“Still feel good?” His voice rasped right along my sensitive nerve endings.
“Hell yeah,” I said, and I could tell my vehemence made him smile even as he bent toward me, touching his forehead to mine. He kept going, swirling in circles until I could feel myself sucked down into them like a whirlpool, the gentlest climax settling over me like a sigh. He left his hand resting on me while we both just lay there, the only sound our breathing in the semidarkness of the room.
I ran my fingers over the ridged veins of his forearm. “I always read the wordfuckinto your body language,” I said.
His laugh rumbled in his chest, vibrating against me. “Did you?”
“Like when I first met you, it was likeWhat the fuck are you doing here?”
He made a sound that could’ve been agreement, or could’ve been something else. “Is that still how you read me?”
“The wordfuckdoes come up,” I said. “Just in a different way.”
“Ah,” he said. “Well, I should hope so. I am sorry I asked you how the fuck you knew about me. I still feel pretty bad about that.”
“It was a fair question. I’m sorry I came on so strong naming all your sisters. I’ve always been good at those icebreaker games, where you go around the room and name everyone who introduced themselves before you. I think I was showing off.”
He laughed, pressing a kiss to my neck, the first spot he’d said he was obsessed with. At some point, my braid had comecompletely undone, the thin blue string holding it together lost in his sheets. Above us, there was the faint patter of water against the glass of his skylight. It must have been raining again.
“It’s probably best if…” I gestured vaguely toward myself. I needed to use the bathroom, get cleaned up, but I also didn’t want to move.
He wrapped his arm over my chest, pulling me to him tighter like he didn’t want me to move, either. “You’re going to see what I mean about that staircase,” he said. “Very inconvenient.”
He palmed my breast with one hand, giving it a squeeze, and I decided maybe an extra few minutes wouldn’t be so bad. For now, it felt nice just to stay.
Thirty-Four
It did turn out tobe a whole production, having to use the bathroom before bed. I didn’t bother putting any clothes back on to venture down the stairs and do everything I needed to do. I even went ahead and brushed my teeth, because I figured if we were going to go to sleep I didn’t want to have to come back down for any reason. When I returned to Eamonn’s room he was lying back on top of the covers, watching me in the flickering candlelight as I slid into the bed next to him. He kissed me before disappearing downstairs himself, and when he returned I was in the same position he’d been, lying naked on top of his covers.
I would’ve normally felt self-conscious about that kind of thing—there was something about being naked in front of someone, even someone you’d already had sex with, when the context was no longer as sexual. And I knew Eamonn didn’t like it when I made a big deal about our age difference, but itwassomething I couldn’t help but be aware of, especially when he was looking at my body. Were my breasts perky enough, was my stomach too soft, could he see the cellulite on my thighs.
But for whatever reason, I didn’t really feel it. I liked the way he looked at me. And I liked looking at him, still felt a kick in my stomach that I was allowed to look at him like this at all. He stood naked in the doorway, rubbing one eye with the heel of his hand in a gesture that suddenly struck me as very sweet. He’d barely gotten any sleep in the past couple days, less than me, even.
“Can dogs do spiral staircases?” I asked.
If he was surprised by my random question, he didn’t show it. He blew out the candle, turning the covers back, urging me over while he pulled them up over both of us.
“They have a harder time going down,” he said. “Sometimes they’re scared of it. You might have to train them to know how to approach the stairs, and I think it’s better if there’s carpeting or something to help with grip. Why?”
I didn’t even fully know how to put everything I was thinking and feeling into words, the way my heart felt so full but so heavy, too. I was bone-tired, the kind of tired that came from running around doing so much over the past two days, putting mybodythrough so much, and barely stopping to rest. I was still scared of sleep, and didn’t know what to expect whenever I woke back up.
But it was a good kind of tired, too, with Eamonn’s arm around me, the sound of the rain, the bed warm and heavenly to sink down into. Somehow I’d known that he’d have ananswer to my question. It told me everything, that he already knew the answer.
“Do you want me to be happy?” I asked.
I could almost feel his confusion in the darkness, the line that would’ve formed between his brows as he faced me.
“Why would—”
But I wasn’t done. “Going dancing or taking an art class or falling in love—those are all things you’d want for me, right? That you think I deserve.”
“Jess,” he said. “Of course.”
“Do you think you deserve to be happy?”
He huffed a laugh, smoothing one hand over my hair, tucking it behind my ear. “Is this about what Joe said, you think because I readUlyssesthere’s something wrong with me?”
He had to know my question had been a serious one, so it was a clear deflection—that he’d answered it with a joke, a callback to that waiter at the restaurant in our first hours together. I wasn’t going to let him get away with it.
