by Ann Aguirre
It’s a hug. Friends hug.
There was no way I could resist touching his hair, now that I finally had him so close, and it slipped through my fingers like coppery satin. He let out a little groan and leaned into my hands. Encouraged, I stroked in gentle little swoops, until he was practically purring.
“You’re a ginger tabby,” I teased as he turned, so I could reach the other side.
“Please,” he mumbled. “I’m totally a battle-scarred tom.”
He nuzzled his face against my neck, making my pulse jump. This was a misty gray area because he was definitely turning me on with the rasp of his scruff against the tender skin of my throat. But his heartbeat was slowing. Getting comfortable, I kicked off my shoes, and Ty, who wasn’t wearing any, ended up sprawled in my lap, and he closed his eyes as I brushed the hair from his brow in rhythmic strokes.
“Whatever.” I couldn’t believe I was in his apartment, cuddling him.
It wasn’t what I wanted but it was better than nothing. It would have to be enough. “This okay?” I asked, just to be sure.
“Better than. Don’t stop.”
Featherlight, I traced the slight arch of his nose, the plane of his cheekbone down to his jaw, around his mouth and over the bristled jut of his chin, which he lifted to give me better access. Eyes closed, he was smiling with an expression that registered as pure bliss. I’d swear he was starved for physical contact, let alone sex.
“Can I ask a personal question?”
“This is probably the best time.” Dreamy tone.
“How long’s it been?”
His gold-tipped lashes fluttered, revealing brown eyes that focused intently on my face. “Since I got laid?”
“Yeah.”
“Couple of months.”
That wasn’t as long as I expected, the way he was reacting. “Huh.”
“Did you think I’ve been celibate for years or something?”
“Maybe.”
“Disappointed?”
“Why would I be?” I smiled down at him.
“Sometimes girls romanticize the situation. ‘Poor Ty, if only he had a woman giving it to him regular and helping with Sam, his life wouldn’t be such a black hole of suck.’” He lifted one shoulder in a lazy half shrug and demanded, “Ears.”
I was only half-sure what he wanted, so I rubbed up and down the shell, gently, with thumb and forefinger. “Like that?”
He hissed out a breath when I scraped my fingernails behind them. “Exactly.”
It might be wrong, but I secretly hoped this was turning him on a fraction as much as me. Even the weight of his head in my lap felt like foreplay, but I didn’t roll my hips. Ears are sensitive. Wonder what lips, teeth and tongue would do to him. I swallowed hard and went back to running my fingers through his hair. It seemed safer. The party was still going strong, and it was only eleven. I might have several good hours of Ty-petting left.
“I hope you don’t think I see you that way,” I said.
“Hmm?”
“The ‘black hole of suck’ thing.”
“Nah. You don’t give off the fix Ty vibe. If you did, I’d be avoiding you like the plague, not hanging out on a Saturday night.” He sounded relaxed, sleepy even. “Though I have no idea what’s in it for you.”
“I like you,” I said softly.
You have no idea how much.
“You’re crazy. Didn’t you hear the grumpy asshole part earlier?”
“Maybe you save that for other people.” I decided to get creative and scooped my hands beneath his head, like I’d seen masseuses do on TV. Since I had no training, I couldn’t be sure what I was supposed to be doing, but I flexed my palms and rubbed the heels of my hands against the base of his skull. Ty arched his neck, lifting his chin until I heard a faint pop.
He groaned. “God. You’re so good, I’d pay you.”
“First I’m a barbiturate and now—”
“You really should’ve hit me by now.” Ty flung an arm across his face, cheeks flushed.
“I’ll snuggle you into submission.”
“It’s working.”
“What else do you miss? Besides the music scene.”
He turned his head side to side, increasing the pressure until I was worried about hurting him, and it reminded me of how he’d dug his knuckles into the back of his head. This had to be my unconscious responding to that moment, wanting to make him feel better. From the way he was smiling, it seemed to be doing the trick.
“How honest am I supposed to be?”
“Completely. I won’t tell.”
“You want me to bare my soul, huh?”
I want you to take off your pants. But I’ll settle for deep, meaningful conversation. I was only half kidding, even in my head, but Ty’s friendship felt rare and precious, a leap of faith that he didn’t offer many people. I might not be special, but he made me feel that way.
“Yep,” I said aloud.
“I miss sleeping in. I miss waking up with someone else and having time for slow, lazy morning sex.”
Oh, hello. Yes. Please. The mental images his words conjured were so very tantalizing. I pictured a sleepy, horny Ty, wrapped around me, his lips on my neck, nibbling down to my shoulder while he took me from behind, his cock working in and out with infinite patience. His hands would be all over me, stroking, caressing in counterpoint to his thrusts. We’d take hours making each other come, maybe not even getting out of bed until well into the afternoon.
I stifled a whimper.
Oblivious to what a firestarter he was, he went on, “I miss showering after and fixing breakfast while mock-arguing about whether we should go grocery shopping or back to bed.” There was a tight, drawn cast to his mouth, as if those were memories of the girl who left him.
Damn. Intuition whispered that he’d be a different sort of sad if she was dead, haunted instead of laced with regret. He radiated self-recrimination in the angle of his shoulders and the way his gaze turned inward when he spoke of her.
I tried to distract him by offering an emotional snapshot of my own. “I’ve never had that. Not in high school for obvious reasons, and until this year, I lived in the dorm. Most people bitch about the lack of privacy, but...” My voice dropped to a shy whisper. “I liked it.”
“What?” His eyes snapped open, and he stared up at me, fascinated, fully in the moment.
I’d never told anyone this, not even Lauren. “Sometimes, when my roommate was drunk, she’d bring a guy back to our room. I always pretended like I was asleep, but I loved listening, watching the shadows under the covers, seeing them twist and move.”
Telling him that sometimes I got off was probably too much information. So I shut up, studying his expression. At least he didn’t look sad anymore.
“And I’m right back to wanting to fuck your brains out,” he said hoarsely. “Is this party ever going to end?”
In his sweats, it was obvious that he was telling the truth. Tipping my head back, I implored the universe for moral fortitude. “I can go.”
“I can take it,” he said softly. “I’m a pro at not getting what I want.”
Like a bite of poisoned apple, I swallowed the argument that the old frustration didn’t have to apply to me. “Back to things you miss?”
“Yeah. This will sound really specific, but...”
“What?”
“Little things. Like...I had a girlfriend in high school. We’d study on her bed, me lying down, her propped against the headboard reading. She had the habit of pulling my shirt up and running her nails lightly up and down my back. Drove me crazy, but I loved it.”
“It turned you on?” Maybe I shouldn’t ask, but I couldn’t resist.
He laughed. “Well, yeah. Goose bumps over my entire body. But I was sixteen. Walking to the bathroom got me hot.”
“Fair point.” I desperately needed a change of topic, or I’d have to ask him to take a cold shower. “Is Ty short for Tyler?”
“Yeah. But it’s my las
t name.”
“What’s your first?”
“Daniel. Your last?”
“Conrad.”
Glancing down, I caught him shaping the syllables with his mouth, and I was tempted to tell him that my middle name was Rose, just to see him do it again. But I had to save some secrets for next time, or he might get bored. From there, I diverted the conversation to music because I couldn’t take more sex talk; I was on the verge of vibrating, and if the sparks popped any brighter between us, we’d burn his apartment down. Small comfort, but at least I knew why it wasn’t happening.
An hour later, he fell asleep in my lap, and fifteen minutes after, I dozed off, too. Later, the silence roused me, the absence of vibrations and cessation of music. Somehow we were tangled together, him on his back and me on his chest, though I didn’t remember shifting. He smelled incredible, so much that I surreptitiously rubbed my cheek against him, breathing in honey and shea butter along with the clean, cottony scent of his shirt.
My heart ached as I mustered the resolve to move. One breath, another, listening to his heartbeat, then inch by inch, I slid out of his arms, trying my damnedest not to rouse him. He stirred once, his hand tangling in my hair. I froze. It would kill me if he woke up and saw me leaving when I wanted so badly to stay.
But I can’t. I never can. When Sam wakes up, I can’t be here. Ty’s sacrificed so much for him. He’ll never change his mind about us. And I should probably be grateful for his common sense. Yet half-strangled yearning swept over me like a tidal wave, and I shivered with the force of it while Ty let his hand drop. Swallowing those feelings, I pressed a ghost of a kiss over his heart, and I rolled away, grabbed my shoes and purse and tiptoed to the door. I was a mouse creeping out of his apartment, though I did silently test the doorknob to make sure it locked behind me. No way to turn the dead bolt from this side, so that would have to do.
I let myself in upstairs and found the apartment completely trashed. To get to my room, I stepped around four people, two of whom weren’t wearing any pants. There was nobody in my bed, at least, and it looked as if Lauren had defended it before passing out in the closet. She was drinking more these days, but I didn’t know if I should mention it. Maybe she’d just tell me I was no fun. The last time I brought it up, she said, All you do is work, Nadia. Some of us want to live a little. Sighing, I went to the bathroom, brushed my teeth and then stumbled to bed, wrecked by the intensity of the night.
Yet despite gritty-eyed exhaustion, I couldn’t sleep. For half an hour, until the glowing numbers on my alarm clock read 4:30 a.m., I shifted and rolled, until I gave in to temptation. Feature by feature, I built Ty’s face in my mind’s eye, complete down to the tiniest detail like the faint cleft in his lower lip and the tiny, nearly imperceptible scar that bisected his left eyebrow. Once he was there with me, I dipped two fingers into my panties. One stroke, two, three, God, it was good, and I was still so slick. As the clock ticked over, I came in silence.
My whole body went limp, and I passed out a few seconds later.
The next morning, I woke in a panic, thinking I was late for class or work, then I fell back with a muffled groan. A glance at my phone told me it was just past eleven. Lauren propped herself on an elbow, looking as miserable as I’d ever seen. At some point, she must’ve crawled from the closet into bed.
“I can feel my heartbeat in my lips,” she whimpered.
“That can’t be good.” I knew to whisper.
Since I wasn’t hungover, I headed into the bathroom to wash my hands, and then I got her a cup of water and some ibuprofen. “You want toast?”
“Just let me die. You’ll have the room to yourself then.”
“We can’t afford the place without you,” I teased. “Plus...I love you too much. So what’ll it be, toast or crackers?”
“Crackers.”
I padded to the kitchen and was pleased to find Max cleaning. He’d also shooed out the floor surfers. “You weren’t kidding when you said you’d be ambitious once school started.”
“I noticed that you bugged out early last night. You okay?”
“Liar. You were banging Courtney up against your door when I left.”
He grinned. “Okay, so maybe I didn’t exactly notice. Lauren told me.”
“Yep, I’m good.” I opened the cupboard and grabbed a pack of saltines. “Have you seen Angus yet today?”
“Think he’s still in bed.”
As I nodded, I carried the breakfast of champions to Lauren. “Here, these should make you feel better.”
“You realize they’re made of flour and salt, not magic?” she asked.
“Don’t make that face, drunkie. You’re just mad because I’m not sharing your misery.”
A reluctant smile formed as she nibbled the cracker. “You may have a point. A tiny one.”
“Microscopic,” I said.
“Do you ever wish we were still in Sharon?” It was such a non sequitur that I turned on my way to the door, brows raised.
“Not really. But I miss my family.” That wasn’t the same thing.
Lauren’s expression shifted. “What do you think Rob’s doing night now?”
My brother didn’t rank high on my list of things to ponder on Sunday morning. But if he ran true to form... “Probably having brunch with our folks. Why?”
“Idle curiosity. I’ve been thinking about home lately, wondering what people are up to. Krista texted me the other day. We were talking about the old days.”
After a moment’s thought, I remembered her as a mutual friend who’d moved away before graduation, though I was bad at keeping in touch. “How’s she doing?”
“I dunno, we talked more about high school. Remember the party where Rob punched Kent Walker?”
“Not really,” I admitted. “Rest, I’m going to help Max with the fumigation.”
“Wait, he’s cleaning up his own mess?” She sat forward, then clutched her head. “I think hell has actually frozen.”
“He couldn’t be a pain in the ass forever.”
Lauren was still mumbling in wonder, saltines in hand, when I left the room. It took us three full hours to make the apartment look even remotely close to how it did when we moved in. Which wasn’t that long ago.
Angus got up just as we finished, and Max scowled at him. “Don’t even pretend you weren’t awake before now.”
I didn’t feel like refereeing, weird as it was for Max to complain about someone else slacking. So I said, “Nothing valuable broken, no stolen furniture and no vomit in my shoes. This went pretty well, huh?”
Max nodded. “But I think I’m done hosting for the semester. This shit is exhausting. Someone else can deal with the mess next time.”
“No argument from me,” I said.
By this point, I desperately needed a shower, so I took one quietly, as Lauren was still asleep. My hair went up in a ponytail, then I put on sweats and went in search of lunch. As if to apologize for shirking, Angus was making a beef stir-fry while Max waited on the other side of the breakfast bar.
“That smells fantastic.” My stomach made a weird noise.
Max teased, “You ate a T. rex, didn’t you? That sound can’t have come from a girl.”
Plunking down beside Max, I watched Angus cook through the open space over the counter. Our stools were cheap plastic, though, nowhere as nice as the ones at Ty’s place. And once his name crept in, I couldn’t banish it. That was a gateway thought, leading me to wonder where he was, if he’d taken Sam to the park, a movie or the zoo. I’d give a lot to be with them right now, but he’d made it superclear where the boundaries lay.
In under half an hour, Angus had the food on the table. I ate like it had been days. He didn’t strut his culinary prowess often, but he’d apparently learned to cook from their housekeeper. Likely he could’ve afforded this place on his own, but he didn’t want to live by himself, and he wasn’t ready to move in with Josh yet.
“It was delish, thanks.” I scraped my fork across
my plate twice, saddened that there was no more food.
Max agreed, “Yep, awesome grub. I’m not even holding a grudge anymore.”
“That was the plan.” Angus grinned.
I killed the rest of the afternoon on assigned reading and coursework. By evening, Lauren was ambulatory—without barfing up her guts—so that was a good sign. I heated up a plate for her and then put on my shoes.
Max let his gaze drift over me in the insolent, up-and-down elevator look that made me want to punch him. “Hot date?”
Since I was in sweats and an old T-shirt that read The Penguin Ate My Homework, he was obviously being a tool. “With the elliptical machine. I haven’t been to the fitness center here since we moved in.”
Lauren said, “It’s nowhere near as nice as the one on campus.”
“And it smells,” Angus added.
I tilted my face heavenward. “Why are they trying so hard to crush my motivation?”
“Because secretly you’d rather sit on the couch and watch TV with us, instead.” Max patted the cushion next to him invitingly.
Shaking my head, I had to laugh. “That’s not a secret.”
“Where did you go last night, anyway?” Lauren wore a curious, quizzical look.
“Now that’s a secret.” Smirking, I swept out of the apartment amid vocal protests. Someone even threw a shoe after me for being such a tease; it thunked hard against the door as I jogged away and down the stairs.
I kept up the pace until I reached the clubhouse, though that was a big name for such an unimpressive building. There was someone on the elliptical, so I went for the treadmill, instead. I put in twenty minutes until the guy finished, and then I shifted. Forty minutes later, I was ready to call it a night. Swiping away the sweat, I headed back.
In the streaky purple twilight, Ty was helping Sam from his car seat. After last night, I wasn’t sure how to act, so I waved and kept walking. They responded with raised hands, a bright smile from the kid and a hungry stare from Ty that made my panties glow in the dark.
I won’t survive this, will I? But the fireworks will be spectacular.
CHAPTER SEVEN
