by Dahlia Adler
That fucking Xanax.
How could I have forgotten I’d popped one of Lizzie’s pills to keep myself calm for my date? And how could I have forgotten that Xanax—especially in the dosage she’s got—and alcohol do not fucking mix? So now, basically, I’ve combined chemical coping mechanisms only to screw myself into the worst, most stressful situation of all, because I am an asshole and how the hell am I supposed to explain to my girlfriend—if I even still have one—that I was so nervous about a date I should’ve been excitedly counting down the minutes to that I stupidly knocked myself into a coma?
I grab my phone from my butt pocket and light it up.
Shit. Three missed calls. I check my texts, and sure enough those are full too.
Hey, are you in there? I’ve been knocking for a few minutes already. Time: five minutes after eight.
Ten minutes later: I’m guessing you’re not in there, and my feet are starting to hurt from standing in your hallway. I’m gonna head back to my room and wait for you there, OK?
Ten minutes later: I called the restaurant and moved our reservation half an hour, but that’s the latest they’ll seat.
And finally, when there’s been no response from me for an entire hour: Guess you’re not coming. Hope everything’s okay.
That’s it. And it only takes a minute of scrolling through the texts to figure out what’s bugging me about them. There’s nothing from Lizzie, nothing from Cait. If Samara were really worried that something had happened to me, she would’ve contacted them. Or maybe she did, but they weren’t worried. Either way, however well I’ve been thinking I’ve been concealing my anxiety…clearly, I haven’t been fooling anyone. And that knowledge just makes everything worse.
How did I ever think I deserved her?
No, fuck that. I’m not giving up that easily. I fix my shirt in the mirror, use Doug’s toothpaste and deodorant to make myself a little more human, pull on my boots, and do the best I can to clean up my hair and makeup. Even if I’ve burned any chance I had with Sam, she deserves better than to think I don’t give a shit, that I just didn’t show up because I don’t care. She doesn’t have to forgive me, but she does have to know how sorry I am, and, yeah, maybe how crazy I am about her too.
Because I am. Because I wanted to be there with her last night. Because I want to be with her now.
I slip out of Doug’s room and out the door of the Sig Psi house, ignoring all the whistling trailing after me. I’m still feeling a little dizzy, and it takes me a minute to orient myself, but finally, I manage to pick my way over to Wilson Hall.
Where no one answers when I ring up.
I step away from the security desk and dial Samara, but it rings three times and goes to voicemail. Not that I’m surprised she’s screening my calls. I don’t bother trying again, and instead call up Cait. That one doesn’t even ring, which means she’s probably in the gym. I could go there and drag her back here to bring me up, but before I do, I try Sam again. And again. And again.
No luck.
The gym it is.
• • •
By the time I let myself into my apartment, I’m physically and emotionally exhausted from searching for Samara on every square inch of the Radleigh campus. I can’t blame her for not picking up her phone any of the billion times I tried her, but even Cait has no idea where she is. I am completely at a loss.
For now, I just need to be patient, recharge, shower the smell of the Sig Psi house off my skin, and then figure out how to make the world’s most epic apology.
No problem.
The place is quiet when I close the door behind me. “Lizzie B.?” I call out as I hang up my leather jacket on the hook by the door. “You here?”
Silence.
I walk further into the apartment and spot a note on our little round dining table. Have fun, it says in her scrawl. I’ll see you tomorrow.
Clearly Lizzie’s in her own universe; “fun” is the last word I’d use for what lies ahead. I drop her note back on the table and continue on to my room, grumpily throwing open the door.
And there, lying on my bed, hair fanned out around her, fingertips dangling over a book she must’ve dropped to the carpet in her slumber, is Samara.
I’m tempted to pinch myself to make sure she’s real. How long has she been here? And what—
Wait.
I blink, and blink again. I was so startled and relieved to see her when I first walked in that I didn’t even notice what she’s wearing. Or isn’t wearing. One of those long, golden legs is adorned with an honest-to-goodness lacy garter. A garter that matches the lacy frills emerging from a skintight pink satin corset rising and falling with every one of Samara’s delicate breaths.
She is fully decked out in the most fuckhot lingerie I have ever seen.
I want to wrap her in my arms, bury my nose in her hair, and kiss her senseless so badly it aches. I want to stare at her in that outfit for days, want to peel it off in seconds, want want want.
But I haven’t earned it, haven’t earned her. She deserved so much better from me, and I don’t know why she’s here now, but I know I need to make her stay.
I glance at the book on the floor—is that flower on the cover supposed to look so vaginal?—and then back at Sam. She hasn’t so much as stirred since I walked in. Kissing her awake seems too presumptuous, so I kneel by the bed and lift her fingers to my lips instead. Her eyelids flutter open, revealing those gorgeous tiger eyes that melt me every time, and I say, “Hey.”
She blinks and I wonder if I should take back my hand. I don’t know if she’s here to read me the riot act; I don’t know how to reconcile her being here with what happened last night at all. But then her lips curve into a slow smile and she says, “Hey,” and I leave my hand wrapped around hers.
“I’ve been trying to call you.”
“I’ve been asleep, apparently.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Since…ten, maybe? Eleven? Lizzie let me in, then said she was going over to Connor’s.”
Samara’s been here for hours. I’ve been chasing her all over campus and she’s been here, waiting. For me. For this. For whatever’s coming next. “Sam, I am so, so sorry about last night, and this morning, and…everything.” I squeeze her hand and use it to pull myself up so I’m sitting on the bed at her knees. “I hate myself for not showing up, especially because I wanted to show up, but I was so nervous that I took one of Lizzie’s mega-Xanaxes, and then suddenly I was waking up in—”
I cut myself off, but she doesn’t miss it. “Where?” she asks quietly, and I know she’s been wondering this since long before I opened my mouth, since long before I even returned to my room. “Where did you wake up this morning, Frankie?”
There’s no way to make this sound good; all I can go with is the truth. “With Doug, at the Sig Psi house.”
She sucks in a sharp breath, but doesn’t say a word.
“Nothing happened with him, Sam. I promise you. And you don’t even have to take my word for it.” I reach into the back pocket of my jeans for my phone, hit Play on the voicemail Doug left me at some point during my rabid campus search, and then hit the speakerphone.
“Frankie? Hey, where’d you go? I woke up and you were gone before we could even talk. And listen, I just want to make sure you know nothing happened last night. I don’t know why you were so out of it after a couple of beers, but I put you to bed as soon as you passed out. Can you just, like, let me know that you’re okay? Okay. Thanks.” There’s a long pause and then a breath that suggests he’s gonna speak again, but instead, he hangs up.
Samara presses her lips together. “He sounds like a good guy.”
“He is.”
“But nothing happened.”
“Nothing but a text back to tell him I’m okay.”
“And are you?”
It’s a loaded question, but an easy answer. “I am now.”
That finally gets a smile out of her. It’s small, but it’s t
here, and I’ll take it.
“So…this outfit,” I say, my voice turning raspy as my gaze flickers over her body, lingering on the small, perfect breasts pushed up by the boning of the corset, the curve of her hips underneath the second-skin satin. “Did you wear it here to seduce me or destroy me?”
That tiny smile turns sly as fuck. “Can’t it be both?”
“I think it must be. You look like an angel sent from hell.” I glance down at the scrap of lace encircling her thigh. “I have to admit, if you left me alone here right now, it would be some well-deserved revenge.” I dart out my tongue to wet my lips; my mouth is desert dry. “Cruel and horrible, but deserved.”
“Do you want me to go?”
My eyebrow shoots skyward. “You’re kidding me, right? I’ve been looking for you for hours. All I’ve wanted to do since the minute I woke up this morning—since the minute I saw you for the first time, really—is be with you, preferably in this bed. I don’t want to do anything but this, like, ever again. I just feel shitty about it happening after last night.”
She curves her palm around my jaw and leans in, but she doesn’t brush her mouth against mine. Instead, she takes my lower lip between her teeth and bites down, tugging until I groan with the pleasure and pain of it. “Here’s the deal, Francesca,” she says, her voice so low I have to strain to hear it. “I made a decision this morning that I would hear whatever you wanted to say. And now, it’s my turn to get what I want.”
“Anything,” I say, and I mean it with every fiber in my being. “What do you want, Sam?”
A lone fingertip grazes my forearm, tracing the ink there, the lines from a classmate’s poem I had tattooed there last semester. This is the story of a woman who had done it all wrong. “I want what I came dressed for. So, is that still on the table?”
A rush of warmth floods my body, every nerve cell pinging. “If you still want me then yes. Hell yes. Yes, yes, yes.”
The last yes isn’t even fully out of my mouth before she swallows it in hers, burying her hands in my hair and pulling me back to the bed with her. I surrender completely, letting her take control of this kiss, of anything she damn well pleases, knowing it’s only a matter of time before the roles are reversed and she’s melting under me instead.
But she isn’t giving up control just yet. Her hands yank open my shirt and push it from my shoulders, her nails raking my back on the way down. We’re only half on the mattress, kissing too hungrily, too desperately to care. I hate that we could’ve been doing this all last night, that we should’ve been, but I’m here now, and so’s she, and all of it feels like such a miracle I could kick myself for ever doubting this.
“You’re thinking too much,” she murmurs, shifting back on the bed, then tilting her face up for another kiss, which I gladly relinquish. “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”
“I want to,” I tell her. “So fucking much.”
“Well, it’s mutual.” She rises to her knees and puts her delicate hands on my shoulders. “So why are we still talking?”
I want to speak, but I can’t. It’s as if she reached into my chest cavity and squeezed my heart in her little hands. But she’s right.
We don’t need to talk anymore.
I bury my hands in her hair and close the distance between us, the distance I never want there to be again. She walks back on her knees without moving her mouth from mine, and I follow until she’s lying back against my pillows and I’m above her, tasting, touching, inhaling her honey-citrus scent until it’s imprinted on my brain.
She’s so soft—her lips, her skin, that fucking lingerie. I kiss my way to her jaw and suckle down her throat, every one of her breathy sighs and moans hitting me where it hurts. My jeans are the denim prison of romance novels, but I can’t make myself stop touching her long enough to take them off. I slide my hands down her fine-boned shoulders to the perfect handfuls of her breasts, and she arches into my palms with a gasp.
The sounds she makes are the sexiest part, a constant reminder of how new this is to her, confirmation I can make her feel damn good. I hear it in her whimpers when I drag my tongue along the edge of the cups of her corset, her groans when my thumbs seek out her nipples through the satin and she unconsciously rocks her hips against mine. But I want more, always more. She is so beautiful and lying right here for me and I don’t want her covered by my hands, by my body. What a waste.
Suddenly, I’m struck with inspiration. I pull back reluctantly and give her lower lip a little love bite before sitting up and climbing off the bed. “Come here.”
She blinks up at me dizzily. “You want to go somewhere now?”
“Just trust me.”
She takes the hand I hold out to her and stands, letting me drag her over to the full-length mirror in the corner of my room. I wrap my arms around her from behind and press my lips to the back of her shoulder, our eyes meeting in the reflecting glass. “Look at you,” I rasp, taking her in from her beautiful blond head to the pink nail polish on her perfect little toes, and every satin-and-lace-wrapped curve in between. “Look how fucking stunning you are. I didn’t want to miss it.”
She doesn’t say anything, though she flushes in some choice places, and I smile against the back of her neck before covering it with gentle kisses. My arms are still around her, one hand over her heart, feeling her pulse race beneath lazily trailing fingers.
And then I slowly trace my tongue down her spine.
“Oh, God,” she breathes, her eyelids fluttering shut.
“Keep them open. Watch me.”
She does. She opens her eyes and fixes them on the reflective glass as I suck her neck while I palm her breasts, squeezing gently, then not so gently. Every now and again, she sways on her feet with a moan, but I keep her steady and watch her watching me.
Then I slide a hand down down down the smooth satin. Her breath hitches as I trace a finger along the smooth strip of skin between her corset and matching panties, and I force myself to be patient, even though every ounce of my being is dying to know if she’s as wet as I think she is. “Sam?” I whisper, still kissing whatever skin I can reach—shoulders, arms, that long, slender neck.
“Touch me,” she whispers back without hesitation. “Please, please touch me.”
Jesus fucking Christ. My hand obeys as if of its own volition, sliding beneath the waistband, and oh my fuck she is soaked. My fingers glide right over her clit, and she trembles under the touch.
I maneuver her forward until we’re so close to the mirror her breath is fogging the glass, and she puts her hands up on the walls on either side of it to brace herself. A little of the tension drains from her body, but only for a moment before I slide my hand back through her wetness, grazing her clit in light circles.
“What are you doing to me, Francesca?” she utters desperately as I stroke harder, faster. “How can anything feel this good?”
“Oh, sweetheart, you have no idea.” I slip into the cup of her corset, gliding over the softest bare skin, and squeeze, aching to feel her nipples hard and tight against my palm. She doesn’t disappoint, arching with a whimper while my other hand speeds up over her clit. I want to be inside her, want to devour her, but I wouldn’t change what we’re doing right now for anything. Not with the way her eyes have gone wild, or the way her moving with my hand has her ass grinding against me. Not when her golden skin is growing flushed and damp, her hair mussed just enough to suggest she’s been gently fucked. “This is only the beginning.”
As I say the words, though, I realize they’re not true. This isn’t the beginning. I’ve been crazy about this girl for months. I’ve been dreaming of touching her like this since the moment I saw her a year earlier. This started so long before now, and there is a lifetime left to go.
But right now? I want to see her finish.
I slip down further, sliding a finger inside her easily, though she’s so tight a second would probably be a stretch. She sucks in a sharp breath, and I grind my palm ag
ainst her clit until she gasps out a moan that turns me to liquid. I keep my eyes on the mirror, progressively gentling the hand fucking her until her cries and shuddering taper off into a whimper. Then I ease out, missing her soft, wet warmth the instant I’ve lost it.
“Oh my God,” she whispers. Her knees are buckling, and I squeeze her tight to hold her steady. Once she’s focused again, I wait until her eyes are watching me, then suck my finger down to the last knuckle.
“Francesca.”
I keep her staring at me until I’ve licked off the very last trace of her. “Yes?”
“I am going to pass out.”
I smile and draw her back to the bed, aglow in the presence of her complete and total contentment and the knowledge I’m the one who put her in that state.
I’m also horny as fuck.
She looks like she wants to sleep for a year, so I debate leaving her for a few minutes to take care of myself, but before I can even open my mouth to suggest it, I feel a light touch grazing my belly, then a gentle tug at the button of my jeans. “May I?”
Two softly spoken words and I am on fire, arching off the bed into those delicate hands. I watch her slender fingers work the button, then the zipper, and then she’s between my legs, tugging the jeans down and off.
On her knees, her blond hair streaming over her shoulders, she makes a gorgeous picture I’ll recall on many future lonely nights. Only one thing could make her more perfect right now. I sit up, brushing my lips over hers while my hands snake around her back to the tips of the ribbon keeping her corset in place. “May I?”
“Uh huh.”
I do, and the garment falls away, leaving smooth golden skin and small, beautiful tits in its wake. I press a kiss to each while my fingers dance up her spine, and her body shuddering under mine is exquisite.
I could keep going like this for hours—touching, kissing, tasting, sucking—but Samara clearly has other plans. She pushes me back to the pillows and follows me down, her tongue sweeping over my lips. I reach up to cup her head so I can kiss her more deeply, but she slips out of my grasp before I can, kissing my neck, down my throat, along my collarbone.
