Page 82 of The Other Side
“I’m sure we can find holiday movies on TV too,” I added, trying to show him that I was calming down over the whole situation.
Chance smiled, opening one of the beers and taking a swig.
It had been dark for quite a while by the time we got settled. We ate cross-legged on the end of the bed, on top of the comforter, passing chip bags back and forth between each other. Chance had also procured an assortment of cookies from the vending machine. They tasted a little stale and definitely full of preservatives, but I didn’t mind so much.
After the first movie, we were both starting to fade, so we decided to get ready for bed. Out of nowhere, the butterflies had returned in full force, considering there were two of us and only one bed.
“Do you have an extra shirt?” I worried my lip, nervously. I’d been in such a rush that morning, I hadn’t put on anything underneath my hoodie, just my bra…which I also realized at that moment, I couldn’t very well wear to bed.
“Catch.” Chance tossed me a dark T-shirt across the bed.
“Thanks,” I said before ducking into the bathroom. I tried not to look at myself in the large mirror, knowing whatever I found there, good, bad, or ugly, I’d pick it apart. The air in the hotel room was charged, as if it knew something was going to happen before we did, and I felt it too, that we were teetering on the edge of a precipice and that whatever happened that night, we’d pick which side we were going to land on.
When I walked out of the bathroom in nothing but Chance’s shirt, which was at least long enough to hit my short frame at mid-thigh, covering a view of my underwear, Chance was on the far side of the bed, arranging some sort of makeshift bed on the floor.
“Chance…”
He looked up, gulping as he took me in from head to toe.
I immediately turned beet red. I didn’t have to see myself to know. I could feel the heat pouring off me, under his scrutiny.
“You don’t have to sleep on the floor,” I said quietly, peeling back the covers on the side of the bed closer to me.
He seemed to mull over my words for a long moment, eyeing me cautiously, as if this was some sort of trap.
“Really?” he gave me one last out.
“Yeah.”
Abandoning his nest, he grabbed the pillow he was planning on using and hopped up on the bed, a Cheshire grin adorning his stupid, handsome face.
“What?” I growled.
“I knew you wanted to cuddle. I said so this morning.” He scooted under the covers, then flipped his light off, leaving the room in complete darkness, save for the sliver of light from the parking lot that streamed through a crack in the curtains.
I felt his warm hand reach out, pulling me against him. For a brief moment, it felt like an out-of-body experience, being surrounded by such warmth, feeling comfortable in his hold, and wanting to be held…only by Chance.
And then he had to go ruin it by continuing to joke around. “I thought you’d at least put up a fight,” he murmured, his lips skimming the column of my neck, his breath hot on my skin.
I huffed in annoyance, which seemed to delight him. His lips took purchase around my pulse point, and my breath hitched at the sensation. Chance let one hand run down my side, only skimming the edge of my breast and finally coming to rest on my hip, which he used to pull me even closer at the same time that he pressed into me.
Feeling his erection between us, I couldn’t help but let a soft moan escape as he continued his ministrations. “I’ll kill you if you leave a mark,” I muttered half-heartedly.
“Promises, promises.” Chance laughed, sliding his hand back up, this time under the shirt I was wearing, splaying his searing palm over my rib cage, just shy of where I wanted him to touch me.
“Chance?”
“Hmm…”
My body was singing in his capable hands, and I didn’t want to keep the boundaries up any longer. I wanted him, and I was sick of fighting it with everything inside me.
Why couldn’t I let myself have this?
Why couldn’t I let myself give in to him?
Would it really be so bad to let him in?
“Do you think…maybe because we’re not at school…that their rules shouldn’t count?” I whispered.
