Chapter 22
James
I can’t sleep.
The beach house the Lustres always rent has four bedrooms, and Nadine and I are in separate ones, obviously, since her parents don’t know that we’ve been sharing a bed in recent weeks.
But it’s been over an hour since Nadine and I got back from our walk on the beach, and I’ve been staring at the ceiling for a good forty-five minutes.
Finally I have to admit the real reason I can’t sleep:
Because Nadine's not beside me.
Somehow in the past few weeks, I’ve gotten used to her warm softness curled against me.
Gotten used to the smell of her shampoo and the sound of her breathing.
It’s just sex, I tell myself.
Other than the few days Nadine was all Crazy-Town thanks to PMS, we’ve had sex every damn day. So the fact that we haven’t today? That’s what’s throwing me off. That’s all. Just the lack of sex.
I’m pretty sure.
I hesitate for about thirty more seconds before throwing off the blankets and quietly moving toward the door of my bedroom and opening it. It squeaks. Damn it.
Then I let out a silent little laugh, realizing that I’m acting like a teenager trying to sneak into a girl’s room to cop a feel while her parents sleep down the hall.
And that’s exactly what’s about to happen.
Nadine's door is unlocked, and she must be awake, too, because she sits up in bed the second that I open her door.
I shut it behind me, but then, oddly, I lose my nerve, and don’t move.
But she does.
She doesn’t say a word, just scoots from the middle of the bed to the right side. Making room for me.
I grin as I hurry to the warmth of her bed. To the warmth of her.
We lie down at the same time, heads on our respective pillows as we face each other.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi.”
And just like that, I’m back to feeling hesitant. Shy, almost.
What the fuck is wrong with me? With us?
I’d come in here with every intention of hot, raunchy sex, made even hotter by the fact that we’d have to stay completely silent.
But now that I’m here, just barely able to make out her familiar features in the darkness, I find that I want something different. Something I don’t even have a name for.
My hand slides across my pillow, then hers, until my palm rests on her cheek. My thumb rubs across her soft skin, and I think I hear her sigh. I wish there was a little more light so that I could see her, but I make do with touch as my fingers explore her cheek, her closed eyes. Her lips.
She kisses my fingertips then, just barely, and my chest squeezes.
I move slowly closer until we’re chest to chest and I can feel her breath against my lips.
I kiss her.
Slowly, softly. It’s a different kiss. Dangerous in its intimacy, but neither of us seems eager to hurry it along to our usual frantic pace. My tongue dips into her mouth again and again, loving the way her fingers pull restlessly at my T-shirt.
My mouth moves down to her neck, her hands roaming through my hair as I linger there endlessly before moving down her body, kissing her breasts, her stomach.
I stop at her waist, pushing her tank top up slightly so my mouth can rest on the bare skin just below her belly button, and it’s there that I pause, realizing that what makes sex with her on some whole other level from sex with other women is not her amazing body, not the way her frantic fingers contradict her soft sighs.
It’s that she’s Nadine. And sex with someone who I care about is…different.
Better.
My hands slide all the way under the shirt, and I move back up her body, pulling the shirt with me as I go. She lifts her arms above her head so I can remove it all the way. My own shirt follows, as do her panties and my sweatpants and boxers, although not before I pull a condom out of the pocket, because…Boy Scout.
There are so many things I want to do to her. Things that I want her to do to me. But when her arms come around me, pulling me closer, all I can think about is being inside her. Being home.
There’s none of the usual joking or impatience as I roll the condom on.
My hands are on the pillow on either side of her head, my eyes locked on hers as I gently move a strand of hair out of her face, wanting to see her. Needing to see her.
I watch her face as I slide all the way in, one smooth stroke that has both of us gasping in the quiet night air. And then somehow my hands have found hers on the pillow. Our fingers link together on either side of her head, and somehow the palm-to-palm contact feels every bit as important as the feel of me inside of her.
I plunge again and again, her hips lifting to mine.
“James.” My name on her lips is a whisper, a plea. One that I answer by moving against her just right until she arches against me, clenching around me.
I groan, and somehow this quiet, straightforward missionary sex makes me come harder than I ever have before.
I rest my forehead against hers lightly, catching my breath before pulling back and pressing my lips to her cheek.
I want nothing more than to lie beside her, cradle her to me, but reality is slowly creeping into the dreamlike sequence of the past several minutes, and I remember where we are. Who we are.
“I should go back to my room,” I whisper.
She nods.
Neither one of us make any effort to unlink our fingers.
I feel like there are things to say, but I don’t know what the hell they are, so I settle for kissing her one last time.
It’s only once I’m back in my room that I realize perhaps it’s not so much things I should have said, but thing. As in one thing.
Because for the first time since we started this whole thing, I’m wondering if one of us shouldn’t utter our safe word.
Before it’s too late.
