Gossip Girl: It Had To Be You

Her heart's on his sleeve and he's wrapped around her little finger

"Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!" Blair howled as Nate eased her black Ellesse ski pants down over her snowboard-sore calves. He'd warned her that snowboarding used a different set of muscles and a different skill set than skiing, but as usual Blair had refused to listen. Now she was paying the price. Yesterday she'd collapsed in a heap after dinner. This morning she'd barely been able to walk, but she'd insisted that Nate give her another snowboarding lesson on the baby run while Serena skied with her father and Giles. Nate pulled off her white cashmere turtleneck and rubbed her bare arms.

Sounds like she's really suffering.

"Want me to run you a bath?" he offered.

Blair lay back on the bed, her pain forgotten. He'd already cured her. "Just kiss it better, please," she directed.

He walked over and closed the door between their room and Serena's. Serena seemed to be having a blast hopping moguls with Blair's dad and his boyfriend. All the more time to finally do it with Blair. She lay on the bed in her black underwear and a ridiculously see-through black mesh undershirt that was supposed to be some sort of high-tech self-wicking polypropylene undergarment but was actually pretty fucking sexy. Nate took off his snow pants and then his shirt. His heart was beating fast.

"You were so patient with me today," Blair observed. She propped herself up on her elbows to look at him. The brown-and-gold floral bedspread was totally heinous, but she looked hot on it anyway. "I love you, Nate."

Nate sat down on the end of the bed. "I love you too, Blair." His heart was beating even faster now. This was it, he was sure of it. When they'd first gotten together Blair had said they would have sex "later." Well, it was later now. It was time. He bent down and kissed her on the shoulder.

Blair grabbed his head and pulled him down on top of her. Her own hotel room with the boy of her dreams—the movie that was her life just kept getting better and better! She smiled up at Nate and almost said, Let's pretend we just got married and we're on our honeymoon, but then she remembered that not everyone was as crazy as she was. "Just kiss me," she whispered instead.

Nate kissed her—all over. It was a good thing he'd had such a long day of skiing and swimming and getting high, because if he'd been slightly less tired, he'd have had trouble containing himself. "I don't think I want to just kiss you anymore," he told her as he smoothed her long dark hair away from her face. "I want to do something else."

On the other side of the door the sounds of a TV roared noisily. Then there was a series of thumps and bumps. Serena appeared to be back and rearranging the furniture. Was she with that Fenner dude? Nate wondered fleetingly. It was cool how easily Serena met people and made friends. He traced his finger across Blair's collarbone and down her arm.

She giggled ticklishly and propped herself up on her elbow, then kissed Nate's temple. He was such a boy. Obviously he was dying to have sex, but she just wasn't ready yet. "I know you want to. I want to too," she murmured sympathetically. "But we have to wait." She kissed his cheek. "Until this summer." She kissed his lips and smiled coyly. "On the train." They'd spend the day in Paris, ambling the side streets around Nôtre-Dame and drinking rosé in romantic cafés. When night fell they'd board the train at the Gare du Nord. As it eased out of the station and across the city, they'd lock their couchette, strip off their clothes, feed each other champagne-dipped strawberries, and make wild, passionate love until the train had reached the oceanside.

Nate suspected that he was supposed to be as excited by this as Blair seemed to be, but waiting until summer sounded like the worst idea he'd ever heard. He flopped back on the ugly, scratchy bedspread. "Dad said he 'wasn't too keen on the idea of me traveling alone with two young girls,'" he admitted, quoting him nearly verbatim but not exactly telling Blair everything. The truth was, he was pretty sure his hard-ass navy captain father had done one of his extremely sporadic "routine checks" of his room just before Nate left for Sun Valley, and had possibly found his bong. Not that his clueless-to-all-that's-hip father would know what the bong was for, but it had probably aroused some suspicion. "He might not let me go."

Blair pressed her cheek against his smooth, bare chest, closing her eyes and grinning as she breathed in his wonderful Nateness. Then she walked her fingers up his belly, spiderlike. "Since when have our parents ever not let us do what we wanted?"

Nate laughed halfheartedly. "I just love you, that's all." Losing their virginity together on a train sounded pretty damn uncomfortable. There wouldn't be any room to spread out or try different positions. And the pillows would probably suck. Couldn't they just do it now? What difference could a couple of months make?

Blair slapped his stomach playfully and sat up. "I have a present for you. Actually, the present is from France. My dad brought it." She didn't tell him that she had embellished the gift with her own ingenious touch using the lodge's mini sewing kit. She got up, went over to the walk-in closet, and took out the carefully rewrapped parcel. "It's from Courrèges," she gushed, handing it to him. "In Paris."

Nate sat up and tore the white tissue paper away from the squishy package, unsheathing a thick and luxurious moss green cashmere V-neck sweater.

Blair snatched the sweater up and held it against his bare chest. She couldn't wait for him to try it on so she could rip it off of him again. "Try it on, try it on," she urged.

Nate slipped his arms into the sleeves and pulled the sweater on over his head. It was soft and felt nice against his skin. It was going to be one of his favorites—he could tell. "It's great. Thanks."

The moss green hue of the sweater made his eyes look even greener, and the bare V of his tan chest made Blair want to scream. She was dying to tell him that she had sewn the gold heart he'd bought her at Tiffany into the inside of one of the sweater's sleeves so that he would always be wearing her heart on his sleeve. But Nate would only want to cut the heart out and make her wear it again. She liked it better where it was, hidden against his adorable skin. She kissed his neck and nuzzled her face into his wonderful, cashmere-coated chest.

Nate played with a lock of her shiny chestnut-colored hair, loving the soft, cozy feel of the sweater. "Hey, where's the heart I gave you?" he asked suddenly, as if reading her mind."

Blair lifted her head. "In a safe place." She kissed him on the lips—long and slow—partly to make him forget the question and partly because he looked so delicious wearing the sweater, she just couldn't resist.

"I love you, Blair," he murmured, tugging up on her black mesh undershirt.

Her heart on his sleeve, indeed.