Chapter 9
Zoe
There’s nothing quite like a long day of camp and a fading bonfire to make you double down on your commitment to fake affection, I guess.
It’s Saturday night, an hour since Tom and Sheree finished their presentation, and I’ve spent the better part of the last thirty minutes—ever since I licked the remnants of my last gooey s’more off my fingertips—tucked against Aiden’s side, his back leaning against one of the thick tree trunks that surround the fire pit, my body fitting right into the space his arm makes. Every single place where we touch I’m warm, and I wish I could say it was just the fire.
We’d been woken at dawn this morning, the thunk of a fist against our cabin door. Aiden had leapt from the bed, every inch of the chest and torso I’d avoided looking at on full display in the dim light from the window. While he’d pawed at the bunk above him for his shirt, I’d watched his muscles move, the golden-brown skin on his corded forearms pebbling with the chill of the early morning. When he’d finally pulled on his thermal and marched to the door, a grumbled hang on in his dark, scratchy morning voice, I’d turned my head to press my face against the pillow, to press my knees together in shocked, frustrated longing. It’s not that I hadn’t known I was attracted to him. But in the early-morning fog of sleep, I hadn’t yet remembered why I shouldn’t be.
It’d been Hammond at the door, announcing that Paul had a surprise, which I could only hope had nothing to do with the swimming hole. Barely twenty minutes later and Aiden and I had hiked, groggy and cold and silent—still a little bruised, maybe, from yesterday’s awkward exchange over the tour plan—out past the storage warehouse, a satisfying crackle of leaves on the trail beneath our feet.
Zip-lining, that had been the surprise, and from the beginning almost everything about it seemed designed to break the tension lingering between Aiden and me. When it was my turn up on the deck, Aiden having already gone across, Paul had helped me into a harness and I’d basically done gymnastics with my eyeballs to avoid looking anywhere near his face or his crotch, and even though Aiden had been five hundred feet away, I could feel his smile. I could almost hear that low laugh from yesterday, the one that had lit me up from the inside. And once I’d kicked away from the decking? I’d laughed in delight, seeing everything Lorraine promised—early-morning light winking through the changing colors of the canopy, leaves shiny and pronounced with morning dew. When I’d landed on the opposite side, Aiden waiting there, I’d looked up at him and he’d smiled down at me with the same look he’d given me yesterday in the cabin, just before he’d touched me.
It looked something like affection. Something like desire.
Afterward Lorraine had revealed thermoses of coffee and fresh-made muffins. For the first time, I suspected I’d had something close to the experience of being an actual camper here. Sure, we’re all competing for something, but out there in the early morning, zip-lining through the trees, we were all on the same side.
It had lasted, of course, only up until Tom and Sheree’s presentation, when the tense edge of rivalry had again fallen over the lodge’s dining room, despite Tom and Sheree’s constant positivity. It was as I’d thought—similar to Val’s, with assists by four teenagers from Tom’s program in Shaftesbury Park. Their vision for the camp wasn’t as original—modeled on what Stanton Valley already is, but with a focus on programs for kids growing up in the city, far away from what Sheree called the pleasures of nature. They hadn’t worked out much of the business side of things, some of their slides a bit muddled on details. But details or not, original or not, Tom and Sheree presenting together was its own magic—comfortable and spontaneous, joking and laughing, teasing Tommy where he sat wriggling on Lorraine’s lap. Aiden and I had watched—a frozen tableau exactly like we’d been last week, his arm across my back and my hand on his knee—and I think both of us had seen the strength Tom and Sheree brought to the table. They looked like a family. They looked like love.
So maybe that’s why, once the after-presentation bonfire got under way, Aiden stayed close. A hand on my shoulder while I stuck my marshmallow-topped skewer into the fire. A few fingers to push the hair away from my mouth when I’d first bitten into the s’more. His thigh pressed close to mine while we sat side by side. Obviously, I’d thought, with surprisingly grim disappointment, this is only for show.
“Aiden,” Sheree says, from where she sits on the other side of the fire, passing Little Tommy another unroasted marshmallow, which he stuffs in his face with chubby, sticky hands. “Do you remember when Kenny Templeton sat in the bonfire back when you were a counselor?”
I inadvertently stiffen at this, Sheree’s casual invocation of the past, a topic Aiden seems to avoid with everyone, not just with me. Usually that’s a comfort, but right now I feel it like a string pulled tight at the back of my neck. I don’t want things getting spoiled again. But beside me, Aiden offers a lighthearted groan, and when I look over at him, his lips are turned up at the corners. “You were a counselor here?” I ask.
“Yeah. My last two years.” He looks across the fire at Sheree. “The smell.” Sheree puts her head in her hands. “I never forgot that!” she exclaims.
“Did someone push him?” I say, my voice weirdly high pitched in concern for young Kenny Templeton, whoever he is. I think I’ve scooted a centimeter away from the fire, a centimeter further into that space between Aiden and me.
Lorraine laughs. “Kenny was experimenting. With the flammability of his—”
“Of his farts,” says Hammond, like he’s so pleased to have found an opportunity to say a word that any self-respecting adult avoids in mixed company.
“You’re disgusting,” says Val, pushing at his shoulder.
“Aiden was a hero,” says Sheree, and though she’s talking to the group, I get the sense this is directed only at me. “All the other counselors scattered to the wind! I think Paulie Kilroy left to throw up, even. Aiden was the only one who knew first aid protocol.”
Aiden shrugs beside me, and I can’t be sure—the light of the fire is too indistinct—but I think the skin beneath his jaw is a little pink. “I’d taken some classes,” he says. “For—you know. So I’d be able to handle things, at camp.”
“Well,” Lorraine says, “and of course, for Aaron.”
Lorraine. Come on, I’m thinking, angry on Aiden’s behalf. I don’t know what she means by this remark, but I find I don’t really want to know. From the beginning, it seems Lorraine’s been on a Good Samaritan mission to get Aiden to open up, to talk more freely about his brother, and whatever I think about that in the abstract, in practice I’d like her to back off, since Aiden clearly doesn’t want to talk about it. I open my mouth to say something, but close it again when I feel Aiden’s big hand come up from where it’s been resting on the ground behind me, settling around my waist. One of his fingers grazes my bare skin, where my flannel shirt has ridden up, and my breath hitches.
“Aaron was—he had asthma,” he says, low, just for me. “Lots of allergies. Had to keep an eye on him.”
“Oh,” I say, but he probably doesn’t even hear, because Hammond’s talking loudly about the cutoff sweatpants Kenny had to wear to accommodate his bandages. Walt and Rachel, hovering on the edge of our circle, look annoyed and a bit resentful whenever old, shared memories of the camp come up. Val, for her part, only lasts for a few sentences of Hammond’s juvenile memories, then clucks her tongue and stands, calling to where her girls have been playing. “We need to get them to bed, baby,” she says, her voice tense. I catch Lorraine’s eyes darting between Val and Hammond, her lips pursed. Hammond and Val suffer so completely in comparison to Tom and Sheree that I feel a little sorry for Val.
After this, the party breaks up quickly, Tom and Sheree anticipating a sugar crash for Tommy, Walt and Rachel appearing relieved to not have to stick around. Paul yawns, patting Lorraine’s knee, and she rises from her spot, gathering the last of the s’mores trash.
Beside me, Aiden hasn’t moved. His hand at my waist hasn’t, either.
“I’ll put it out, Lorraine,” he says, nodding toward the fire. “Our cabin’s closest, and I’ve got a lantern.”
“You’re sure?” she asks, looking back and forth between us. Part of me wants to say, Lorraine, don’t leave. Things are weird and what if they get weirder? But she’s not giving a look like Betty or Kit or Greer would give me, not an Are you all right with things look. It’s more of a What a nice night for a young couple look, and so the other part of me focuses on that, on how convincing Aiden and I must’ve been today.
She and Paul say their goodnights; when Paul stands from his place on the log I have to feign interest in my shoelace on account of the cannonball thing. Aiden snickers, and I lean into him with my shoulder, a light body check that he contains by pulling me closer. He smells so good, like this bonfire and like the trees and like him.
We listen to the fading footfalls of the group, watch their lantern lights dim as they go their separate ways, and then, suddenly, we’re alone.
“I’ll just—” I say, scooting away from him, closing my eyes at the awkwardness of it, afraid to see his reaction. Which would be worse, I think: relief, or disappointment?
“So is it because of Aaron you became a paramedic?” I have to tuck my hands underneath my thighs to keep myself from slapping them over my mouth in embarrassment.
Beside me, he’s quiet. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him take a deep breath, and I expect he’s counting to ten so he doesn’t call me a bunch of names or remind me of the deal: You and me, we don’t talk about my brother. But instead he says, “I guess that’s part of it. Spent a lot of time around doctors with him, back when we were young, and I suppose—I was good in a crisis, when it came to him.” He pauses and then adds, “Not all types of crisis, I guess.”
Well. That lands like a lead balloon, an awful sadness that I don’t know how to recover from. I am an idiot for bringing it up, for saying his name. I’m as bad as Lorraine.
“Why’d you become a lawyer?” he asks, and I slump against the log behind me in relief.
“My dad was a lawyer.”
Aiden nods, like he fully understands this as an explanation. “You think you’ll ever go back to it? I know you won that money, but…”
“I didn’t win enough money to never work again.” I’d been so embarrassed, initially, that he’d known, but now it’s almost comforting, not to have to keep it a secret from him. “I thought I’d—I don’t know. Take time off? Figure out what I really want, I guess. My first job...” I trail off, thinking of the sleek, glass-walled offices at Willis-Hanawalt. My two-thousand-dollar ergonomic chair. The Tiffany desk clock I got after my second year of service. “I had my eye on the wrong thing. I went to a top law school. I thought that meant I should go to a top firm, same as my dad did. I went through the motions.”
“It’d be a shame to give it up altogether. You’re smart as fuck.”
I look over at him, my smile immediate and spontaneous in a way it’s usually not around him. I’m probably blushing all the way down to my boot-cramped toes. “Drives me crazy,” he adds.
I know by something in his voice that he doesn’t mean an annoyed kind of crazy. He means the same crazy that I felt this morning, in my bunk. The same crazy I felt when he smiled at me on the zip line. The same crazy I felt with his hand on my skin. His eyes slide to mine, one hot second of contact before he stands and reaches behind the log he’s leaning against, hefting a large metal pail I didn’t even realize was there. He moves to stand between me and the fire, his back to me, and dumps the bucket on top, the fire hissing and popping. It’s not all the way out yet, but Aiden grabs a stick that’s leaning up against a nearby tree and begins stirring the pit, extinguishing more and more of the flame.
“Might want to switch on that lantern,” he says.
But I don’t. In the fading light, I watch the muscles underneath his shirt move, watch when he leans forward a little, the muscles in his legs and ass pulling tight. What would it matter, I’m thinking. What would it matter, if we just did this, if we did something with this attraction other than sniping at each other? Aiden’s the first man I’ve wanted like this in a long, long time—and if I press hard on that thought, I’ll bet I come to the conclusion that I’ve never wanted a man like this, wanted a man enough that the fact that we barely get along is something I’m willing to overlook. Since Christopher, I pick men who are easy. Men who won’t fight with me. Men who won’t get in the way of my work. Men who won’t ask why I never want to stay over. Men who won’t ask anything of me at all.
“That night at Betty’s,” I say, softly, and he stops stirring. “At first, I thought you were with Charlie.”
“No,” he says.
“Right, I know. But—I hated that. For some reason.” This is as far as I’m willing to go with it without something, anything, in return.
“You know the reason.” My blood feels as if it turns warmer, thicker at the roughness in his voice. “Same reason I hate the way Hammond stares at you, sometimes. Same reason I’ve been thinking about getting my hands on your skin since yesterday. Since before yesterday.”
“Oh,” is all I say, because that was definitely more than something. He turns around so he’s facing me, looking down to where I’m sitting, knees tucked up against my chest, my arms wrapped around them.
“We do this, and it can’t have anything to do with debt. With anything else but you and me.”
I stand from my spot on the ground, take a step toward him. “I shouldn’t have said that yesterday,” I say, but he’s shaking his head before I’m even through.
“Doesn’t matter about that. I’m talking about this. You and me, and what we want from each other.”
It’s full dark now, the fire all the way out, smoke and ash heavy in the air. I barely notice. I only notice him coming closer to me, tilting his head down. Not to kiss me—to get close, to put his ear that much nearer to my lips, so he can hear me say it back to him. “You and me,” I whisper, an agreement as sure as the one I made with him a month ago, and I am suddenly desperate for this, for him to put his hands on my hips and tug me right against him. To work off this tension. We’re so well matched, me and Aiden—I can feel it, how good we’ll be together. But he doesn’t make a move. He’s standing close enough that I can hear him breathe, and I reach a hand out, wrap my fingers around his wrist, same as he did to me, on that first day.
I feel his pulse beat, hard, against my fingertips.
We stand like that until the smoke begins to thin, until Aiden’s pulse evens out again. Slowly, he pulls his wrist away from me, moves past me and leans down to pick up the lantern, placing it my hand. “On,” he says, a dark command, and I flick the switch, watch him crouch down in the column of light to place his palm against the ring that had contained the fire. He moves around it methodically, making sure it’s cool all over. It looks as if he’s done this a hundred times, as if he belongs in a place like this—out in the woods, building and putting out fires and just like, leaving his testosterone all over the place. My skin flushes with heat, anticipation.
When he stands again, he looks right at me, light from the lantern casting the hard planes of his face in shadow. “Let’s go,” he says, and nudges me toward the trail.
* * * *
Neither of us says a word on the walk back.
Aiden stays close behind me, close enough that any change in my pace or gait—slowing to push a branch out of the way, turning sideways to step over a log—puts his body against mine. Brief, hot touches that make me impatient to get in the door.
But when we get there, he sets a hand at my waist and turns me away from where I’m unlocking the door, his palm pressing against the side of my stomach until I’m backed against the wood. “We start here,” he says, leaning down to press his nose against my throat, just above the notch of my collarbone. “Jesus,” he breathes. “What do you smell like?”
I blink into the darkness, realize I’ve used my free hand, the one not holding the lantern, to grab his forearm. I’m clutching it like it’s the only thing keeping me upright. “I don’t know,” I murmur, shuddering at the way his breath tickles me there. “Probably marshmallows and smoke. And pheromones.”
“No,” he says, and traces his nose up, his bottom lip dragging against my neck. “You smell like something. I don’t know what. You smell so fucking good; it drives me crazy.”
“Like how smart I am?” I whisper. He’s pressing a line of kisses from where my earlobe meets my jaw across to where my lips wait, ready for him.
“Every single thing about you,” he says, right against my mouth, and just like that, we’re kissing.
We’ve skipped the preliminaries—that much is clear. Every kiss I’ve ever had at my door, after a date, started gentle, a little searching—Is this okay? Do you think you want more?—but Aiden and I settled that out by the smoldering fire, and this kiss says so. His mouth is hot against mine, his tongue licking into my open mouth. It feels like it goes on forever, this kiss, long enough that Aiden’s brought himself closer and closer, long enough that we’ve managed to arrange our bodies so that the hardness beneath his jeans meets the space I’ve made between my legs, long enough that I feel wet and empty. My hand left his forearm as soon as our lips met—I’ve reached up to tangle it in all that gorgeous, dark hair, one of the first things I’d noticed about him, and I’m tugging at it, telling him, the only way I can, that we need to get inside.
At first I don’t notice that my other hand is suddenly free to join in the fun, until I realize that the place where Aiden had been touching me—right at my rib cage, frustratingly short of the underside of my breast—is absent of the delicious pressure he’d put there. “I’m going to need to take this,” he says, pulling away, the lantern in his hand now. He’s breathing hard, but he takes another step back. There’s no place now where our bodies are touching, and I bite my lip to keep from whimpering in frustration.
“What?”
“I’ve got to go—” he begins, and I really do let out that whimper.
“Aiden. I’ll kill you if you leave me here right now. I’ll kill you, bring you back to life, and then kill you again.”
He grins, a particular smile I’ve never seen on him. Had I thought he was good looking before? Because that was the understatement of my life. “I need supplies.”
I look down at the bulge in his jeans. “Your supplies seem fine.”
“Condoms.”
I thud my head against the door, closing my eyes. I have to take a deep breath to settle myself, to manage the ache between my legs. “What man your age doesn’t carry condoms? I’m so mad I don’t even want to do it anymore.”
He says nothing, and when I open my eyes, he’s looking at me, his brow furrowed.
“Oh, please,” I say, rolling my eyes. “I still want to do it.” I grab the front of his shirt, pull him toward me, and kiss him again. “Hurry.” He allows himself one nip of my lower lip, a quick pass of his tongue to soothe it.
“I’ll hurry.”
Once he’s gone and I’m in the cabin, though, I’m nervous, impatient. If he’s driving all the way to Coleville, it’ll be forty minutes until he’s back, and by then he’ll probably remember what a terrible idea this is, what a terrible idea I am, the woman who sat across from his devastated parents at a conference table and negotiated the kind of deal that makes people hate lawyers. Even if he doesn’t remember that, he’ll probably think of all the ways I annoy him, or all the ways sleeping together could fuck up his plans to get this camp. I go to the sink, look at myself in the mirror. My cheeks are flushed, my lips swollen. My hair looks like I teased it in back. I reach up a hand to smooth it, catching the winking light of that thin gold band, the small pearl that looks far too sweet for me.
What am I doing? I tug the ring off, setting it gently on the small metal ledge underneath the mirror. It doesn’t matter if that ring’s just a placeholder. That ring is everything I do not do. That ring is complication. That ring is strings-attached sex. I should know that better than anyone.
But it’s hard to keep that train of thought when my lips feel warm and bruised from Aiden’s firm kiss, when I can still feel the echo of his hands on me. When the cabin door bangs open, Aiden standing there with a strip of condoms in his hand and a hard, determined expression on his face, I feel a gust of relief, or maybe it’s just the cold air from outside. Either way, I’m so glad he’s back. “That didn’t take long.”
“I broke into the infirmary,” he says, a little out of breath. “Picked the lock.”
“They keep condoms in there?”
He shrugs, tucking them into his back pocket. “Safety first.” He looks at me, eyes moving up and down my body, and I don’t know if I imagine the way his glance stutters, for the briefest of seconds, on my left hand. He steps toward me, and same as yesterday afternoon, Aiden’s hand reaches up to stroke the skin of my cheek. This time, he doesn’t trail off—he tucks his fingers into my hair, lets his palm cup the side of my face, a touch so gentle and so unlike the way the two of us are together that I drop my eyes in embarrassment. “Zo. It’s all right if you’ve changed your mind.”
“No,” I say, and then, more firmly, “No. But this”—I reach out, tuck the tips of my fingers into the waistband of his jeans, tugging him closer—“we only do this here. Only for the rest of our deal. This is sex, nothing else.” Even as I say it, I feel a pang of regret. But it’s necessary. I’m not stupid—I’m smart as fuck, in fact—and I know this thing between us can’t work in reality, not with all the baggage between us.
“Good,” he says, maybe a little too quick for my liking, but it doesn’t really matter, because half a second later we’re kissing again, my tailbone pressed against the sink, trapped by the press of Aiden’s hips against mine. My hands roam under his shirt, feeling every inch of warm skin that I can, smooth and taut over all the muscles I saw this morning. His body is deliciously unfamiliar to me—I can feel, in the way his trim waist gives way to broad, ridged planes across his back, in the way his biceps stack right up against the bunched, firm muscles of his shoulders, that this body is made for work, lifting and carrying and hurrying, everything about it efficient.
He runs his hands down my sides, around to my lower back to pull me forward, and then he’s cupping my ass, the backs of my thighs, and with barely an effort he lifts me, my legs around his waist while he turns to walk us into the bunk room. Our kisses are messy, frantic, our teeth clicking together a little as he moves us toward his bunk. Even when it’s the moment for him to set me down, or for me to climb off and get on the bed myself, we stay like that—wrapped up in each other and kissing, our tongues tangling together in a way that almost feels like fighting, my arms tight around his neck, his big hands kneading the flesh at the backs of my legs—hard, electrifying pressure that may well bruise later. I tighten the muscles of my abdomen and curl my pelvis closer to him, a move he answers with a hot, impatient grunt of frustration.
“I’ve never had sex in a twin bed,” I murmur against his lips, and it works, because he ducks down, lays me on his bed, the smell of his sheets all around me, his body following mine like we’ve done this a hundred times.
“Not even in college?” he asks, pressing his face against my neck, and when I don’t answer right away, he nips the skin at my collarbone, a move that makes my skin flush anew with pleasure.
“Nuh-uh.” I didn’t fool around in college, not until I’d met Christopher, and then it’d been—Stop thinking about him, about that fucking ring, I scold myself, gripping Aiden’s shoulders and pulling him up toward me, so I can get my mouth on his again.
“Doesn’t allow for...” He pauses, sucks in a breath when he feels my hands tuck beneath his waistband to grab his ass and pull him closer. “Much movement,” he finishes, and his voice sounds like it did this morning. Gruff and a little angry and oh, God, I want him to say everything to me in that voice.
“We’ll manage,” I whisper. He pushes himself up on one hand, careful not to hit his head on the bunk above, and uses his other hand to work at the buttons of my flannel, his eyes on the skin he’s revealing, little by little. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man so focused on a task like this, so intent on just this scrap of skin, when it’s damn near guaranteed he’s about to see the whole package.
When he spreads the sides of it, revealing my bra—nude, no frills, because I’m at camp, for God’s sake—he takes a deep breath, reaches out his hand, and traces the line of soft skin above the cups, watching in rapt fascination as my nipples peak underneath the fabric. Never have I so acutely wanted a man to touch me, lick me, suck me there. There’s an actual, physical ache. “Jesus Christ,” he says. “You make me feel like a teenager.”
“That’s—nice?”
“It’s not nice if I don’t settle down.” He bends his head, licks across the skin he just touched, and I arch my back in frustrated desire. “Remember that old t-shirt?” he asks, against my skin, and it’s taking me a second to do any kind of verbal processing when all I can think about is getting both of us naked. “The one you got at Goodwill?”
Right, the old camp t-shirt. I open my mouth to answer, but all that comes out is a low moan when Aiden lets his tongue dip, just a little, beneath the fabric of my bra.
“I got so fucking pissed at you about that shirt. It was almost see-through.”
“Let me guess,” I say, my voice thin, my breaths coming so fast from just this little bit of foreplay. “It drove you crazy.”
He lifts his head, pushes himself up so he can kiss me again. “It’s like that with you,” he says. “Half the time I don’t know if I want to yell at you or fuck you.”
I raise my head to kiss him, to lick across his bottom lip, to tug on it gently with my teeth—a move he answers with a thrust of his hips that’s hot, impatient, involuntary. I forget about every single complication this might introduce. I forget about everything but that hardness between his legs, the wetness between mine.
“Well,” I say, releasing his lip and letting a slow smile spread across mine, “you can yell at me later, if you want.”
But all Aiden seems to want now is our clothes off, our bodies closer, and our mouths otherwise occupied. Between desperate, hungry kisses, we strip each other—a mess of limbs, a few run-ins with the rails of the bunk above us, and one frustrated grunt—from me, unfortunately—when I struggle to push Aiden’s jeans from his hips. He smiles against my lips and hunches his way out of the bunk, standing to the side and leaving me naked, cool air from the loss of his body pebbling my skin and drawing my nipples tighter. He says nothing, only tracks his eyes over my body, top to toe, as he pushes his jeans and underwear down. For the few seconds it takes him to step out of them, I return the favor, propping myself up on my elbows to take in every gorgeous, hard inch of him—and when his eyes meet mine, they’re bright with something I’ve never seen there before, a look that’s somehow both carefree and anticipatory. The smile that curves his mouth is part playful, part predatory—in the best possible way—and for a second all I can think is, There, there he is.
But I don’t want to dwell on that thought right now, so I reach out a hand to him, pull him by his wrist toward me, a move he has to accommodate with a quick fold of his body to fit in the space above mine, and when his naked skin meets mine, that’s it—we’re done in, more frantic than we were even on the way in here, his knee moving my legs apart, my hips thrusting up to meet his even as he pushes them back down and works his hand between us to touch right where I’ve been hot and needing him for what feels like days, weeks, months, for-fucking-ever. “Jesus, Zo,” he breathes out, his fingers deft, tracing the wetness there.
“Later,” I say again, and he laughs against my neck, a gentle rumble that sends a new shot of heat between my legs. “I’m not gonna yell at you about this,” he says, and I laugh too, grabbing for the strip of condoms he tossed beside the bed. My fingers shake as I tear the packet, my head tipping back as he finds a spot between my legs that must’ve been invented in the last thirty seconds because it has certainly never felt that good there.
He watches me while I roll the condom down his length, closes his eyes briefly when I stroke him, and I like that small concession to vulnerability so much that I take advantage, take control. I move his busy hand away from me, move my hips up and guide him toward my entrance, and when he pushes inside me the noise he makes is more arousing than any single word he could have said—a gusting, groaning sigh of relief, a noise like he’s set down a thousand pounds of weight, and it makes me crazy, that noise. Without thinking I’m pulling his mouth toward mine, tasting that noise, meeting every one of his deep, sure thrusts with my hips. It’s fast—I knew it’d be fast, this first time, already I hope not the only time—but he’s not impatient. He’s moving inside me in a rhythm that’s exactly right, banking a fire within me and waiting, waiting, waiting to ignite it fully.
My legs clasped tight around his hips, one of his hands on my ass, the other braced above me on the bunk frame, my skin and his already slick with sweat. “Aiden,” I say, because I can’t wait—I’m too desperate, and he’s too good at this, and he answers me with a thrust so deep and perfect and there—there’s that explosion, that fire he’s made me wait for, and we come together, panting and relieved and probably both shocked out of our minds.
Because I can tell already. This fire is going to be hard to put out.