Page 41 of Business Casual
“Why? I’m having—oh.”
Charlie drags me up his torso, one arm under my ass while his opposite hand cups gently around my jaw. He grips me there, and I get a glimpse of bright, burning blue before he yanks my mouth to his and kisses me.
It’s to shut me up, I think, or to force me to make a decision. But it doesn’t work because Charlie is kissing me like he can’t wait another second for it. Like he’s mad I’ve already kept him waiting this long. His mouth is hot and wet and lush and—usually it’s slower than this. Kissing someone for the first time. It’s a tease, a tentative give and take. I’m used to partners who slowly try to figure out what I like, and what they like, and how we can fit together.
Not Charlie. Charlie kisses me like he’s had a plan on how to doit the entire time he’s known me. He slots my bottom lip between his and sucks, catching it with his teeth and then soothing with his tongue. I open my mouth to his, and my hips punch forward for friction, my arm tossed over his shoulders, trying to pull him closer. We slide our tongues together like we can bicker like this too, starting out forceful but settling into something slow and thorough. A wet, obscene press of our mouths that has me moving against him as much as I can, desperate to ease the tension between my legs.
Charlie stumbles his way over to a wall and presses me there, the force of our impact stealing the air from my lungs. A painting tumbles to the floor. Another tilts precariously to the side.
Charlie ignores it. So do I.
The hand on my face shifts and his thumb finds my jaw, pressing until I open wider for him. He guides me exactly how he wants me, a pleased sound rumbling in his chest when I go pliant against him. His palm slips down my neck, fingers fanned out, his thumb resting gently against the frantic flutter of my pulse. He holds me there, his hand cupped against my throat, his touch devastatingly careful.
I want him to stop being careful.
“Nova,” he pants into my mouth, his other hand fisting in the material of my skirt. “Tell me which one is your bedroom.”
“Or what.”
“Or I’ll fuck you on your hallway floor.”
There’s a deep clench between my legs, a flood of electric heat down my spine. I drop my head back against the wall and grin. His hand flexes against my throat, his thumb gliding up and then down. “That’s not the deterrent you think it is,” I tell him.
“Nova.”
I tug on the ends of his hair and drop a kiss to his mouth. His bottom lip is swollen and I bet mine is too. I don’t think I’ve ever been kissed so thoroughly in my life. “Kiss me again, first. Just—real quick.”
I can’t stand the idea of not doing it again, immediately, over and over. Kissing Charlie has taken all the cluttered thoughts in my brain and tossed them to the wind. I’m nothing but sensation. Shades and colors and hot, liquid feelings.
He gives in to me, finding my mouth with his, the hand collared around my throat holding me still as we move together. I catch his bottom lip with my teeth and a pained sound echoes somewhere in his chest. I want to reduce him to cinders. I want us both boneless and stupid.
“You taste like cherries,” he mumbles, nose digging into my cheek, mouth pressing sloppy, wet, distracted kisses along the line of my jaw. I tip my head up to give him more room, looping my legs tighter around his waist.
“And you taste like peanut butter,” I breathe.
Peanut butter and dark chocolate. Whatever spiced cider he was drinking at the bookshop. I roll my hips into his, and he pushes back, friction exactly right for a half a heartbeat. Then he angles himself away and tugs me off the wall, my body clinging to his.
“Bedroom, Nova,” he grunts again, just below my ear this time. “Which one?”
“Last on the left,” I manage, voice airy and tight. I scratch my nails down his neck and his teeth bite at the curve of my shoulder.
He turns to the right instead and almost sends us both tumbling into a linen closet. I shriek and wrap both arms around his shoulders as pale blue hand towels and a bath mat shaped like a succulent tumble down around us. I think a box markedCHRISTMAS DECORATIONSlands on his foot.
“I said the left.” I laugh, trying to direct him with my hands in his hair. We’re an overeager pinball, pinging back and forth between light-up bumpers. Colors and sound and a high-pitchedding, ding, dingechoing in my ears.
“You have too many doors,” he mutters, spinning and finally finding my bedroom, nudging his way through the door and kicking itshut with his foot. He tosses me on the bed, and a few pillows slip off the edge as I bounce, my hair half in my face. Charlie plants one knee on the mattress and climbs after me. Moonlight from the gap in my curtains illuminates the hunger in his eyes, the smooth cut of the muscles through his shirt.
“Nova,” he says as he situates himself between my open knees, his palms braced on the bed by my head. One hand lifts to brush the rest of my hair off my face. “I don’t know what to do with you like this.”
“You don’t know what to do with me?” I shimmy beneath him, spreading my legs wider to make room for him, my skirt inching up my thighs. The very tops of my tights are visible, a strip of black lace with dainty butterflies stitched overtop. “I find that hard to believe.”
Charlie inhales a deep breath through his nose.
“I don’t know what to do with you being so agreeable,” he tells me. He shifts closer and lifts himself to his knees. His fingers catch the edge of my skirt and he lifts, his tongue appearing at the corner of his mouth. “I like this.”
“What? The tights?”
He nods, then shakes his head, then nods again. “The tights, yeah, but I was talking about your art.” His thumb traces the curve of the sun at my hip, its bright, golden rays shining down to a garden in bloom across the top of my thigh. The tights are an afterthought. I love that he called it my art and not my ink, because that’s what I think of it too. All the things that swirl around in my heart painted across my skin.
