“I don’t know … I feel like I should stay.” He cups my face the same way Tyler did earlier, but instead of feeling mildly intimidating, it feels wonderful, even though he’s close enough to stare straight into my pores and I know I’m not a pretty crier. “I don’t like leaving when you’re sad.” His brows pinch together. “Actually, I’ve never seen you sad.”
“I’m okay.”
“I can stay.”
I go for lighthearted—for playful—but unfortunately my singsong words come out like bricks: “You can stay, but, I mean, I’m not going to have sex with you again.”
Insert record-screech sound here.
Josh rolls his eyes and lets go of my face. “Yup. Okay. I’m headed home.”
“Wait.” I swallow down the desperate edge to my voice. “I was kidding.” I try to salvage the joke: “I would totally have sex with you again.”
His expression goes dark and he slumps slightly in exasperation. His voice is rough and quiet. “Come on, Haze. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”
“I know,” I say. “I’m sorry. I’m a mess.” I wipe my face and try to look as collected as possible. “I really would love the company.”
He’s already kicked off his shoes at the front door, so all he has to do is step out of his jeans and he’s only in boxers and his T-shirt. His boxers have little jalapeño peppers all over them, and he draws my eyes away from the shape of his cock—Friend cock! Not for you!—by pulling back my sheets and climbing into bed beside me.
“Scoot over.” He takes the remote, and I rest my head on his broad shoulder, knowing as soon as I get a whiff of the warm tangy spice of him that I’m probably ten minutes away from sleep.
“But none of this Steel Magnolias junk,” he whispers. “Let’s watch the first Alien movie.”
SEVENTEEN
JOSH
I wake up on the brink of orgasm. I’m still dressed but my chest is sweaty, my blood rushing hot and frantic, and as soon as I come into awareness, I can feel the electric storm building at the base of my spine.
What roused me was the sound of Hazel crying out in my ear. An ancient part of me must have understood the pitch of her noises and heeded it before I was even fully awake, because I’m still rocking my hips when I register that (1) I’m awake and (2) she’s gone limp beside me.
Everything falls still as we pant, breathless. Her leg is around my hip, her hands are fists in my hair, and her mouth is only inches from mine.
“Whoa.” I swallow, lifting my head to glance over my shoulder at her dark bedroom around us. The only light comes from the television. The Apple TV is cycling through the screensavers—a revolving series of flowers and wildlife. The clock on her nightstand tells me it’s 3:21 a.m.; the movie must have ended hours ago. I’m only barely oriented, and I look down at her, mouth soft and lips parted, her eyes open now and lit in the dark.
So here we are: somehow, in our sleep, we started to move together through our clothes, and I think Hazel just …
“Oh my God.” She swallows. “I thought I was dreaming.”
“Me too.”
“I woke up as I was coming.”
So she did come. Holy shit. My stomach tenses with need. “That’s about when I woke up.”
“I’m sorry, Josh. I didn’t mean—”
“No, stop, it was both of us.”
She must be able to feel the hard line of me, pressed against the heat of her, because she whispers, “Are you okay?”
Every muscle in my body is flexed. Hazel’s hands are still in my hair and she scratches her nails gently against my scalp, shifting her hips up just slightly, rocking into me as if she needs to clarify her meaning.
I’m rigid; I can feel the ache, the pulsing tension in my navel that will slowly morph into a leaden, throbbing discomfort. Tomorrow I’ll worry about the fallout. For now, “I … need to come.”
With a whispered, “Yeah?” she lifts her head just enough to press her mouth to mine. It’s soft and warm, and her hips rise from the bed, urging, circling up into me.
“I don’t mind … doing it myself,” I stammer between kisses, “if that’s better …”
“That’s a nice image, but …” Hazel hooks her thumb in my boxers and slides them down over my ass, to my thighs.
Before I climb over her, I have a moment of pause—What are we doing, and what does this mean?—but it evaporates like steam in cold air. We have to untangle slightly to get her underwear off, and I want to feel her, skin to skin. I pull off her shirt, and then mine.
The relief of it—of her bare skin against me, of her legs sliding up and around my hips—is nearly obliterating. I can sense how close my orgasm is, just beneath the surface.
She reaches down, holding me, playing with me against her, and I have to pull my mind somewhere else—I imagine running, scrubbing the shower, chopping carrots—so I don’t come from the heat and friction of her against the head of my cock.
“I know I shouldn’t talk because I’ll ruin it but holy shit, Josh. This feels so good.”
I grit my teeth, tighten the muscles of my abdomen, and force my hips to stay exactly where they are: far enough away that she’s in control, but close enough that she can do whatever she wants.
“I think I could come again. Like this.”
Holy shit.
“Like …” Her voice unravels into a gravelly little sigh and she arches her neck, the words becoming harder to find. “How does something so simple—” She slides the tip of me along her wet skin, back and forth, up and down, in between. I have no idea how I’m even still breathing. “How does this”—a little gasp—“feel so good?”
I’m shaking my head because I have no idea—or maybe my brain is just trying to convince the rest of me to slow down—but I’m distracted by the feel of Hazel’s knees sliding up to rest against my ribs.
She kisses my lips, pulling the bottom one into her mouth. “Do you think it feels good?”
I suck in a breath, light-headed. “I think you feel better than anything.”
“Did you know there are, like, seven thousand nerves in the head of the penis?” she gasps. “More than any other part of your body?”
My arms shake with the effort of holding back. “That seems about right.”
She laughs but the sound breaks apart and floats away as she moves underneath me, hips tilted up as she positions me just where she wants. Everything stops and her eyes meet mine in the odd light emanating from the TV. “Is this okay?”
I let out a single breath, a short laugh at the absurdity of this, kissing her chin. “Are you kidding?”
“We’ll just do it twice, then.”
I’d normally smile at this except my brain can’t process anything but the unbelievable heat of her, the knowledge that I’m about to get exactly what I want. My open mouth rests on hers as I push in, and it means I feel the way her breath shakes.
“Josh.”
She’s right, holy shit it’s so good. “I know.”
“Is this the worst idea ever?”
“I don’t know. Right now it feels like the best idea ever.” I cup her backside, lifting her hips to me, working myself in and out of her, deeper on each pass.
I feel a flash of guilt, like this sex should be for the sake of taking care of business only—an accident that happened in our sleep—and I shouldn’t be enjoying it so much. But how can I not? Hazel is gorgeous beneath me: her hair is a tumble of curls on the pillow, her mouth is full and wet, her breasts move with me every time I push deep into her.
And I get the sense that she’s relishing it, too. She touches me like she’s memorizing my shape, with fingertips and palms, thumbs tracing the lines of my back. Her hands slide down to my ass, back up to my shoulders, my neck, and into my hair. When I push up onto my hands to see what I’m feeling, her hands make a circuit of my front: my shoulders, collarbones, chest, stomach, and down to where I’m moving in and out of her.