Page 40 of Every Time We Touch

I push my finger into her wetness, then skate it upward, to her clit. Touching her makes my body forget how spent it is after how she just played me so expertly.

“Yeah,” I breathe. “Touch me.”

Her finger brushes against my clit, gauging. I nod, indicating that, inexplicably, I’m ready.

We move together. Our actions mirroring each other. Our eyes locked.

The world narrows to just this—her gaze, her hand, the way our bodies move together, finding the same rhythm without needing to think. It builds fast, much faster than it should, like we’ve skipped all the space in between and gone straight to the edge—again.

My breath stutters as everything in me ignites again, impossibly, rising from the embers she left behind.

The control she’s held onto all night slips. Clancy’s lips part, her eyebrows drawing together, her eyes dark and unfocused like she’s gone somewhere far beyond this bedroom.

It does something to me all over again, seeing her undone like that, no longer the composed, teasing woman who kept me waiting, but caught in the same wave as me—just as helpless.

It breaks through both of us at once. My body arches toward hers as the sensation crashes over me again, deeper this time, fuller, like there’s no separation left between what I feel and what she does. Her forehead touches against mine, a breathless sound escaping her as she follows me over—or maybe I follow her.

For a moment, there’s nothing else. Just the aftermath echoing between us. Just her beautiful face. And the unsettling certainty that this was never going to be just one night.

Chapter 22

Clancy

I close my legs and shuffle toward Jen. I cup her jaw in my hand and gaze into her eyes. I’m still all out of wisecracks. I just look at her as I catch my breath, as I savor this beautiful moment between us, while, admittedly, having to keep certain thoughts at bay. In the morning, is she just going to leave here never to come back? Because she’s Eric’s daughter? I’m not sure I can let that happen.

She seems to be out of words as well. She curls an arm around my waist and pulls me to her, while our faces remain apart, our gazes locked on each other, like neither of us wants to break the eye contact for fear of what might happen if we do.

But if I look into her eyes much longer, I’ll want her to go even less. Because I feel something I haven’t felt in a long time—years, even. Something I might not be willing—or able—to turn away from.

Jen swallows slowly and even that floors me a little. It makes me want her again. Makes me want to kiss her for as long as I’m allowed—and long after. There’s something so brittle about her in this moment, so gorgeously exposed. She doesn’t look away, her blue eyes a bit moist, but endlessly inviting. For long moments, we don’t speak—what would we even say?—and lie like this, in this impossible cocoon of post-climax intimacy. But it is possible, because we’re both here, naked in my bed. Maybe this wasn’t supposed to happen. But it did.

There’s zero one-night stand energy about this, about us in this bed together. And I think Jen knows it, too. I’d like to ask her, but I’m too afraid of the answer. Too afraid of what our situation will make her say. She didn’t come here to talk, anyway. Although I’m starting to feel a conversation is what we need most of all.

Her fingertips travel up and down my back.

“I take it you are bisexual, then,” she says, her lips stretching into the kind of grin I desperately want to kiss off her face.

I never did answer her question—not with words.

“Yeah.” I let my hand drift to her neck, then her shoulder. “How did you know?”

“There’s no doubt you’ve done this with a woman many times before.” She puffs up her cheeks and exhales in an exaggerated manner. “My body may never recover from what you’ve done to it.” She gives me a soft, almost bashful smile, making my heart do something funny in my chest.

“I’ve had some practice.” I mirror her smile, because what else am I going to do?

“You made me come so fucking hard,” Jen says, revving up the temperature between us again.

“As a woman of my word,” I say. “I was just keeping a promise I made.”

“I wonder.” Jen keeps looking me in the eye. “What else you can promise.”

Gazing into her eyes like that, my lips stretching into a wide smile, all sorts of feel-good hormones flooding my body, I want to promise her all the happiness in the world—if only I could.

“Can you promise you’ll come for me again?” Jen’s voice doesn’t have the natural command mine has, but it makes hearing her say these particular words even more arousing. “Because I want to taste you now.” The end of her sentence is more a breath than a declaration. She’s the first to break eye contact. She pushes her nose into my hair, her lips finding my ear. “There seems to be no limit to how much I want you,” she whispers.

“Ditto,” I want to say, but kiss her instead. And this kiss is yet again different from all the previous ones we’ve shared—as though things between us have changed again.

From when I first met her at her mother’s house, to her barging into my studio with her accusations of, I guess, infidelity, to our first conversation at that bar, and then those damn dance lessons. I’ve taught so many people how to dance. I’ve stood in the same intimacy-simulating poses with so many others, but none of them have had this effect on me.