by Box Set
“Hey, Marc?” I asked on a whim.
“Yeah?” He looked up with a smile as warm as cinnamon.
“Are you subletting while you’re gone?” His smile disappeared into the furrows of his brow. I noted that this was clearly a stressful subject. Fair enough, subletting was nothing fun in the best of circumstances, but when you are not even in the country to deal with any mishaps… ugh. Big ugh.
“No. I’ll continue to pay my half. You’ll just.” He didn’t trail off so much as stopped talking. Coughed. Coughed again. Maybe he was coming down with something. I fervently hoped I wouldn’t get it too, but his tongue had been inside my mouth, so. We’d recover together, super romantically. I meant not romantically! Not!
“I’ll just,” I reassured him. With all that time to myself, and his piece of the rent still covered, I was so going to install a mini-studio in the living room. It wouldn’t bother a soul. Maybe Lizzie. But she didn’t live here, so her perfectionist ways didn’t count. I’d tape tarps to the flooring and walls. I wasn’t going to be rude and lose the deposit, I was just not going to be bothered with niceties like places for my friends to sit. Then, my life refocused, I’d forget about Marc, make a million (or thousand) dollars, and get my own apartment.
A studio of my own. The thought was blissful. With that thought, I could shove down my nervousness about my newly-discovered feelings. My entire body relaxed, I could feel it go. Better than wine, the thought of a studio. Art was everything. Guess I’ll survive, I thought to myself with a smirk, and went back to becoming an absolute expert in viticulture.
Chapter 13
In retrospect, we both should have known that the idea of only a single bottle of wine was laughable. A mere fantasy.
It was also quite a coup that we were even allowed back into the Culinary Center after stumbling out last night, holding each other upright. But hey, if nothing else, we were paying customers, so.
“You guys again? I feel like maybe this isn’t the best idea,” said the wine guy, in lieu of a hello. He was apparently running the tasting event we’d decided to crash last minute. If I weren’t already with the only guy on earth I was interested in impressing, I might have been embarrassed by that.
“No way,” I told him indignantly. “It’s totally the best idea.”
“Yeah. Me and my screwmate are going to crush this,” Marc added, and my heart gave a little squeeze. Okay, a giant one.
“Screwmates? I love that comic!” the guy answered brightly. Whaaaaat. This was entirely unexpected. Marc opened his mouth, maybe to ask, or maybe not, but I wasn’t going to allow it no matter what.
“Hey, look! A snack buffet!” I pointed. “You wanna grab us a good selection? We gotta be less ridiculous tonight.” And with that I quickly steered Marc into the room and set him to work. Then I turned back to wine guy and let the nice girl attitude drop. My eyes narrowed. My jaw clenched. I grabbed his shirt collar.
I looked super badass, I could just tell. It was going to have to go into the comic, but first—
“You can’t tell him about the comic. Not a goddamn word, do you understand?” I hissed, holding onto his button-down for all I was worth.
“I won’t! Holy shit! I won’t say anything else about it! I didn’t know you didn’t—” I cut him off by using my free hand to point at my name tag sticker.
“And I’m Brandon. Wait—ooooohhhh,” said Brandon, the pieces all coming together for him. “It’s you. You are Maddy and he is Markus. And he doesn’t know.”
“Bingo, buddy. And this is not the time or place for him to find out.” Marc caught my eye from across the room and gave a little wave. I dropped Brandon’s shirt and pretended to be dusting him off. From what, I have no idea, but Marc went back to his business, so I guess it works as well in real life as it typically does in the movies.
“So it’s real, then? You guys are roommates? And you’re doing it? What’s going to happen next? And where did you get those Sexy Ninja suits? My wife would die for a set of those. We read the episodes together the second you post.”
“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” I grimaced, peeking back as Marc headed our way. “But, um, you really like it?”
“Hey! Are you okay?” he asked, handing me a plate filled with crackers, cheese, and little topped bread-looking things.
“Yup,” I said. “Just chitchatting with Brandon about the evening. Apologizing for last night and all that.” My eyes narrowed at the poor guy again. I hoped against hope he’d remain a fan after my whack-job behavior. However, that took a backseat to my desperate need to silence him. Speaking of whack jobs… No, killing him would be messy. Plus, it wouldn’t play well when I put it in the comic.
“Oh, yeah, man, we are definitely sorry about that. And we have learned our lesson. Tonight, Madison and Marc shall be upstanding citizens, and excellent wine tasters. Can you show me where the restroom is?” He handed me his plate and Brandon’s face underwent a series of emotional responses before finally settling on a polite smile. I eye-checked him once more for good measure as he walked away, and then found our table.
The bread-thingies were excellent, and I polished them off in quick order. A shadow fell across me plate, and I looked up only to be dazzled by my Hot Professor roommate all over again. It was so very unfair how good he looked. Then again, from the way his eyes were lingering on me, I did too. Thank Odin, because I’d watched three online makeup tutorials trying to nail this subtle glow.
“I thought I had some crostinis,” he said. So that’s what they were. My eyes darted around, unable to meet his.
“They’d gone off. I got rid of yours,” I told him. And at the next opportunity, I planned to get rid of the entire platter. Into my face. Madison and Crostini, sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G.
“Oh, thank you,” he said, smiling at me and carefully smearing a little cheese on a cracker. I could almost have felt guilty, if the delicious flavors weren’t still in my mouth keeping that from happening. Luckily, Brandon cleared his throat and started addressing the class at that moment. To be honest, I ignored everything he said in favor of watching Marc make serious listening faces and occasionally jot things down on the tasting cards we’d found on the table.
When the lady who was assisting came along to pour our first glasses, I didn’t even know what variety we were working with. Luckily, I figured it out the same way I passed algebra—I peeked at someone else’s paper.
Marc had, naturally, written it at the top, underlined. I cast my mind back to this afternoon to recall everything I now knew about Napa Valley cabernets. Terroir, lots of terroir. I wrote that down on my own card. I felt very good about this tasting already. Following the lead of everyone else, I swirled and sniffed. Was that—was that the dryness resulting from an abundance of nitrogen in the soil I could scent?
I took a slurpy sip, introducing air to the wine in my mouth as the book had suggested. Definitely some dryness.
“This wine is very light for a cabernet,” Marc remarked.
“Oh yes. Dry, even,” I said.
“Do you also taste the mocha?” he asked. Two such sophisticates had surely never been in this class before. Mocha was exactly what I was tasting, now that he said it. It was on the tip of my tongue, literally. We both wrote it on our cards.
“Is everyone ready?” Brandon asked from the front of the room. “The cab you just sampled should have been fairly light for the varietal, and contained hints of mocha on the finish.”
Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather. Yes, I had been feeling good about our studies, but to actually get the exact verbage as the freaking wine guy? Unbelievable. I was grinning so hard I knew my cheeks would hurt the next day. It would have been a great time for a high five, but I was still trying to play it cool in front of Brandon. Marc wasn’t, apparently, because his hand went up for one right away. I smacked it with mine, relishing the brief contact of our palms.
I cleansed my palate with a cheese-y cracker, wishing it was a cro
stini, and eagerly awaited the next glass. After a long and droning speech by Brandon that I ignored as thoroughly as the last, and for the same reasons, a glass of white came around.
Again utilizing my sneaky method to determine that we were about to sip a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, I flipped through my mental files. Sheep. Hobbits. Wine. Surely I had picked up more than that. Wasn’t there some volcanic shit in the dirt? Fairly certain, I added that to the card. But classily, with asterisks instead of the last three letters.
“Lalalalalala,” Marc was rolling the wine around on his tongue. “Melons.”
I imitated him. Right on again. Melalalalon, all right.
“Marc,” I said. “Those books were a legitimately good idea. I take back all the things I said before.”
“Books are sexy,” he said, and toasted me. In his hands, they goddamn were. Now, if only I could get him to borrow a copy of my first Transmetropolitan graphic novel, my fancy lacy undies would actually explode. Maybe I’d just casually leave it on the coffee table and see if it piqued his interest.
“Do you like cats?” I asked, running my finger around the rim of the glass.
“Um. I guess? We have a few mousers on the farm. They aren’t terribly friendly, though. More wild than not.” He seemed confused, but I appreciated his willingness to roll with my careening train of thought. “Do you?”
“No.” Cats were little fuckers who sat on your notebook while you were in the middle of sketching and stepped on the keyboard while you were in the middle of uploading. I did not cats even a little bit, and as far as I was concerned, not dealing with Scarlet’s fluffy nightmare was the best thing to come out of our roommate-breakup.
“Not like a watermelon, though,” Marc sipped again and said, seamlessly moving us back to our mission.
“No, definitely not,” I agreed. “Honeydew. Or cantaloupe. A gentler melon. Volcanic shit.”
Brandon hopped back on the mic, and lo and behold, cantaloupe was also his take on the wine we’d just had. We were on fire. We were crushing wine tasting. We were about to get our glasses picked up, so we swiftly drained them.
Boom, boom, boom, we drank and made notes and chatted. Between Marc’s excellent tastebuds and my excellent recall—we were nine out of ten by the end. Our drunkenness was probably a nine out of ten, too, I thought to myself as I emptied the crostini tray into my purse.
Go figure. It turned out Marc was right all along, learning the descriptors of different varieties actually really helped me discern what I was actually tasting. I saw Brandon heading our way with a stern look on his face, but I had prepared for this possibility earlier, when I was more clearheaded. I handed him a sketch of himself I had made on a cocktail napkin and thanked him.
Then Marc thanked him even more profusely. I used the distraction to grab a roll of crackers, as well. And then the Uber driver was calling from out front and another night had passed in Overland Park, Kansas in the bottom of a wine barrel. There were worse ways to spend an evening. This time, though, we really couldn’t return. For one thing, Brandon was probably printing Wanted posters with our faces on them even now.
On the drive home, I lay in Marc’s lap and ate crostini from my purse while he knocked out the crackers. I think both of us were feeling loads better by the time we unlocked the front door. We were for sure feeling better once the coffee was made and poured. And by the time we were in pajamas and drinking our java on The Couch That Will Never See Action Again, life was beautiful. We high fived again, and agreed that we had conquered wine.
“Truly, you impressed me tonight. And I impressed me, too,” I told him. “We work really well together.”
“We’re a good team,” he said. Which reminded me, of course, that being a team was not a sexy thing. It was a practical thing. And that I had sworn to keep the pieces of my heart intact, if a little bruised. So I scooted myself a little farther down the couch. Accidental touches would only increase the difficulty here.
There was no room for flirting. There was only the path forward, which diverged sharply from his.
“Welp. Guess we’re totally done with each other now,” I said. I looked at my coffee mug instead of Marc. “Which is good. Things are going to ramp back up at work, so I’ll need to really focus.”
Although both of those things were true, the odds of me not spending all my shifts mooning around seemed slim.
“Me too. Lots of work to finish up before France.” He was silent, and so was I.
“Totally done,” I said again. It bore repeating, to myself, at least.
“Completely done,” he repeated. “I guess I’m just going to go to bed, then.”
“Yup.” I mean, what else was there to say? We’d had a fun night. We’d had a fun month, actually. I hoped he’d look back at it as fondly as I would. At least we’d always have Screwmates. Well, me and my thousands of new fans would, anyway.
Assuming that wasn’t a mistake, of course.
We walked into our respective rooms and closed the doors. I walked over to my bed, thinking maybe I’d sketch. Or maybe just read. Or maybe—fuck it. Thirty seconds after I’d closed my door, I opened it again, and found Marc doing the same thing down the hall. There was still nothing else that needed saying as we attacked each other with breath and lips and hands.
Nothing that needed saying when he made that noise that said I’d given him a nip.
Nothing that needed saying as our pajamas started flying around the hallway.
Our bodies said it all for us. And our bodies said it better than our mouths ever could have.
Chapter 14
Except, of course, that mouths can do other things that say a lot, too, and within another thirty seconds, Marc’s mouth was telling me all sorts of things. Namely, that he was an oral god. But also that he somehow found me as irresistible as I found him. Whaaaaat. Did I say life was beautiful? No. Life was transcendent.
As I bucked against his tongue, I wondered why on earth I had sworn this off. What was a little heartbreak in the face of—yes, yes, yes another orgasm? For this feeling, for the pleasure of his scruffy face in between my thighs while my fingers curled into his bedsheets, I could stand to suffer a little. If he wasn’t going to That Place for another few weeks, I would seduce him at every opportunity between now and then.
After all, it wasn’t like he was making any sort of effort to stay away, either. Right? I may have been rationalizing a bad decision, but I didn’t care.
Especially not when his tongue was doing that.
And even more especially when his finger joined his tongue to work me in tandem.
No amount of resolve could stand in the face of such an assault on my defenses. No one’s could. It wasn’t my fault.
Surely all our neighbors could hear the yelps I was making. Well, they could darn well get used to it. My tipsy, horny self was going to write many checks her screwmate wouldn’t cash before it was all said and done. I could do it. I could do whatever I wanted. I was a strong, independent lady, and I wanted meaningless sex that mean something to me.
And then he hit that spot that made my toes curl and I stopped bothering to justify anything at all. When I came down, he was peeking up at me with an undeniable smirk. Well, he’d earned the right to a little cockiness, with all his sex-godliness. But I was not prepared for what he said next.
“Madison. Remember how we agreed that books are sexy? Let’s get some now.” I opened my mouth to respond, but nothing came out. That was it? We were quitting before the main event—to read? I knew he was studious, but this took things to an unacceptable new level. I wasn’t going to be able to focus on any written words when I was this revved up to focus on his dick. My horror only lasted a moment, because then he bounded back into bed with a copy of the Kama Sutra in hand.
Did I say life was transcendent? Life was nirvana.
I pulled my knees up to my chest and leaned into him as he opened the book on his lap. Thank goodness I had decided we would do this more often, bec
ause the feeling of his hard body against my softness was the stuff dreams were made of. And the little excited grin on his face as he handed me my glasses to look gave my heart a little extra pitter-pat.
We had to flip past a few position ideas that looked just plain weird and acrobatic. The fourth page was very promising, though. Ascent To Desire relied entirely on his arm strength. I side-eyed them again just to double check that they were as ripped as I remembered. Yep. They were.
“This one first?” He didn’t wait for an answer, just smothered me with kisses as he moved back between my thighs, this time moving my legs so I was straddling him. I let my head fall to the side as he moved down my jaw and towards the spot behind my ear that made shivers roll like thunder down my spine. I was jelly in his arms as he swung his own legs over the bed. I rose up on my knees long enough for him to put on the condom waiting in his bedside drawer, then sank slowly down onto his shaft.
Once I’d settled fully on his lap, completely impaled, he put his hands under my ass to support me and slowly stood up. It always seemed like a cliché to hear “no one had ever been that deep before” in a romance novel, but legit, no one ever had. Of course no one had ever supported my weight with nothing more than their hands and their cock before, either.
I started, slowly, to shift my hips. In this position, he was grinding against my clit with every small change of stance. Once we were completely stable, he started pushing back against me, building momentum until I was bouncing up and down on him.
The promised ascent took almost no time at all, but I held off my orgasm through sheer force of will, just to enjoy it a little longer. When Marc’s arms started to get tired, he lay me back down on the bed, and I took my turn on top of him. The book lay discarded on a pillow, so I flipped around until I found something called The Perch that looked both doable and enjoyable.
Marc sat back up, and I turned around to sit on his lap facing away from him. In this position, his hands were free to roam my body. And roam they did. I kept forgetting to move as he gently kneaded my breasts. My head rolled back onto his shoulder, and he kissed that spot again.
