Ten
Lincoln
Jenny doesn’t let me taste her. She doesn’t want anything in return for the best experience of my damn life except to cuddle up on my lap and trace my tattoos with the tip of her finger.
I’m so fucking hungry for her, but I don’t push the issue. I never will.
She knows best what she’s ready for.
Still, I can’t help prowling after her through the apartment for the next few days, always desperate to smell her throat, to touch her skin, to nibble her bottom lip. To feel her arms loop around my neck and hear her relieved sighs. And she always welcomes me, every time I go to her, but she never seeks me out. Not since shattering my world on that sofa.
I try not to think about that fact.
And I sure as hell don’t ask her to kneel for me again.
* * *
“Lincoln?”
I’ll never get over the way Jenny says my name. Soft and shy and full of so much buried hope. Like she can’t really believe that I’m here, and she doesn’t want to jinx it.
I know the feeling.
I grip my phone tight, tilting my head back to peer up at the stars. “Yeah, sweetheart?” I started this ritual the week I moved in with Jenny—coming up to our building’s roof and sitting up here in the silence, escaping from the urges pounding through my veins whenever my adorable roommate is near.
The breeze is cold and the shadows are dark.
It’s the perfect place to work through my shit before I go back down to her, human again.
“Where are you?” Dread laces her words, and I swallow hard. It’s like she’s waiting for me to run out on her like her last piece of shit roommate. Jenny has no idea how much I need her. It’d be like carving out my heart and leaving it on the nightstand.
“On the roof.”
There’s a pause, and I can just picture her wrinkling her nose. Screwing her face up like I’m the most confusing man in existence.
“The roof? Why are you up there?” Her breath stutters, audible through the phone. “Are you… are you trying to get away from me? I can go in my bedroom for a while if you need space—”
“That’s not it.” Not the way she’s thinking, anyway.
Jenny thinks I’m getting tired of her. But the truth is, the longer I’m around her, the more my restraint wears thin.
“Why don’t you come up here?” I say suddenly, pissed off that I never thought to invite her before. I guess it would defeat the point of getting some silence, but hell, it’s perfect for her courage thing. Operation: Bold Jenny. “Bring a blanket with you, though. The wind is cold.”
“Um.” The moon is waxy and pockmarked overhead. Glowing bright between dark clumps of cloud. “I… okay.”
Good.
I swallow hard, my throat tight. It’s only been a few minutes, and already I miss her.
Jenny clatters through the roof door ten minutes later, grumbling audibly about stairs and blankets and freaking roommates who pick ridiculous places to brood. I grin, lighter already, and call over from my spot against a wall. I’m sitting on the frigid concrete, my back against rough brick.
“Over here.”
Jenny stomps over, then spreads her blanket between my bent legs. She plops down between my thighs, her back to my front, and yanks my arms around her middle before leaning back with a sigh.
“We could do this inside, you know.”
I press my face against her hair, breathing deep. “No stars inside.”