“That’s a tough choice,” she says, and somehow there’s no irony or sarcasm in it.
It really is a hard choice for her, for reasons I can’t fathom. She stands on the top step, looking down at me, and I can’t read her eyes. She reaches out with one hand and touches the linen, and then the chilled glass of the bottle.
“If I stay, what will happen?” She moves her gaze to mine, and waits.
She expects the truth, so I give it to her. “If you tell me you want to stay, I’m going to take that robe off of you and I’m going to lay you down on the bed over there, and I’m going to kiss and touch every beautiful inch of your body. I’m going to make you come over and over and over, until you can’t stand it anymore. And then, when you can’t possibly come again, I’m going to put my cock inside you and make you come again.” Her eyes go wide, her mouth falls open, and she stops breathing. I ascend the steps until I’m face to face with her, and she’s backing away and I’m following her. Her palms go flat on my bare chest, as if to push me away, but she doesn’t. “That’s where I’ll start. We’ll drink some wine, eat some chips and salsa, and then I’ll ravage you over and over and over until you beg me to stop.”
“Holy shit.” It was a breath, a curse, a prayer. I’m not sure which.
“Is that what you want, Des?” I set the bag on the floor, and then put the bottle on a little table just inside the doorway. She watches my every move, her hands toying with the knotted belt of the robe.
“I…I don’t know,” she says.
I move toward her, taking a deep breath to swell my chest, my arms swinging, my eyes fixed on her brown, inscrutable gaze. “You don’t know?”
“You talk like that, and yeah, I want that, but—”
“Do you want me to take you home?”
“No.” Her voice is small, and she’s looking up at me from beneath thick black lashes. “Yes. I don’t know.”
“Des.” I take the knot in my fingers, work it loose, but don’t untie the belt. “Do you want to stay?”
Her breath catches, and I can see her pulse beating in her throat. Her fingers touch the backs of my hands, but she’s not stopping me as I slowly untie the belt. Her arms go across her torso then, keeping the robe closed.
“I don’t know.” Her voice is barely above a whisper, and she’s not looking at me.
“You don’t want to leave, but you’re not sure you want to stay?” I ask.
She nods. “Right.”
“You’re really testing my resolve to not ask you any questions about yourself right now, you know that?” I take the edges of the robe and hold them closed, and close in so my lips brush hers. “I’ll be gentle, Des. I’ll go slow. You want to stop, at any moment, and I’ll stop.”
“Am I a conquest?” she blurts.
I’m taken aback. “What? Are you a conquest?”
“Are you doing this to prove you can? Is this just because I’m here, and you’re horny? Is this what you do? Seduce random girls? What is this, Adam? Tell me the truth.” She grips my hands in hers, keeping her robe closed, holding tightly to my hands as if I’m all that’s keeping her upright.
“No, Des. That’s not what this is.” I pause to gather my thoughts. “I haven’t been with anyone in months, and before that I was in a relationship for almost two years.” I hope she doesn’t push that line of questions, because it’s not something I want to rehash. Not now, not ever.
I can see the curiosity in her eyes, but she doesn’t ask the question. Instead, she frowns and asks, “So why me?”
I shake my head and shrug. “Because you’re beautiful. You’re secretive and mysterious and sexy.” I gather her thick damp black hair in my hand. “Because the moment I saw this hair of yours, I wanted to bury my hands in it. Because the first time I saw your big brown eyes and those lush lips, I wanted to know you. Kiss you. Find out who you are, get to know you.”
“Lush lips?” she breathes, as if disbelieving.
I brush my lips across hers, lightly, teasingly. “The lushest.” I kiss her cheekbone, and she turns her face to the side, giving me access to her neck, so I kiss her there too. “I’m intrigued by you. I don’t know what this is any more than you do, Des. The last thing I have time for right now is to get involved in anything, but I can’t seem to stop myself.”
Her fingers release mine, release her robe, and she grasps at me, clutches at my chest. I move closer, press our bodies together, and she sighs, a desperate exhale. Her fingers scrape over my chest, curl and dig into my pectoral muscles, and now she turns her face and tilts it to look up at me, and all I can see is her eyes, wide and the color of liquid chocolate and so deep, fathomless, so expressive and yet giving away nothing of what she’s thinking.
“I’m not mysterious.”
I laugh. “Yes you are.”
She shakes her head without breaking our locked gazes. “There’s just…a lot I don’t like to talk about.”
“Fair enough.”
My hands are on her back, resting lightly. I leave them there, and I shift forward, slant my mouth across hers. I taste her breath; feel the shaking in her body. But she’s pressing closer, her magnificent tits crushed between us, and I’m losing the fight to keep her clothed. I can’t hold back anymore.
“I have to see you.” I whisper it, my lips moving against hers.
Her lips move on mine, and she lifts up on her toes, deepening the kiss. I groan at the taste of her lips, the feel of her body against mine, and then her tongue slips between my teeth to slide against my tongue, and I’m lost. I’m gone.
I reach up and curl my fingers into the thick collar of the robe, just beneath her chin. She’s on her tiptoes, so tall I don’t have to bend at all to match our mouths. The last of my will is shredded by the way she grinds her tongue against mine, and I slowly pull my hands apart as I slide them down the center of her torso. The robe opens, revealing tan skin and inner side boob. She gasps into my mouth and her fingers claw into my shoulders. I’m this close to having the robe off of her, to having all of her gorgeous body bare to me.
“No.” She grasps the edges of the robe and pulls them back together, jerks backward, out of my reach. “Adam, I—I can’t. I can’t.” She’s gasping, her eyes wide and wavering back and forth.