Oh shit, what does that mean? Maybe it doesn't mean anything. Tell him, "Yeah, but give me a second" and go move that goddamn book.
But her heart's cranked up so wild she doesn't think her voice will be steady, so she just tries to give a shrug of,
Sure, what the hell
, as she puts her own food down.
He's up and walking toward the bedroom then, unbuttoning his shirt, glancing back, wondering what she's got up her sleeve for him. She's never this reserved. Something's going to break loose and explode when they get in the bedroom. Something good? He wonders what the hell it is and feels her presence like a wave pushing him toward the bed.
But ...
While still in the tiny hallway, he catches sight of the nightstand through the doorway.
What the fuck?
His first thought is,
Did she look through my wallet while I was sleeping and Google me?
There's no mistaking the cover of that book, even from across the room. It's the middle book of his first trilogy, the edition with that lame blank sky-blue cover he'd cobbled together himself in his early days of self-publishing. Where the hell would she have even gotten it? He only sold a few dozen copies before he paid to upgrade to a professional cover. And half those sales, thanks to the mysteries of Internet commerce, went to individual buyers in Italy and Germany.
No, if she Googled my name and bought a copy to plant, it'd be the new version, or one of the other books entirely.
She thinks she sees his stride falter as he gets to the bedroom doorway.
Great. Here it comes, you dumbass. Why the hell didn't you get up and move the damn thing?
He makes his decision in a split second and feels like a chickenshit doing it. Without stopping, he pivots so that he's backing into the bedroom, shucking the dress shirt, then putting a thumb over his shoulder toward the adjoining bathroom. It's not too hard to pretend that he's doing it so he can drink in a long look of her as he's moving.
"I'm going to take a leak real quick, okay?" He paints her body head to toe with his gaze, down and then up again. "But don't get undressed. I want to peel you out of those clothes."
"Sure," she says, with a clumsily faked casual tone. He saw it. She knows he saw it.
He's giving me a chance to ditch it.
If there's any doubt, just as he starts closing the bathroom door, he glances at the nightstand and says, "Oh. Hey, you left a book out. Uh, probably ought to put it away if you don't want me to see it."
He's a shy pisser. It's not that weird for him to go in and close the door, or for it to take a bit before she hears the stream of his pee hitting the toilet bowl. She stands paralyzed in the doorway, staring at the book in silence.
Inside the bathroom, he thinks,
She wanted you to see it. She wanted you to see it, and you pushed her away, you dipshit.
But what if that's wrong? What if she just forgot it was there?
Goddamnit. Then you could have just asked, "Hey, what's that? Any good?"
But no, because then he'd be lying, pretending he didn't already know the damn thing cover-to-cover. And if she
had
snuck a peek at his license and
was
trying to tell him she knew who he was, then playing dumb would be pushing her away just as much as handling it the way he had.
But either she doesn't know who you are and she likes your books, or she's trying to tell you she knows who you are.
He can't figure out which one of those is scarier, or more exciting. Then he realizes the third alternative is that someone loaned her the book and she doesn't give a crap about it.
Come on, you stupid fucker, piss already!
The last is aimed at his bladder.
When the splash of urine sounds through the door, she finally moves. Stomps to the nightstand. Grabs the book roughly (even though it's precious and probably one of the only things she would try to save from the apartment in a fire).
Yanks open the nightstand drawer, throws the book inside, slams it shut.
Stands panting with her back toward the bathroom door, trying to get herself under control while the toilet flushes and the sink runs.
The book is gone when he opens the door in his boxer-briefs, pants and socks discarded on the floor.
Because she didn't really want me to see it, or because I made her feel rejected?
He steps in behind her, wraps her in his arms, hooks his chin over her shoulder, closes his eyes, takes a few long breaths. Perfume. Deodorant. Hair. Skin. Her whole body feels taut in his grasp.
What do you say? What do you say?
It hits him pretty quick. "You know what I like about you, bitch?"
"What?"
"Everything. There is not a single goddamn thing wrong with you. You're fucking perfect."
Some of the tension eases out of her. "Well ... I did cock up and leave that book out. Almost gave away what kind of thing I like to read."
So she
does
like it. Or - she's covering for the fact that she peeked in my wallet. Dude, just ... turn it off, okay?
"Yeah," he replies, "but I think I would have lived. And anyway, it gave you an excuse to say 'cock up.' That was a pretty well chosen phrase."
She feels him hardening against her left ass-cheek then, and she lets go of her worry and frustration, squirms around to face him within the tight circle of his arms. His grey eyes say he meant it when he called her perfect.
"Okay. So we gonna fuck now or what?" She feels filled up with sunlight as she says it. Things are suddenly so good, there's no conceivable reason to change them.
"Yes, bitch, I believe we are."
His encircling arms loosen, slide his hands down her back. Her eyes close and she shivers as his fingers reach her waist, tickle their way farther down, find the hem of her tank and begin to draw it upward. He puts his lips to the rich fullness of her mouth, closing his eyes to match hers. The feel of her shifting slightly as she raises her arms sets him afire, almost makes him rip the blue top up and off, except that he'd have to break the kiss to do that, and he's not willing to - not yet. So he creeps the fabric higher and higher, releasing her soft flesh to the air in movements of inches. Her breasts momentarily weigh down his progress, until the fabric rolls up and around their curves, lifting and then letting them fall. He breaks the kiss then, to lean and get his mouth to one of her nipples. The tank top goes up and over her head to be tossed across the room.
"God, it makes me so hot when you do that," she breathes at his suckling. A quick circle of his tongue around the nipple makes her gasp. "Yeahhhh. You getting my skirt, or am I?"
He rises up, looks her in the eye, one hand on each side of her rib cage. The way she stands there, nude to the waist, the color of coffee with a dash of cream, and then an extra dash in the band around her breasts and ribs where the sun never hits, and then the deep chocolate of her areolas and nipples, the bronze of her hair, the buff of her palms - he could write a whole book on just the different browns of her.
The look he's giving her makes her forget her own question about the skirt. For a while, she just meets his stare and knows and needs nothing else. Then a heat like being belly-down on hot sand suggests at least one other need. Maybe the same thing hits him at the same time, because he kneels and works the catch of her skirt, unzips it, glides it down with both hands, the fingers spread wide to cover and sense as much of her flesh as he can.
As the denim curtain descends along her thighs, her silky off-white panties are laid bare, an aromatic painting of female arousal. He stoops and bends and grazes her still-clothed mound ever-so-gently with his teeth, making her suck in a lightning-quick breath.
"I want to ride your mouth," she says. His grey eyes glitter as he brings his jaw and lips to a slow close, sending soft heat and a bit of extra dampness into her panties with his delicate kiss. Then he tongues a crease into the cloth along her slit and leans back, getting his thumbs through the leg-holes to either side of her mons, to tug the fabric down.
They move like a single creature: her, stepping out of the wet, silken cloth, him sliding his legs through her wide-spaced ankles, her coming forward and down, him easing down and back with just slightly less speed so that the space between her labia and his lips closes in time with their descent to the floor. His head touches the carpet just as she settles fully against his mouth, the subtle and intricate involutions of her flesh tangy with lust. With a few careful shifts and adjustments, she positions her legs, her hips, just where she can press herself to him without her weight crushing him or straining her knees.
