“Hollis.”
“Adam.” I ran my tongue over my teeth. “You never say hi. Or hey. Just, ‘Hollis’.”
“I know.” He licked his lips and his eyes roamed over me briefly, almost like he was ashamed to be looking. “I like your pajamas.”
I sat back on the bed, giving up the sweater completely. “I like your towel,” I said.
He laughed and the bright flash of his teeth uncoiled something deep in my belly. There was no doubt in my mind that I wanted Adam, that I trusted him. I wanted whatever he wanted; I just hoped that what he wanted wasn’t for me to sleep apart from him tonight.
He stepped away from the closed door, coming closer to me, close enough that I had to tip my head back to look up at him. He was still pretty wet from his shower; narrow rivulets of water traced irregular paths across his tanned chest, over the muscles of his abs. I had seen him shirtless before, and it’d rocked me a little then. But he was more than shirtless now.
“I thought you’d be out in the living room with everyone else.”
“I abandoned them.” I swallowed, and swore he watched the glide of my throat. “I was tired.”
He reached out, brushing hair off of one of my shoulders. My chest heaved, like breathing was something I had to remember to do—not something innate to my respiratory system. “Are you?” he asked, his voice low and dark. “Tired?”
I didn’t trust my voice to speak then, so I merely shook my head.
“Okay.” The side of his mouth tipped up and his hand landed on the curve of my shoulder, teasing the strap of my top. I couldn’t believe that such a simple touch had the effect it did. Even though I was sitting, my knees trembled. It was as if every part of my body came alive when he looked at me like that.
I wanted to touch him, but my face was right at his towel. And even though I was ready for that, I wasn’t eager for this to accelerate at a pace that I couldn’t keep up with.
The back of his hand slid down my arm, leaving a trail of goosebumps in its wake. My body was not a liar, it spoke for me when I couldn’t.
His hand moved back up, not stopping until it cupped my chin, tipping it with just his fingers as his head came down. “You surprise me, all the time,” he said against my lips. He wasn’t kissing me, not really, more just resting his mouth on mine as his hand curled around the back of my neck, to support my head. “Are you sure?” he asked.
I swallowed again, willing my voice to be normal when I said, “I’ve been sure.”
And then, he kissed me.
37
Adam
I didn’t have words for what she did to me. She was part witch and part merciful angel, pulling me in with one of her steady gazes like a spell, and relieving me when I needed relief the most. But the kind of relief I needed wasn’t about the destination; it was about the journey there. I needed to take my time with her, watch her come undone under my hands, under my mouth. Because really, what I wanted was to see her completely uncontrolled, to give her what her body wanted.
I had been nursing some pretty carnal thoughts about her for the last week, at least, but seeing her body in that slip of satin, that swell of her breasts pressing against the fabric begging to be let out, had undone me in a way I couldn’t articulate.
My mouth moved off of hers to glide along her jaw, testing her earlobe between my teeth, before I made my way south. Because she was sitting and I was standing, I had to brace both hands on the bed, on either side of her, to keep from falling on top of her.
My hands landed on top of hers, our fingers linking, as I squeezed and moved my kisses across her chest. The angle of her body pushed her breasts out for attention, but I neglected them for the time being, fully committed to tasting Hollis’s skin in the most thorough way possible. She smelled so fucking good, like some kind of dark dessert, the kind that made your mouth water before you even knew what it tasted like. I had never known a woman like her, and I had never known this kind of deep fascination that lured me to her over and over again. I supposed that’s what infatuation was.
I wanted to tell her, to give her words that would mean something. To make her feel the way I was feeling. I had never dated anyone for long, not long enough to form some kind of intangible attachment to them. But I’d be damned if someone tried to separate me from Hollis—especially at that moment, when she tasted so damn good, when her very skin vibrated under my touch.
With my head, I nudged her chin up so I could better taste the skin under it. And because I couldn’t resist, I nipped the skin lightly, tugging it between my teeth as I worked my way back down.
She let out a sigh that provided a gap in her tank, allowing me to look all the way down her top.
Fuck me.
I had to calm myself down. Already, I was straining against the towel but Hollis wasn’t someone I wanted just to fuck. I wanted more than that. I wouldn’t spend the time analyzing the why of that, but I knew I wanted more not just for her, but me too.
I rubbed her skin with my cheek, relishing in the way it turned pink from the scruff on my face. There she was, my rose; blooming for me again.
I moved across her shoulder until I came to the top of her tank. Our hands were still clasped, the weight of my body bearing down against them. I didn’t want to let go of her just yet, so I grasped the strap between my teeth and nudged it off of one shoulder and then moved to the other one.
The top clung stubbornly to her breasts, as if daring me to challenge it. Instead, I kissed a path across the heaving tops of her breasts, sucking and nibbling my way across each of them until Hollis’s hands strained under mine.
I let go, half-convinced she was going to stop me, but instead she stood and the top fell, pooling at her waist.
She stood before me, naked from the waist up. A hunger I’d only been teasing became stronger, more powerful. She was cream and roses, from her breasts all the way across her body. “You’re fucking perfect,” I said, not caring that my voice sounded hoarse.
Her gaze dipped, landing on the full-on erection I knew I was boasting and then climbed back up to my face. “Last chance, Hollis,” I said, almost afraid for her to say yes. Whatever feelings I had for Hollis rose closer and closer to the surface. It was only a matter of time before they dislodged from my throat and became words I actually spoke. I had very real, very scary feelings for her—feelings that had been planted three years ago and had been fed a hearty and steady diet the last ten days. Feelings I wouldn’t be able to walk away from.
I realized it didn’t matter if she said yes because those feelings weren’t caused by her flesh, but by her brain, by her heart.
In the end, she didn’t say yes. She stepped forward, looping her hands around my neck and pressing her chest to mine. She rose up on her tiptoes and claimed my mouth the way I wanted to claim her. I couldn’t be careless with her, or with me either.
Grasping her thighs, I lifted her up until her legs wrapped around my waist and I turned so that I was seated on the bed. This gave me easier access to her skin, which I took full advantage of when my mouth closed around her nipple, tugging and laving it. Her hands curled in my hair, mimicking my pressure. The desire was sharp, hot like an iron thrust into my veins. I was impatient to taste every part of her and it was hard to force myself to slow. I pulled back to move onto her other nipple, but this time I watched what happened to her face when I closed my mouth around it, when my teeth nipped the rounded point. Her eyes were closed, her mouth open. Fucking hell, watching her gave me as much pleasure as touching her. I’d wondered how expressive her face was, and was grateful to see that she couldn’t control her face when it came to desire.
I nibbled the underside of one breast and the other. She rocked against me, pressing my erection between us. It was sweet, delicious torture. The slight pressure had almost caused me to rip the towel off, to line Hollis up, and to thrust myself to the hilt. But I wanted to savor. I wanted Hollis to be so delirious from pleasure that she couldn’t speak.
; I flipped her over, she was flat on her back on the bed, her dark hair splayed out across the cream comforter. God, she looked like every fantasy I’d have for the rest of my life.
The movement had caused the outside edges of her shorts to flip up one side, revealing a deep slit, nearly all the way to the waist of them.
She had fucking incredible legs, and that tease of skin did little to satiate my curiosity. I played with the slit, watching her face as she watched my movements. She was a delight to witness, and when I flattened my palm on her skin and slipped it under the waistband of her shorts, her eyes went a little wide. I grazed my thumb along her exposed skin, reveling in the way she squirmed, moving so that my hand came closer and closer to her center.
With my eyes on her, I slid a finger over her skin there, in her most private place. She went wide, legs and eyes, and I marveled over the intensity in her gaze. Was she really this innocent, to be surprised by a light graze over her skin? I wanted more for her, so I didn’t continue—not yet. I leaned over her, pressing my mouth to the skin below her belly button. She was so warm, her skin like velvet.
“Adam,” she said, her voice the first word we’d spoken in several minutes. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Yes, you do.” I turned my head so that I could look up at her. “You’re doing it already.”
“But what about you?” She gestured at my towel.
I kissed a path from her belly button, between her breasts, all the way up until I was braced over her, facing her. “I want this.” I plucked at her nipple, just to watch her face change. “Trust me.”
“I do.”
We’d been talking about trusting her body to mine, but her reply was so automatic, so calm, I had no doubt that she trusted me more than with just her body. Sitting back so that I straddled her, I took in the sight before me. Her nipples were rosy, dark, the same color as her lips. With her hair sprawled out and her dark eyes focused, she looked like some kind of mythical creature, someone in a naughty kind of story.
I glided back down her body, my hands trailing her sides until they met the waistband of her shorts. I tugged them off and then the top that had bunched at her waist, revealing her completely to me. I wanted to treat her like fine china, but she’d proved to me she was made of titanium. I could write a dozen lyrics to the shape of her body; the way her hips curved and her hair rested around her in a dark halo. The rosy color of her lips, and the way they curved in pleasure when my mouth descended to right where she wanted me most.
38
Hollis
And to think, I’d thought my satin little pajama set had been indecent. No, what Adam was currently doing in between my legs felt decadent in the most carnal of ways. I finally got it, I understood why sex was such a big deal.
But then again, was it like this with everyone? Because this felt like a Big Deal, like something that didn’t happen with just anyone. I couldn’t imagine letting anyone do what Adam was doing, but then again I couldn’t really think beyond the hazy fog of lust that infiltrated my brain, robbing me of any deeper thought.
Strong hands gripped my thighs, spreading them wider. Adam looked up at me, and the motion rubbed his facial hair over my center, causing me to nearly buck right off the bed.
The tension inside of me was tightening, like something desperate to unravel. My body climbed a peak I wasn’t familiar with, and I struggled to keep up as it happened quickly—everything happening all at once. I couldn’t focus on anything, on anyone, except that uncoiling of pleasure.
Adam dipped down again, and I felt everything.
His tongue.
Inside of me.
Sweat prickled my brow as I threw my head back.
His fingers joined his mouth, stretching me and curling and I couldn’t stop writhing on the bed. It was as if my body and my brain existed in two separate entities, because I lost all control. When his finger pressed firmly against my clit, my head lolled to the side and a moan left my mouth.
Later, I’d be almost embarrassed of the noises I’d made. But Adam had seemed encouraged.
When that tension snapped, when I came, everything uncoiled and my body fell back to the sheets as if I had just levitated.
He climbed back over me. “I don’t have a condom,” he said.
“I do.”
He raised an eyebrow, and if I hadn’t been totally spent, I’d have yanked him down so I could explore his face the way he’d explored my body.
“‘By failing to prepare, you’re preparing to fail,’” I recited.
He laughed, that dimple carving a small canyon in his cheek. I wanted to explore that canyon, to kiss him the way he’d kissed me. “Of course you have a condom.”
I pointed at my bag on the back of the door. “Front pocket.”
He left me for a moment and cool air rushed over my deliciously overheated body. I had never felt more relaxed, more spent. Like I had just been given a massage in places I didn’t know needed it.
Adam was climbing over me seconds later, his towel discarded. I spread my legs and he settled between them. This was it, this was actually happening. I didn’t think seventeen-year-old Hollis Vinke ever expected to have Adam in this way. I wanted to go back in time and leave her a message, letting her know that things would get better after Willy. I wanted to tell her how lucky she was, how Adam was even more amazing than she’d predicted.
But then half the pleasure of my time with Adam in the present was how unexpected it all was, how discovering all these little facets of him made him more than just some guy I sort of fantasized about. He was real, in the flesh, the only guy to live up to my childish dreams.
“Hollis,” he said, his voice a whisper when he pressed his forehead against mine.
There was something immeasurably reverent about the way he said my name, like I had given him pleasure instead of the other way around. I was overcome with the urge to wrap my arms around him, to anchor him to me. I kissed the side of his face, his lips, his jaw, his ear. An ache bloomed from my chest. Tenderness, like a bruise I had pressed just to make sure it still ached. I closed my eyes, feeling an unexpected prick of moisture in them. Adam was still over me, but his breathing was ragged and I was overwhelmed with an emotion I wasn’t able to name, an emotion that spread out from the ache in my chest.
I lifted my hips, feeling his erection immediately. I wanted to give him this, after all he’d given me, so I lifted my hips again until we made contact.
We moved in tandem, coming together over and over until that tension curled inside of me, and uncoiled once more. He was seconds behind me, his lips at my ear whispering words I couldn’t make out when he met his release.
I’d never been so worn out—emotionally, physically, mentally. It was like my bones had been replaced with rubber, my brain with jelly and my heart…
Well, my heart was more tender, sore in places I couldn’t soothe. And it was my heart that kept me awake with ache, long after Adam had kissed the side of my head and fallen asleep beside me.
If I thought having two orgasms and falling asleep beside the guy I had crushed on for forever would have allowed me to drift off to a deep slumber, well I was in for a surprise. Because I awoke so many times that night, glancing at the clock each time, expecting it to say a time later than it did.
I knew I was exhausted. I knew I wanted to sleep in. But I was so trapped in my mind that I simply couldn’t.
It felt like I had barely drifted off to sleep when I woke to Adam’s hand on my stomach, his arm draped over my waist. I probably could’ve ignored the press of his individual fingers and fallen back asleep because in a way it was soothing. But then I realized why it was so soothing. He was playing a song on my skin. Now and then, his thumb would tap lightly right by my belly button and his other fingers would take turns playing their beat. I pretended to be asleep for at least ten minutes while he created a song on my body.
“You’re awake,” he said, his voice hoarse.
“Yes.” I w
as on my side, not facing him, but something about my body language had alerted him.
His fingers stilled and the bed dipped behind me as he rose up to look down. “You okay?”
I didn’t know how to answer that. My body felt great, if a little sore. My brain was still as mushy as mashed potatoes. But deep down, in places that weren’t in an anatomy and physiology textbook, I felt something akin to a hurricane. “I’m good,” I said, as a compromise. This was not the time to tell him that I was fully falling in love with him. Because I most definitely was.
“We gotta get on the road soon,” he said, and nuzzled my neck.
I closed my eyes. I wanted so desperately to give in to his touch, to fully embrace him and throw caution to the wind. I wanted that more than I could say, but when my feelings were in the turmoil they were I couldn’t pretend that physical touch didn’t affect me in a mental way.
“Yes, we do.” I gave him a smile and sat up. There was no graceful way to walk across the room naked, I realized, but did it anyway.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Adam asked, grabbing the towel he’d left on the floor the night before. He wrapped it around his waist and approached me once I had my jeans and a bra on. I quickly yanked my sweater over the bra, feeling like I needed some kind of physical armor to cushion whatever blows he was unknowingly delivering to my heart.
But the thing was, he wasn’t doing anything wrong. He was being gentle, respectful, thoughtful, and sincere. I was the one being weird. And I knew it, because I saw the way he looked me over like there was some kind of outward explanation to how cold I was acting.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I think I have a migraine. I didn’t have a soda before bed as usual.”
That seemed to satisfy him somewhat, because he nodded. “Okay. Well, there should be a handful more in the fridge.”
One Little Lie: a hate to love rom-com Page 31
