Room at the Inn

Julie sighed, feigning exhaustion. “It’s kind of hopeless, isn’t it?”

“It’s like a sickness.”

“That’s romantic.”

Carson grinned. “You’re a disease.”

“You’re my cross to bear.”

“An epic mistake that I keep making, over and over again.”

“A colossally bad idea with really hot arms.”

“You like my arms?”

“Don’t even pretend you don’t know it. You have the body of a god.”

He wrapped his hand around her neck and rested his fingers on the knot that held the bandana on her hair. “I like your hair long.”

“Thank you.”

“Would you do me a favor and take this stupid thing off?”

“Take it off yourself.”

Her lips formed a ridiculous bow, like on a cartoon cupid. Soft and pink, the most feminine part of her entirely feminine body. He waited to kiss them, drawing out the anticipation just a moment longer now that he had something to anticipate. He kissed her throat instead, lingering over the spot where the blood thundered beneath her skin. Slid the tip of his nose along her neck. All the while, he worked the knot loose.

“Leo?” he asked as he pushed the bandana off.

“It’s been a long time.”

“You’re not seeing him.”

“I’m not seeing him.”

“I’m going to kiss you now.”

“Please.”

Their mouths met, a soft brush of lips that reminded him how good it would be in a few seconds, when they kissed like they actually meant it. Six years? Eight? It was an eternity since he’d touched her, far too many months since he’d fit his hands over her hips, slid them up to her waist, measured the distances and angles between every curve of her lithe little body. She felt different, but not in a bad way. She’d come into herself. Everything about her was Julie now. The right Julie. The woman he’d sensed behind the fancy fingernails and hundred-dollar salon haircut when he sat behind her in history class freshman year at Alfred.

He kissed her jaw and stroked his hands up her back.

“Kiss me for real,” she whispered.

“I’m getting to it.”

She took his head in both hands and pulled his mouth toward hers. “Hurry up.”

This time when their lips met, hers were wet, and her tongue darted out to slick over his bottom lip. His arousal dropped out of his head and into his dick, a sinking heat that became an ache when she pressed her breasts against his chest and dug her nails into his scalp.

“Carson,” she said. A complaint and a plea.

“All right, woman.”

He stroked his tongue into her mouth, and it was like flash paper igniting. Too-bright heat and light, then a burn that followed his hands over her ass, weighing her breasts, trailing along the back of one thigh toward the hot center of her. Her hips tilted into his, and the extra few inches of height meant that when she let him wrap her leg around his hip, the core of her settled against the crown of his cock, a hot, needy pressure that made him tug her close with both hands and grind against her as he showed her with his tongue what he wanted to do to her.

God, she killed him. Every time, like nobody else had ever kissed him before. Hamstrung with lust, he’d taken her once on her knees in the backseat of a car. He’d fumbled open his fly and fucked her in an alley outside a restaurant his parents had dragged them both to in Fenimore when they weren’t together, when they were barely talking, and it wasn’t because he didn’t respect her, it was this. This crazy connection that told him where she wanted him to touch her, how hard, how much pressure she wanted. This sense of being perfectly in the moment, centered over Julie, pushing with everything he had in exactly the right direction for once.