Just Down the Hall

by Alessandra Thomas

  Her back hit the wet tile with a slap, and now I was the one tilting my chin up to kiss her. This may have been the perfect position for us - my mouth was in easy reach of her lips, neck, collarbone, and stunningly perfect tits.

  Yeah. This was heaven.

  The shower water hit the back of my calves now, safely out of the way of where my mouth wanted to be to be but in the right spot to keep me warm and the room steamy. Perfect.

  I got to work licking and biting along her shoulder, then retraced the path an inch lower along her collarbone. Then, the only uncharted territory left (at least, for today) was her chest. Levering her weight between my hips and the wall notched my dick in the perfect space between her ass cheeks, and gave me a free hand to admire, touch, and play with those perfect tits of hers.

  I took my time, tracing my tongue around the outer curve of one and sucking a series of love bites there. She panted every time my tongue laved her skin, like this one little flick of my tongue might be her undoing. I grinned as I nipped at the underside of her right breast and she groaned. Any time she looked in the mirror or twisted around while she was getting dressed in the next couple days, she’d see evidence that we’d been together. Hopefully she’d remember how much she loved it.

  If I was lucky, she’d want more.

  I paused for a second at the thought, letting the tip of my tongue idly swish against her skin. Where the hell was that desire coming from? I’d never felt like I wanted to mark a girl as mine before, to make her feel weird about being with anyone else in the near future. Liz was making my head go places it had never gone before - part of me even wished I could say I was sorry about it.

  My thoughts broke when one of her hands snaked behind her back and under her ass, gently circling the head my cock, which was hard as steel and felt five degrees hotter than the water. I moaned at the contact. Something about the delicate attention of her fingers combined with slight scrape of her nails with every pump was already driving me absolutely wild. I growled and switched to her other breast, no teasing this time. I sucked her nipple into my mouth hungrily, stroking the underside of her breast with my tongue with every pull. She moaned and arched into me, pumping me harder, now fanning her fingers out every time she reached the base to caress my balls, then pulling away.

  It was an exquisite torture, and soon one of us would break. We both knew it.

  Reluctantly, I pulled back, taking the time to lightly scrape the perfect hard bud of her nipple with my teeth before completely letting go. I tilted my head back one more time and plundered her mouth with a bruising kiss, which she returned measure for measure. When I forced my lips away from hers and licked my bottom one, I could swear I tasted a trace of blood.

  “If we’re not careful, I’ll come before you do.”

  She shrugged and grinned down at me like she was Huck Finn and I was blueberry pie. Like she was getting to taste something she never thought she’d have. “I wouldn’t mind that much, except that’s not what I came for.”

  “Tell me what you want,” I murmured against her ear before sucking the lobe into my mouth. She moaned, even louder than she had when I was doing my worst to her tits. Who knew she’d love attention to her ear so much? I grinned. She wasn’t the only one winning here.

  “You. Inside me. Please.”

  She didn’t have to beg, but hell if I wasn’t glad she did.

  “You okay if we don’t have a condom?”

  “I’m clean, if you are.”

  I sucked a line of wet kisses down her neck, and she let loose a rhythmic whimper. “And—ahh—I’m on the pill.”

  “Music to my ears,” I grunted, already imagining how amazing it would feel to have her surrounding me again, this time with no barriers.

  With the angle I was bracing her against the wall, I didn’t even have to reach down to line myself up. I just pulled my hands back up to their perfect resting places on her hips, notched my thumbs under her hip bones one more time, centered her over me, and tugged her down as I thrust up.

  Her quick gasp followed by a throaty scream made me pause for a second, worried I’d hurt her. But when I checked her face, there was only a breathless smile.

  She tilted her eyes to mine. “More,” she said, and I got the feeling that if I didn’t give it to her, there would be hell to pay. Not that I minded one bit.

  I gripped her hips even tighter and redoubled my efforts, answering every moan and sigh with a kiss and every demand for “harder” or “right there, again!” with exactly what she asked for. As the seconds ticked by, my legs started to burn with exertion. Quickly, though, the burning turned to a steady, electric pleasure racing through every muscle and nerve. It drove me to get closer to her, faster, just as she was begging me to do the same.

  Liz’s head lolled to the side, her cheek pressing against the cool tile. “Jordan,” she panted. “I’m so—” and then she arched her back and let loose a delicious scream of ecstasy, pulling the most intense wave of pleasure I’d ever felt from every cell of my body.

  I instinctively stepped into her as we both came, chasing the closeness I craved as my orgasm faded, There was something so incredible about the feeling of her against the wall securely as her body shuddered and she drew deep, desperate open-mouthed breaths. My forehead seemed drawn to hers by some pull I had no hope of controlling, and I smiled as my breath swirled against her neck through the steam. It felt so safe here, with her, in our own little word.

  It also felt dangerously addictive.

  Finally, Liz’s eyes floated open and she turned so that our foreheads tented together. She breathed a feather-light, lingering kiss against my lips, and then groaned as she tightened her arms’ circle around my neck, pulling herself up.

  I chuckled. “Okay, sweetheart. I’ve gotcha. Easy does it.” I pressed her body to mine, and I swear my eyes rolled back in my head at the feel of her breasts pressing into my chest. She kissed my shoulder one more time as she let one leg drop, then the other, which brought her torso sliding down against mine, just a few inches.

  She could have backed away, could have claimed her own space and cleaned up and gone to bed. We didn’t owe each other anything more than that. But, without pulling away from me, she reached one arm out to grab a sponge, then pumped soap onto it from a shelf hung over the shower head. She took her time working it into a lather and then lowering it to my still half-hard cock, washing it gently and slowly, like she wanted me to feel safe. Like she wanted to make me feel loved.

  I leaned my cheek against the top of her head and allowed myself a low hum of approval. When she’d covered my whole body, knees to neck, with suds, she relinquished the sponge and I did the same for her. She was still slick and hot between her thighs, and I didn’t miss the stuttered whimper that snuck out when my fingertips lightly traced the sponge’s path.

  When the water started to cool, I reached over and turned it off. Suddenly, without constant bombardment of droplets, it felt like a spell had been broken. My heart stuttered with fear of what would happen if I broke the spell by speaking out loud. The intimacy of what had just happened felt heavy to me, but in a good way - like a thick blanket cocooning me against the scary unknown. Maybe it was because I’d known Liz for so long, but it was different from what I’d felt with any other girl, ever.

  I didn’t say a word as I reached for a towel and handed it to Liz, then got one for myself. I opened the door to the hallway, which felt blustery in comparison to the steamy bathroom, and stepped out, ready to head to my bed. But Liz was right behind me, and before I could even take a single step away from her, the pads of her fingers brushed my palm.

  “Stay with me?” she asked in a hopeful, yet confident, whisper. I just grinned and caught her around the waist, playfully tugging her in front of me.

  “As long as I get to be the big spoon,” I said in her ear. She let her head fall back to my shoulder and laughed out loud, and a thrill ran through me as the firm pillow of her stomach shook against my forearm. />
  “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  Somewhere along the way back to her bed, our towels fell on the floor, and we slid under her covers hastily, with little space between us, like the air outside those blankets would freeze our skin on contact. Liz pulled my arm back around her so my fingers were free to trace patterns around her navel. When I pressed every part of my front against her back, she sighed.

  “You called me sweetheart,” Lizzie murmured into the air, when we’d finally stopped squirming for the perfect arrangement.

  I raised my eyebrows. “Did I?” I’d call her “Princess Liz” if that’s what would make her smile. “Is that…is that okay?”

  “Just not what you would normally call someone when she’s riding you like the Cavalry.”

  I chuckled. “I guess not. But, you know. You’re more than just a rider for this stallion.”

  She laughed, a full-on, deep-from-her-belly laugh. “Is that so? What else am I? The hot stable hand?”

  “Something like that,” I said, not able to stop myself from pulling her even closer and nuzzling into her neck.

  “You know, stallions only nuzzle into people like that when they want some more sugar.”

  I pulled away from her a little, checking her expression to see if she really did want to go another round. I knew that this might be our last time doing this, and I was certainly not opposed to stretching it out further. But Liz’s eyelids were very clearly growing heavy, just like her body as it leaned into my shoulder. She let a soft laugh tumble out from the back of her throat. “Oh, I don’t know. I never rode horses, you know. Too busy playing tennis and doing summer internships and whatever other bullshit my parents decided a girl like me should be doing.”

  She had to be sleepy if she was discussing her childhood with me. She hadn’t given me very specific objections to us being together like this, but I knew one of them was that she didn’t want things to get weird between us. Her friendship with my sister was important to her, and I knew she didn’t want to bring it into whatever this thing was between us. Just as I was about to say something, though, her head grew heavy where it lay on my arm, and her breathing picked up a light snore.

  I swept her hair over her shoulder and pressed a soft kiss to the nape of her neck. I felt my eyes drift shut and sighed into the feeling of finally letting them stay that way.

  Chapter 10

  Liz

  “I have to go to work.”

  I spoke even before the streaming sunlight nudged my eyes open the next morning. I stretched my legs, wincing a little at the soreness between my thighs. Beside me, Jordan lay on his stomach, arms crossed under his head, his curls framing his brow over fluttering eyelids.

  He took a deep wakening breath, then hauled his eyes open. “Hmmm?”

  God, that voice alone could start up my libido all over again. Any other day I would have considered straddling him and going for another round, but if the sun shining through my windows, it meant I was very nearly late for work. And today, of all days, I couldn’t be late.

  It was Friday. The day the poll results would be in. The day I would spend trying to get as much information as possible on whatever Mr. Rando Philadelphia had chosen as my date before I went out with him.

  I kept trying, and failing, to stop thinking about the fact that exactly zero of the guys I’d be dating for this little journalistic romp would be the guy lying naked in bed beside me. The guy who made my heart swell and flutter whenever I thought of the gentle way he touched me, or the way his voice seemed to curl into my ear and stay until it warmed me to my toes. The guy who seemed uniquely capable of making my body feel like it could explode and melt at the same time, and like I’d love every second of it, to boot.

  “I have to go to work,” I repeated with a whine, forcing myself to shimmy out from under the covers. I snagged the flat sheet and wrapped it around my body, just under my armpits. The more tangled up I made myself in his presence, the less tempting it would be to unwind myself and drape my body over his again.

  Jordan just groaned, rolling over onto his back while shielding his eyes with crossed forearms. Unlike me, he gave absolutely zero thought to covering himself, and the comforter slid to the side just enough to give me a glimpse of his abs, the little muscle above one of his hipbones, and the edge of the thatch of hair above his cock.

  God, I loved that thing. Like, really loved it. I loved it more than I had after the last time we’d done this. I may have been becoming obsessed with it. Even addicted.

  “I only have one meeting today,” Jordan said, but then quickly groaned, covering his eyes with his hands. “And I have a thesis proposal review. Almost forgot.” He rolled onto his front, making the sheets curve over his beautiful, muscular butt. I wanted to bite it.

  “Is it a humungous paper for you, like it is for journalism?”

  “Nuh uh,” he mumbled as he lifted his face off the pillow. “I have to build something, and write a moderately-sized paper explaining how and why it works. I think.”

  “So, like, a really grownup science fair project.”

  He chuckled. “Sure, but without the trifold display. “The morning scratchiness made his voice even sexier. “You could help me with my paper, maybe. Writing’s not my strong suit.”

  My heart swelled in my chest at his trust in my abilities. “That means a lot, Jordan.”

  He gave me a soft, sleepy smile. “I’d be stupid not to ask an expert.” We shared a few seconds of eye-gazing in which I seriously considered ignoring work completely to burrow back under the covers with him. In those same seconds, though, Jordan had resigned himself to being a grownup.

  “Want me to pick up dinner for tonight? I could try cooking again, but I’d rather cut my losses and blame someone else if you accidentally ingest flaming peppers. At least for this one night.”

  I took a deep breath. Had I even told him the whole “Date an audience-selected Philly bachelor!” thing was starting this week? No time like the present, I guess. “Well, I, um…I sort of have a date tonight.”

  Slowly, Jordan let his other arm drop, pulled himself to sitting, and blinked exaggeratedly at me. Several long seconds ticked by before he said, “A date? You? Tonight?”

  “Jordan, I told you about this. The work thing, remember? Liz Dates Philly? The feature series I’m so super lucky that I get to write?” I hoped the sarcasm in my tone was evident, hoped that it hid the nervousness. I couldn’t have blurted out what I wanted to happen between us if I’d tried, but I knew one thing for sure—I didn’t want it to end.

  “Oh, my God. Yeah. I just didn’t realize it was so…soon.” He took in another deep, just-waking-up breath, and dragged his palm down over his face. “Okay. Do you—um, do you know who your date is?”

  “No,” I said, giving in to the urge to be a little closer to him, even for a few more seconds before I had to get ready. I flopped back down onto the bed and rolled on one side to face him. “The voting closes at four today. Date’s at seven.”

  “Are you okay with it?” His eyebrows drew together as he searched my expression.

  I shrugged and let out a rueful laugh. “I mean, I guess I have to be, right?”

  He shook his head. “Not really. No. Like, in the dating world, I’m pretty sure it’s protocol that nobody has to do anything they’re not okay with.”

  “But this isn’t dating,” I said, suddenly feeling defensive. “This is journalism. If I don’t ever leave my comfort zone, I’ll never get anywhere. Definitely not in my career.”

  He sighed again. “I’m not gonna argue with you. Obviously, you’re a grown woman, you can make your own decisions.”

  I smiled a little at hearing him say that. A woman. I was a grown woman. Nobody else had ever pointed that out, and he’d done it twice now, in two different contexts. Nobody else had ever even said the words, let alone treated me that way.

  Then again, nobody had ever fucked me ‘til I couldn’t see straight and then made me feel like th
e most cherished human being on the planet mere minutes later.

  “Anyway, I won’t be here for dinner tonight. But I won’t be late, either.” I looked down at my comforter while I asked him, “Do, um…do you have any plans for tonight?”

  His eyes were still trained right on me, I could feel it. “Haven’t really met anyone yet. I mean, any friends. I’ll probably just hang out here. Watch a movie or something.”

  “Okay, um…well…maybe…” I’d twisted a handful of blanket between my fingers, and released it, leaving a three-inch sweaty circle on the bed. “Maybe I’ll join you?”

  “Sounds good,” Jordan said. “Listen, Lizzie.”

  “Liz,” I said. “Everyone calls me Liz now.”

  Lizzie was a little girl.

  He nodded. “Okay. Liz. My friends call me JJ. Guess we’re grownups now, we should probably use our grownup names.”

  If I didn’t know better, I would swear I heard sadness in his voice.

  “So, um, listen,” he continued. “I don’t know what this is, between you and me.”

  My heart thumped wildly. “Well…um…we’re roommates?”

  Thank God, he just laughed. “Yeah, but a couple of times we’ve also been the stallion and the stable hand.”

  My deep laugh at that took me by surprise. I beamed at him. “Okay, we’re gonna have to banish those terms from being used in reference to us. Never, ever again.”

  “Agreed,” he said, grinning back at me, then sticking his hand out. “Let’s shake on it.”

  My mistake was in reaching my hand out to touch his. As soon we made contact, a warmth spread through me, making my stomach swoop. “But, um,” I chanced, “you want to know what this is?”

  “Yes,” he said. “And, to be clear, by ‘this’ I mean the two times we’ve had sex in the past week.”