She knew, though. She knew the answer. Because she felt alive for the first time in days. Her heart beat strong and the hair on the back of her neck rose in excitement. It didn’t matter how this worked. It only mattered that he pushed the numbness away.
“No strings?” she asked, because she couldn’t get into something with this guy. Not with how things were going with Nick.
“None,” he agreed, closing the space between them. He waited for her to kiss him first and Ari didn’t waste any time. Their mouths were warm against the cold night air but she let out a shriek when his freezing fingertips grazed the skin on her back.
“Shhh…” she said, as though he had been the one to make the commotion. “My roommate’s asleep. Plus my neighbor is ninety-eight years old. She’ll call the cops on you in a heartbeat.”
“I’ll be quiet,” he said, leaning down for another kiss, harder this time. Ari felt the connection from her head to her toes, zipping through her like a bolt of lightning.
“Do you want to come in?” she asked foolishly.
He nodded and breathed, “Yeah,” into her mouth and it felt nice not to be turned down. It felt amazing to be wanted. She ushered him into the house and shut the door to the backyard thinking how awesome it was to feel alive.
* * *
He touched her stars. All of them. The three on her hip. The one on her foot. The scattered constellation on her shoulder. He didn’t ask her about them though, because that counted as a string and Ari refused to go there. Not with this guy. He was heat and fire and, well, sex.
“Mmmhmmm,” Ari breathed, biting her fist to keep quiet. Davis rolled on his back with Ari straddling his hips. His hands grazed her skin, her breasts, keeping every nerve on edge. Davis stripped off his shirt and pulled hers over her head. His hot mouth covered her body in kisses until he settled down, perhaps realizing she wasn’t going to disappear—that this was happening.
Davis barely had the condom on before Ari felt him inside. Pushing his hips against her own. This was undoubtedly the dumbest thing she’d ever done. But possibly the only thing that could pull her out of the continuous funk that threatened to pull her under. The trade-off was worth it. At least momentarily.
Seeing Davis resting his head on her pillow made her head hurt. Surely he wasn’t the guy that should be there. But he was. He’d come for her. He knew what she needed and as she rolled her hips and reached that place where she was unable to catch her breath, unable to see straight—she forgot about everyone else. He sat up to kiss her, pushing her on her back where she could see all eight of his magnificent ab muscles, shaded perfectly in the dark room. He kept his eyes closed when he reached his own climax. Ari watched as his nose wrinkled and she ran her hand down his chest. Moments later he fell into a crumpled, gasping heap on top of her body.
Under Davis’s heavy weight, every inch of her body felt alive for the first time in months. The word she searched for was satiated. He lay there for a moment before rolling off, kissing her neck gently. Barely awake, she curled toward him, drifting off into sleep.
* * *
“So you finally talked Nick into staying over, huh?” Oliver said the next morning.
Ari choked on her coffee. “What?”
“Not to sound like a perv but you guys were going at it pretty hard when I got up to go to the bathroom. You kick him out or something?”
Taking her cup to the sink, Ari poured the remaining contents down the drain. She used a napkin to wipe the dripping coffee off her pajamas. “Yeah, he got up early and went home.”
“Tell him he doesn’t have to sneak in next time. I’m not your dad or some crazy older brother with a shotgun.” He made a pretend shotgun motion. What a dork. “But then again, maybe he and I should have a talk. Man to man.”
“Please don’t say anything to him, okay? He’s skittish due to our working relationship and potential problems with all that. We agreed not to talk to anyone about it, okay?”
“That wasn’t some kind of booty call was it?”
How could someone so self-absorbed and ridiculous also be so perceptive? Ari wondered. “Just be cool, okay?”
“I can be cool,” he agreed. “Won’t say a word—swear.”
“Thanks,” Ari said in relief. Nick. That was a problem she didn’t give much thought to last night. She’d had an itch and Davis scratched it. She and Nick weren’t exclusive, he wouldn’t even come in the house. There was no doubt Ari wanted to justify her decision, and she was justified. It didn’t matter anyway. One-time thing, she assured herself, as she walked out of the kitchen to get ready for work. No big deal.
* * *
Much to Ari’s relief, her interaction with Davis was limited after that night. She suspected it was a one-time thing for him, too, the kind of thing that built up from their first meeting at the club and had escalated from there. He’d sent her a package including two tickets to the fighting event at the GYC on Friday night. A small note inside listed Curtis’s time and event. Apparently he’d decided to let him participate after all. She double-checked the envelope, but there were no other messages inside. Maybe this was one of those one-night stands that worked.
Glad her hookup with Davis could be compartmentalized, Ari found herself obsessing over different things during the following days. Nick occupied a segment of her mind that normally remained rusty and forgotten. She liked him. A lot. His texts and phone calls had become the high
light of her day, other than the real treat of meeting him for lunch in her office or with a group for dinner. The lunch date was fairly benign and consisted mostly of talking about work, but dinner ended in a tentative make-out session in the back hallway of the restaurant. Ari had a feeling the mutual self-imposed rule of “taking it slow” was about to crack—it just depended on which one of them would crumble first.
“Sure you can’t come with me on Friday?” Ari asked. She’d spent the last thirty minutes alternately kissing Nick and trying to convince him into going to the fight at the GYC with her.
Nick pushed a wisp of flyaway hair over her ear and said, “I wish I could, but I promised my mother I’d help her move some furniture.”