shifted his hand to pull it all the way down my arm. I finished the job, lifting my hand to remove the strap entirely. He repeated it on the other side and while his hands explored my breasts over my bra, his mouth continued to float over my flesh, sometimes on my neck, sometimes my cleavage, sometimes my lips, so that I never quite knew where he was going. It went on and on, minute after agonizing minute, and I moaned, my hips grinding more desperately against him. I hadn’t had sex since August and I hadn’t devoted this much time to making out since tenth grade.

He paused long enough to strip off his own T-shirt, revealing a chest that had more definition than I could have ever expected for a guy who spent all his time with beakers or whatever they had in chem labs. I ran my fingers over it, wanting to feel him. His skin was warm and wherever I touched, goose bumps appeared, and for some reason that pleased me. When I reached the button on his jeans, I popped it, and he drew back to look at me.

“I was wondering if we were going there,” he said. “Is that a yes?”

For a second, I felt a little confused. He really hadn’t seen sex as a definite conclusion? That seemed hard to believe. But it cemented my decision. I had already decided to without going through any actual decision-making process, and this forced me to stop and think and be one hundred percent certain. Did I want to have sex with Darwin? Oh, hell, yes. My body was on fire and he seemed like a guy who wanted to do everything to the best of his ability. For every tool who had told me I wouldn’t be disappointed, the majority of the time I had been, but the amount of effort Jonathon had given to making out made me certain in this case I wouldn’t be.

I nodded, biting my lip. “It’s a yes.”

He didn’t speak, he just popped the back of my bra and lifted it off of me. He studied the tag.

“What are you doing?”

“34C. Damn, I’m good.”

I laughed. “Or a pervert.”

“Not usually. But you bring out the pervert in me. I told you that you were dangerous.”

“I’m not taking responsibility for you staring at my breasts.”

His mouth descended onto my nipple.

“Or doing that.” Oh, God, that felt good. He took his time, sucking slowly, his hand cupping the weight of my breast. I could feel his erection thick against my leg, the heat from my body feeling trapped inside my jeans. I wanted to be naked. I wanted him to be naked. I jerked his zipper down and slid my hand inside his pants.

He paused to give his own moan when I made contact with his business, squeezing down the length of him.

But he still didn’t hurry. He didn’t shuck his pants to his knees and pump into me for five minutes, slapping the side of my ass at random intervals.

Not even close. He moved his mouth over me, trading breasts, licking down my middle, tongue dipping into my belly button. His hands trailed behind everywhere his tongue touched, and the feathery brushing over top of the wet path he’d created had me sucking in air on desperate gasps, my grip tightening on his cock.

“Darwin,” I murmured, still needing to test both names on him. I couldn’t figure out which one suited him better. Normally nicknames feel more personal, but that didn’t seem quite accurate with him.

“Yes?”

“I don’t know,” I told him, free hand digging into the back of his hair, urging his mouth back to my nipple. “I have no idea why I just said that.” I didn’t. I couldn’t think.

“Maybe you wanted to ask me something?” he suggested, glancing up at me with a wicked smile.

It should be illegal for a guy to be both that intelligent and that goddamn hot. He held all the cards. “You’re right. I wanted to ask you to take my pants off.”

His nostrils flared. “I’d be happy to.” Moving down my stomach, he undid my button and took down the zipper. He gave a tug but the jeans didn’t do much. “I’ll be really happy when these fucking skinny jeans go out of style.”

That struck me as super funny for some reason and I giggled.

“What?” he said, smiling at me. “It’s true. These are a pain in the ass.”

I had no response for that. And I wasn’t sure why I was laughing, exactly. Maybe because for the first time in forever I felt . . . sexy. Wanted. Even if it was for right now, and right now only.

Instead of answering him, I just gripped the waistband of my jeans and shoved them, along with my panties, straight down my thighs. “There. You can take it the rest of the way.”

The way his eyes darkened and he muttered, “Holy fuck,” as he stared down at my body was very satisfying. “You weren’t lying about the piercing.”

“No.” It wasn’t something I would have sought out. I’d done it at Nathan’s urging, who had seen too much sex on the Internet. He’d insisted it would be super hot for him and super sensitive for me during foreplay. Except there never was foreplay. About all he had ever done with it was flick the hoop with his finger and occasionally tug it when he wanted my attention. I had actually been meaning to take it out, but just never quite got around to it. I was used to it, though, and when I was getting turned on, it did give it an extra tingle.

For a second his hand hovered over me, before lightly cupping me. His eyes shifted up to meet mine. “You shave.”

Since it wasn’t a question I didn’t answer. I’d been shaving since freshman year in high school because of bikinis and volleyball and later because of boys. I liked a clean surface to set the table.

He shook his head slightly and I frowned, wondering what it meant, but he kissed me before I could ask, while his finger slipped inside me. Words disappeared. What he found was that I was already wet. What I found was that Jonathon had long fingers that knew just where to stroke. This was no twenty-year-old jamming his fingers into me like he was scraping a peanut butter jar. His touch was gentle, exploratory, and when he got a positive reaction from me, he settled in with a steady rhythm that probably could only be topped by my own touch, and I’d had years of practice. He had only been doing it for five minutes. While his finger stroked, his thumb teasingly brushed over my clitoris, flipping the ring back and forth, creating extra friction and stimulation.

I turned my head, too many sensations pouring over me. I needed air, I needed a break. But that only freed him up to drop his tongue over my nipple again, flicking it in a steady rhythm that matched what he was doing to my clitoris. Back and forth, back and forth, tongue and thumb until I was squirming on the bed, my grip on his arms desperate. I scissored my feet trying to get my pants all the way off so I could fully spread my legs.

He knew what I was trying to do and without breaking rhythm inside me, he shifted off my breast and leaned down to jerk hard on my jeans, freeing my legs.

“Thank you,” I breathed, letting my hips drop apart.

“I’m the one who should be giving thanks.” He rubbed his jaw and swept his eyes over me from head to toe. “You are honestly the hottest thing I’ve ever seen. I want to lick every single inch of you.”

I wasn’t going to say no to that. He was already halfway to accomplishing that goal anyway. My hand was trembling, like it had been when I had tried to open my apartment door, as I took his wrist and pulled his touch away from me. I was too close to having an orgasm and he didn’t even have his jeans off yet.

“No finger?” he asked.

I shook my head, wondering again where my voice had disappeared to. I never stop talking. Ever. But I had nothing to say. I just wanted to feel.

“Tongue?” he asked.

It would probably kill me but the very thought of what he could do with his touch there had me nodding eagerly.

The corner of his mouth turned up. “First let me take my pants off. I feel a little overdressed.”

“Like an Eskimo in the Everglades,” I said.

He laughed. “Kylie, you are a funny girl.” Then he sat up and stripped his jeans and boxer briefs off, his erection springing up at the freedom.

My mouth felt hot, my saliva thick. My necklaces were stuck to my damp skin and the tickling of his hair on my stomach as he descended over me had me shivering. Then I felt the first touch of the tip of his tongue on me, just below the navel. He cut a line straight down, playing with the ring before bypassing it and going to the last stop on the bus line before coming up and starting all over again. This time he lingered longer, toying with my piercing, taking it between his teeth and tugging gently so that I had damp palms and hitched breathing, and heavy eyelids.

His thumbs massaged either side as his tongue moved from playing with my clit to deep into the core of my body, then back again.

“I like your love button and its bling,” he murmured.

“I like you liking it.” Even if he insisted on calling it such a stupid name. For a scientist I would have expected something more anatomically correct.

None of which mattered when he did what he was doing, for longer than I could keep track of, for so long that I almost forgot how to breathe and definitely forgot how to think. “Oh, God,” I cried out, biting my bottom lip and trying to hold back an orgasm.

But he gripped my thighs and worked me deeper. “Come for me, Kylie.”

I couldn’t have stopped it if there had been a million dollars riding on it. It was big, a swollen wave of pleasure that crashed over me, knocking great gusts of satisfied sound from my mouth. It was epic, lasting long enough to have my eyes fully rolling back.

Then it was over and before I even had time to think or blink or swallow he was between my thighs, arms resting on either side of my shoulders.

“Birth control?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, my voice hoarse from moaning.

But then I felt the tip of him just inside me and I shoved his chest. “No, I meant, yes, we need birth control, not that I’m on it.”

“Oh, sorry.” He jerked backward. “Sorry.”

Rolling onto my side I wiggled out from under him and stretched for my purse. I dumped it completely on to my nightstand, desperate to not delay the action too long. Three condoms fell out last, having sunk to the very bottom of my bag, neglected for months. I threw them at Darwin. “Here.”

As I fell back onto the bed and shifted my legs apart again he quickly covered himself with a condom and moved back into position. His glasses had slipped down his nose again but he didn’t seem to notice. For a second he just paused, hovering there, staring down at me. I fought the urge to lift my hips and instead just waited for him.

His jaw worked. “You’re very beautiful.” He bent over me and drew in a breath, deep in my neck, his lips tickling me as he spoke. “I like the way you smell, too.”

Then he gave me a kiss and pushed inside me. It was more than I expected, both physically and otherwise. All his careful prep work had left me super sensitive and very wet and there was none of the usual feeling of tugging, that rough invasion. It just . . . fit. Like he belonged deep there, inside of me, and after five minutes of him stroking in and out easily, I was already halfway to another orgasm.

“That’s it,” he urged me. “You got it.”

For a second I was confused, but then I realized he wanted me to come again. My excitement was exciting him. The comforter was twisted in his grip and his thrusts were coming harder, faster. There was a sheen of sweat on his forehead and he was pulsing inside me the way a guy does just before he comes. I squeezed my muscles around him and enjoyed the groan of appreciation he gave.

It hit me hard, the second one, like a speeding car hitting a wall. I breathed his name. “Jonathon.”

And I knew after that moment I’d never be able to call him Darwin again.

He was Jonathon.

Jonathon gave one final thrust then came, his teeth gritted.

For at least a minute, we were frozen just like that, our heavy breathing the only sound in the dim room. Then he gripped my hips and rolled me over, on top of him, as he collapsed back onto the bed with a sigh. With him still inside me, I rested my head on his chest and swallowed hard.

“You’re a really good tutor,” I said.

He gave a startled laugh and choked on it. His hand slid over my ass. “God. Professor Kadisch would kill me. After he fired me.”

“Well, I’m sure in the hell not going to tell him.” Jonathon had helped demystify chemistry for me and made me come twice. I had no complaints. I scratched my fingers across his chest and yawned.

He patted his hand around the bed until he found his jeans, which were wadded against the wall. He dug into the pocket and retrieved his phone. “I should probably go. It’s after midnight.”

Holy crap. We’d left the coffeehouse at 9:45. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had sex for two hours. Okay, like maybe never. No wonder it had been so good. “Wow. I didn’t realize it was so late.”

I shifted off of him and we both gave a little sigh. As he tugged off the condom, he asked, “Do you have a bathroom in here?”

Pointing to the door across from the bed, I nodded.

When he stood up to ditch the condom in the trash can, I watched him walk across the room naked. He had a nice butt. I yawned again and rolled onto my side to face toward the room, making praying hands to prop my head up. I should probably pull my clothes on, but it seemed like too much work. I was comfortable naked and with my body.

After he flushed, he came back and gave me an appreciative glance. “Damn it, I wish we weren’t about to start finals. I’d like to start that all over again instead of studying.”

For a second I thought about suggesting we do it again after finals, then dismissed it. I wasn’t going to throw that out there. Not when I was feeling so yummy and deliciously satisfied. Jonathon gave me a kiss as he leaned over my body to grab his jeans. Better to just leave it alone.

A minute later he was dressed and reaching for his bag. “Let me know if you need any more help studying.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

He pushed up his glasses and for a second I thought he was going to say something else but he just gave me a soft smile and turned and left, holding the door so it closed carefully instead of with a slam.

Rolling onto my back, I sighed, shoving my jeans off the bed with my foot. My vagina was pleasantly sore and I felt more relaxed than I had since, well, The Incident. My phone had fallen onto the nightstand when I had dumped my purse and it buzzed, indicating a text. I wasn’t even tempted to check it. I didn’t want to ruin this feeling, this perfect contentment.

After I slipped under the comforter I drifted off to sleep.

That night I slept better than I had in four months.