Madly (New York 2)

She couldn’t think. She just wanted and wanted and wanted.

His hands moved over her ass. “Allie.” Down the backs of her thighs, where her dress didn’t reach, and back up underneath. He wasn’t supposed to, was supposed to be following the rules, sixty minutes of kissing with hands over their clothes, but she didn’t care.

The rules were an arbitrary obstacle keeping her from getting what she wanted.

She arched into his palms, offering him more, offering him underneath and inside as she licked and kissed a line from his ear to his chin, tested her teeth there where his skin scraped, and then beneath, toward his throat.

“Allie.” He took her head in his hands and held her still. “The timer’s gone.”

“?’Kay.” Her fingers fumbled with his shirt buttons, wanting him naked now that it was an option.

He smoothed his hands over her back, and immediately, even in the state she was in, she could sense the small shift of energy in his touch. She eased away, and he eased up. She sat crisscross-applesauce between his knees, the backs of her thighs against the soft, pale gray leather of his sofa, her whole self oriented on his warm eyes and smile, his Winston-ness.

“Was that what you wanted?” she asked. “From number three?”

“That was everything I wanted and quite a bit more than I expected.”

He didn’t say it like a line. He sounded…humbled. The thing was, in addition to horny, she was humbled, too. Making out with Winston had been some delicious combination of hot and held back, fast and slow. He watched her, he touched her like he really felt every bit of her, not some woman-shaped person. He kept his hands away from the good bits except in these maddening, glancing, soft touches. He was a rule follower, but a rule follower who was mindful and thinking about and, well, wondering about fucking with the rules. All the time.

All the time, he was some kind of perfect, perfect bit of self-imposed virtue who was also always contemplating being awfully, completely bad.

Fucks McFuckity, was it the hotness.

She leaned forward into his arms and reached into his back pocket to pull out his wallet, then the now-erotic cotton rag paper. She unfolded it and looked at him over its edge.

“Four.”

“Yes.”

“Everything but.”

“Everything is everything, correct?”

“What, specifically, are you asking about?”

“Everything you’re wearing, you…won’t be?”

“I will not. As long as you let me finish off the rest of your buttons and zippers and fasteners and kit. Valet-style.”

“Yes.”

Then his jacket, draped over the mirrorlike finish of the burl coffee table, started buzzing and buzzing.

He kissed her, just a little, just enough. She closed her eyes and felt herself warming up again.

Bzz. Bzz. Bzzzzzt.

Winston backed away from the kiss, only a teeny bit, but Allie was so hyped up on the anxiety of expecting a call that his getting a call made it impossible to concentrate.

“You can check it.”

“I’ll just turn it off. Whatever it is can wait if I’ve managed five years.”

He leaned over and fished out his phone, but as he went to turn it off, his attention was noticeably arrested. He froze in his awkward, leaned-over position, thumbing through some series of messages.

“Everything okay?”

He didn’t reply, just kept reading.