I had to fight to keep myself from grinning. She was home, and she clearly hadn’t had a very good time. At all.
“You’re back early,” I said, keeping my butt in my seat even though every instinct told me to get up and pull her into my arms. She was headed right for the couch, anyway. She collapsed onto a cushion, stretching her body across the full length of the couch, slung her forearm over her eyes, and groaned.
“It feels late,” she muttered. “Do you know where they sent us? She dropped her arm and lifted her head just enough to look at me. I tore my eyes away from the strip of skin that had been exposed where her shirt had ridden up over the waistband of her jeans. Really damn cute jeans that perfectly clung to her hips, like they were inviting me to hook my thumbs into the belt loops. “Uncle Phil’s Philly Phun Zone,” she said before covering her eyes again.
“I don’t know what that is but I’m guessing it’s like…a garbage dump? Or maybe a fish cannery?”
She puffed out a laugh, and then brought her hands down to rest on her stomach with a smile still lingering on her lips. Her eyes drifted closed, like she could fall asleep right there. “It might as well have been. It’s local, obviously. Arcade games and skee-ball and pizza.”
She drew up her legs and pulled off her shoes, dropping them on the floor. When she stretched out again, I saw their half-moon outlines where they had cut into the top of her foot, some looking close to bleeding.
“Jesus, Liz. What the hell kind of shoes were you wearing?”
She laughed, her eyes only half open. “It’s one of those mysteries of girls that we never tell you. Flats are actually not all that comfortable. Especially when they’re new.”
“Okay, that’s ridiculous. Hang on. I’ll be right back.”
I rummaged around in one of the handful of boxes I still hadn’t unpacked and came up triumphantly with my first aid kid, which resembled a tool box more than it did most household Band-aid and Neosporin outfits.
“What in the world?” Liz asked with a soft chuckle, now propped up on her elbows. I dropped the kit at the foot of the couch and slid my palm under her ankles, lifting them up and sitting under them so they lay across my lap. “Who are you, Mr. Safety? God, I remember you mixing chemicals and blowing stuff up in the kitchen sink without so much as your glasses on!”
I winced at the memory. “Yeah, and it only took one time in chem lab singeing my own eyebrows off doing exactly that to get me to keep burn cream close at hand.”
She craned her neck and peered into my med kit, which I’d now opened and pulled some bandages out of. “That’s a lot more than burn cream.”
“Yeah, well there was also the time I sliced my thumb open on a vernier, and scorched my arm with sodium hydroxide, and branded myself with a soldering iron. Nobody told me when I went for my engineering degree that I’d be training to be a lab medic at the same time. But there it is.”
I slid my hand along the bottom of her foot, and her leg jerked.
“Ticklish?”
“Shut up,” she said, smiling at me with sparkling eyes.
I gripped her heel firmly with one hand and spread some antiseptic cooling salve over the largest of the raw spots. She let out a long, gentle sigh, with a soft smile that could only be relief. Once her poor feet were all bandaged up, I slid my palm around to the arch of her foot, digging my thumb in. She groaned when I stroked against a tight muscle, and I suddenly remembered that her feet would be able to feel the effects of that groan was having on my crotch. I adjusted a little bit, then pulled a throw blanket over my lap, just to increase the buffer zone just a little.
She looked so comfortable, I expected her to drift off to sleep, but a minute later, I caught her studying my face, like she was on the edge of asking something.
“What?” I asked.
“Just…have you ever gone on a blind date—on a first date—and been a totally self-absorbed asshole?”
“Not…that I know of,” I said carefully. “I guess I’ve been on a couple dates where I never heard back from the girl. But those dates seemed pretty normal. I guess I always just tried to be myself.”
Liz snorted. “I guess that makes sense, then. This guy - Brad - was definitely not afraid to be himself.”
“But I assume, from your tone of general contempt for him, his true self is a complete douchebag?”
She sighed and let her head tip back again. “I don’t know. Maybe we were just that incompatible. Just…I thought I looked cute tonight. Not gorgeous, obviously, we were going to a freaking arcade - but he was clearly not admiring my outfit. Like, at all. We’re talking actual disdain coming from this guy.”
“You’re kidding me, right?” Liz looked incredible. As far as I had seen, she always did. Her outfit tonight - a flowy, silky blouse with form-fitting jeans - was perfect. In fact, the only thing a little less than perfect about it was the way the loose and flowy bottom hem of her top was practically begging me to let my fingers slide up under it. It didn’t help that I already knew how completely perfect her stomach was, with her skin so smooth and that adorable little mole just an inch above her belly button.
Dammit, JJ. Calm. The fuck. Down.
“It was like…he was weirdly transfixed on my shoes? That they weren’t heels? And he said more than once that I just didn’t look like my picture. You know, the one on the Philly Illustrated site. Which I guess is true because I don’t have on the cutesy dress and dangerous heels and gobs of makeup. And Photoshop.”
“Of course you don’t look like the picture,” I said. “You look like you. Like a real girl. Uh, woman. A real one.”
She raised an eyebrow at me.
“You look better in real life than in the picture,” I clarified. “You look almost like a Barbie doll in that picture. Who wants to date a doll?”
“Him, apparently. He kept talking about all his magazine modeling work. Commenting that I was wearing a different outfit, my hair was different… Maybe all the other girls he’s ever met transfer flawlessly from the page to real life.”
“Mmm. So his type is paper dolls, then.”
That earned me a real laugh, from deep in her belly. I swore that genuine smile of hers was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen.
Liz’s head lolled to the side and her eyes drifted shut. I ran a hand down her shin, squeezing her ankle when I reached the end. “Close your eyes,” I said. “I have some reading to do. I was gonna be sitting here anyway.” It wasn’t a total lie.
“If you’re sure…” she said, not even completing her sentence before she fell fast asleep. I reached over her legs to grab my stack of syllabi and a highlighter, and dug in.
* * *
The next thing I knew, my eyes fluttered open in our dark living room, the light filtering in from the street lamps the only thing illuminating the dark in front of me. My face was smooshed against something warm and soft, and I nuzzled deeper in with a satisfied hum.
Then my pillow started to breathe.
I blinked, hard, then dragged my heavy head up and saw her. Lizzie Palmer, my own personal gorgeous, sweet-smelling body pillow. And I’d snuggled my head right onto her boob.
Chapter 14
Liz
His face looked even cuter when he was asleep. The strong jaw that had become prominent since we were kids was somehow softened when his mouth hung slightly open. It occurred to me that he was probably drooling all over one of my favorite shirts in the same moment that I realized I didn’t care.
His sharp intake of breath told me he was waking up, and in response, I snuggled a bit further down, trapping his body even more tightly between mine and the back of the couch. I didn’t know what the hell we were doing here, but instinct told me that I just wanted him close.
Jordan tilted his chin up and blinked his eyes sleepily. I couldn’t help but smile at him. In that moment, the familiarity and sweetness of our past relationship came flooding back to me. Yeah, we’d hassled each other as kids, and I was sure Jordan r
esented me sometimes just as much as I resented him for taking away from my time with Kiera. But I knew the crinkle of his forehead when he was perplexed and the tone of his voice when he was frustrated. I recognized the t-shirts he still owned, which now fit him much more snugly. When he smiled, his eyes crinkled up at the corners like they always had.
JJ may have been a new, incredibly sexy force in my life, but Jordan—the guy who fell asleep on me and drooled on my shirt—he was home.
“Mmmph,” he said, leaning his forehead against my collarbone for a second before starting to push himself up. My heart sank, and my arms tightened around his waist. Either I was stronger than I thought or he hadn’t really wanted to get up in the first place, because he came crashing back down on me, smooshing my boobs into his chest and his lips into mine. Something about it felt desperate, fleeting, like if I didn’t hold onto it, it would float away.
So, in that split second, I decided to hold on—tight. I moved my hands to his head, letting one comb through his hair and the other cup his jaw. I barely noticed that he tried to pull away for a breath before pressing just as hard into the kiss as I was. His hands snaked under me, his fingers gently digging paths through my shirt, catching on my bra clasp. Everything was too hot, too encumbered - I wanted both the shirt and the bra gone.
Finally, my 30-minute sculpt class from my UPenn days paid off—I used my stronger-than-average abs to pull myself up, and him along with me. He managed to get his legs under him so he was sitting straight up against the back of the couch. I grinned. Exactly where I wanted him.
I pushed up on my knees and swung one leg over his lap, spurred on by the thick outline of his cock through his jeans. I let out a breathy moan as I settled myself over it, satisfied, if only a little bit, by the pressure of it between my legs. In one smooth motion, I tugged my blouse up over my head, saying a prayer that the way the movement mussed my hair was sexy and not disastrous. I bit my lip and ran my fingers under the hem of his gorgeously-fitted tee. “Now you.”
I was more than a little disappointed when he hesitated. For the first time since he’d woken up, I dared to look into his eyes. One of his brows raised and tilted his head a bit, searching my eyes, too. His lips pressed into a thin line, and my heart twisted. He was going to reject me. That would make two guys in one night. Awesome.
“Lizzie, are you sure?” He traced my jaw with his fingertips and ran his thumb once across my chin, like he was priming my mouth for more contact.
“I don’t—It’s not really wrong, is it?” My lips twisted and I felt my throat tightening. “Tonight…he was so clearly not for me. I didn’t even kiss him. I… I didn’t even want to.” With every word, I willed him to understand what I couldn’t bring myself to say—he was the only guy I could imagine myself kissing. At least for the near future. I wiggled my hips, pressing my crotch further down onto his hardness.
He sucked in a breath and his eyes fluttered shut. I smirked. Every time we were together, I loved that look a little bit more. I watched, mesmerized, as my fingers seemed to drag themselves through his hair. He’d learned how to take care of it since he was a kid. His blond dad wouldn’t have known how to teach him even if he had still been alive, and his mom had always wanted it buzzed short. I leaned down to kiss him.
He let out a low hum, like he was pausing to savor this. I pulled back just enough to smile at a memory that just poked its way through the lust-induced fog in my mind. “Do you remember when you went to that wannabe barber when you were sixteen?” I asked.
He gave me a quick, soft kiss and then returned my grin. “And I came back with that terrible excuse for a fade? My head looked like a damn layer cake.”
I kissed him again, harder. “You didn’t want your mom to see it because she’d say ‘I told you to just cut it short,” I recalled. “So I buzzed it down for you.”
“I didn’t appreciate you then,” he replied. “Did I even say ‘thank you?’”
“Can’t hold it against you,” I said, shrugging. “It was a truly horrible fade.”
Jordan narrowed his eyes at that and then dug his thumbs in under my ribs. I squealed with laughter. The jerk knew I was ticklish. Even reflexes didn’t make me pull away from him – instead, I pressed into him closer so that his arms instinctively circled my waist. I melted into his kisses, mesmerized by the stroke of his tongue against mine. We were hot and heavy again in no time.
“Do you want a condom?” he ground out as his thumbs dug into the skin just over my hips.
I leaned down, pressing a smirking kiss to his lips. “Only if you do.”
He growled in response, moving as if to flip me beneath him, but I stopped him. “No, “ I said. “I want you just like this.” I leaned to the side and his tight grip moved to my thigh, pressing so hard even through my jeans that I half expected a bruise to form there.
That just reminded me that my jeans were in the way, so I peeled myself off his lap and stood, shimmying out of them. They brushed against the bandages he’d so lovingly applied to my feet and his sweetness coursed a rush of warmth through me. Right before climbing back over him, I made the call to pull my panties off as well. The past week with JJ, plus a full future docket of dates, had inspired me to step up my grooming game, and I happened to know exactly how cute this particular view of me had been just this morning.
I had to swallow down the extra drool that watching him tug off his own pants and boxer briefs caused. Most girls I knew thought dicks were ugly, and I tended to agree, but something about his was beautiful. It was certainly big. Maybe it was just that looking at it brought back the memory of how it felt inside me, and I was wearing sex-fogged glasses.
It didn’t matter one bit.
I straddled him again, and the slide of his cock through my wetness brought a groan from both of us. He mouthed at my neck, then at the base of my throat, then down to the swell of my breast, sucking a mark there. I wondered if anyone would notice at work, and what they would think it meant about how my date had went. When he slid the strap of my bra down my shoulder, then thumbed at my nipple through the lace, I decided I really, really didn’t care what anyone thought. I arched my back, pushing my breasts right in front of his face, leaving no doubt about exactly what I wanted him to do.
“It’s not really fair that you took your panties off but left this on,” he murmured, tracing the bottom edge of the bra strap around to my back, then flicking the clasp open with his deft engineer’s fingers.
“Your shirt is still on,” I countered, struggling to get words out as he pulled the bra completely off, shoving it onto the couch cushion. My fingers tugged pathetically at the short sleeves while he latched onto the side of my boob, drawing deeply on the skin, almost certainly leaving a mark that I’d feel for days. Every time I turned, I’d think of this moment.
“Patience,” he said, chuckling as his lips moved farther in. He flicked his tongue against my nipple and I whimpered, clawing my fingernails along his scalp to signal my approval. “I want you to know how beautiful you are,” he said before taking my breast in his mouth and sucking hard. “How perfect,” he said as he moved to the other side, then driving me wild with the same treatment on the other side. “I want you to understand,” he said when he finally released me with a loud pop of lost suction, “that anyone who doesn’t want you, doesn’t want to touch you, or kiss you, or talk to you, or be with you, is one hundred percent idiotic.” He alternately licked and kissed his way back up to my neck, then to the space just behind my ear. His breath blew hot there, ruffling the little hairs there and sending electricity skittering down my spine. “Pizza bloating or not.”
I threw my head back and laughed, the spell broken, but not at all in a bad way. I grabbed his face with both hands and kissed him, hard and messy. “That’s why it’s good we had a nap. The pizza bloat is gone.”
He wrinkled his nose and groaned.
“Too soon?” I teased. “We could kill time by taking this off…” Finally, I tugged his tee
off over his head, smiling fondly at the way his hair stood up every which way when I did.
I tossed it to the side, then resettled myself on his lap, making his cock drag through my folds and nudge against my clit in the most delicious way. I let my nails trail over his pecs and trace the slim muscles on his stomach. I’d painted them a soft pastel pink before my date, and they looked gorgeous pressing against his warm brown skin. I wanted to take a picture of my pale freckled arm draped over his chest, forever remember how it looked like part of him had blended with me, like I’d have a reminder of his skin pressing against mine forever.
I gasped as he gripped my hips, shifting me slightly backward and then tugging me forward again. His cock pressed against the little bundle of nerves, and it was like he’d flipped a switch. Suddenly I was frantic, grinding my hips down and tossing my head back, then forward once again to give him another desperate kiss. I gasped out every word. “Need to feel you—” while he groaned,
“Need to be inside you.”
Things seemed to happen in warp speed then. I was so hyper focused on getting him where I wanted him that it was like every one of my senses became eagle-sharp.
When my fingers reached the curls at the base of his cock, reflex pushed me up off my heels. His groan when my fingers wrapped around him filled the room and resonated with something deep inside me. Everything converged into one overwhelming, crystal-clear feeling—this was so undeniably, deliciously right.
I guided him to my entrance and slowly, slowly sunk down, allowing him to fill me bit by perfect bit. God, he was perfect. The friction of him inching into me traveled across every nerve ending, leaving me breathless, not knowing whether I wanted more, faster, or whether I needed a moment to catch my breath. He wasn’t quite in all the way to the hilt when he bumped against my cervix, sending a jolt of pleasure-pain through me that made me cry out.
Just Down the Hall Page 12
