Beach read

21

The Cookout

GUS’S HANDS TRACED down the sides of my body, feeling every exposed line and curve.

“You’re so beautiful, January,” he whispered, kissing me more tenderly. “You’re so fucking beautiful, you’re like the sun.”

His mouth moved down my body, tasting all the places he’d touched. It wasn’t enough. My fingernails dug into his back and he jerked me away from the rack and guided me onto the freezer beside it, fumbling with the button on my shorts. I lifted myself so he could slide them down my thighs, and as he straightened, his hands crawled back up my legs, slipped under the sides of my underwear to burrow into my skin. I arched against him and he pulled my thighs up against his hips, his mouth moving hard against mine. “God, January,” he said.

My want throttled my voice into a breathy gasp when I tried to reply. I ground myself against him and his touch sharpened.

We stopped being gentle with each other. I couldn’t slow myself down enough to be careful with him, and I didn’t want him to be careful with me. I undid his pants and jerked them down. One of his hands slid between my legs and he groaned. The other dug into my hip as his mouth trailed down my stomach. His hands squeezed my thighs, and I gripped the sides of the freezer as he lowered himself between my legs. My breaths came faster, his fingers sank into the creases of my hips and his name slipped between my lips. He cupped my hips harder. It wasn’t enough. I wanted him. I only realized I said it aloud when he said it back to me—“I want you, January.”

He straightened and yanked me to the edge of the freezer, lifting my hips against him as I tightened my thighs against the sides of his body.

“Gus,” I gasped and his gaze rolled up me, heat pulsing under my skin. “Do you have a condom?”

It took him a minute to answer, like his brain was translating from a second language. His eyes were still dark and hungry, his hands wrapped tight around my thighs. “Here?” he said. “In your father’s spare house’s basement?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of in your pocket,” I said, still out of breath.

He laughed, a throaty rattle. “How would you feel if I’d brought condoms with me to tell you about the potato salad?”

“Thankful,” I said.

“I didn’t know this was going to happen.” Gus ran a hand through his hair in distress as the other maintained its nearly painful grip on me. “Next door. I have some.”

We stared at each other for a moment, then started grabbing our clothes off the floor and pulling them on. As we ran up the stairs, Gus grabbed my ass. “God,” he said again. “Thank you for this day, Lord. Also Jack Reacher.”

We didn’t bother with shoes, just ran out the door and across the yard. I reached his front door first and turned back just as Gus was coming up the steps. He let out a gruff laugh at the sight of me and shook his head as he seized me by the hips and kissed me again, flattening me against the door.

I threaded my fingers through his hair, forgetting where we were, forgetting everything but his hands sliding over me, dipping into my clothes, his tongue coaxing my lips apart as I touched as much of him as I could get to. A small, dissatisfied noise slipped out of me, and he reached around my hip to twist the doorknob, leading me backward into the house.

We barely made it three feet before he pulled my shirt off and peeled off his again. In a flash, I was on his console table, his hands undoing my shorts, sifting down over my hips and thighs as he pulled them down me and let them fall to the floor. He walked in between my knees.

I lifted myself against him as he dragged his hands down my breasts, catching my nipples, massaging me until everything in me pinched tight. He scooped me off the table as I wrapped my legs around him and spun to pin me against the bookcase. His hands twisted into my thighs, and I arched against the bookcase to work my hips against his.

Not enough, not even close.

He undid his pants and pulled them down from right under me. My hand scraped down his front to push ineffectually at his briefs. He adjusted me against the shelf and pushed them down.

It was almost too much feeling him against me. A gasp escaped me as I rolled my hips on him. He clutched me with one broad hand and groaned into my skin, “Fuck, January.”

The rumble of his voice sent goose bumps racing over me. His free hand reached along the shelf at my shoulder level until it met a blue jar in my peripheral vision.

He fished a condom out of it, and I laughed, despite myself. “Oh my God,” I murmured against his ear. “Do you always have sex against your bookshelves? Are your books behind me right now? Is this an ego thing?”

He drew back, smiling wryly as he tore the wrapper with his teeth. “It’s for on my way out the door, smart-ass.” His grip loosened and he drew back a few inches. “This is a first for me, but if it’s not doing it for you, we can always wait until we stumble across a good beach cave on a rainy day.”

I greedily grabbed for him, catching his bottom lip with my teeth, before he could pull away any further. He closed the gap between us, kissing me hungrily as he worked the condom on. His hands came back to my waist, tender and light this time, and he coaxed me into a slow, sensual kiss as I trembled with anticipation.

His first thrust was mind-meltingly slow, and everything in my body pulled taut around him as he sank deep into me. My breath caught, stars popping behind my eyes and the wave of pleasure racing through me.

“Oh, God,” I gasped as he rocked into me.

“Are you praying to me?” he teased against my ear, sending a tingle down my spine. I couldn’t take going this slow. I pushed against him, fast, eager, and he matched my intensity.

He pulled me away from the bookshelves and spun around to sit on the couch, drawing me on top of him as he lay back. I gasped his name as he pushed into me again, his hands spa

“I’ve wanted you for so long,” he hissed, hands tightening on my ass.

A thrill rippled through my chest at the rasp of his voice. “I have too,” I admitted in a hush. “Since that night at the drive-in.”

“No,” he said firmly. “Before that.”

My chest fluttered like there was a box fan blowing glitter around in it, and everything in me mounted—tightrope-taut and quivering—as Gus went on whispering into my skin: “Before you answered the door in that black dress with those thigh-high boots, and before I saw your hair all wet and frizzy at that book club.”

Gus looped an arm around my waist and flipped us over, and I wrapped my leg around his hip, my other foot sliding down the back of his calf as he murmured against my cheek, his husky voice shimmering through me like electric current.

He brushed a kiss across my jaw. “And before that goddamn frat party.”

My stomach somersaulted, and I tried to say it back, but one of Gus’s hands had wound around the back of my neck and the other was trailing down my center, lancing through my thoughts like a warm knife through butter. We undulated against each other, lost ourselves in each other, everything else blurry and u

“Oh,” I bit out as he thrust harder, deeper, and all at once, I came undone, rush after rush of pleasure rippling out through me as I clutched tight around him. He braced himself over me, burying his mouth into my neck as we unraveled together, breath hitching, muscles shivering.

He collapsed beside me, breathing hard, but kept one arm draped over me, fingers curled against my ribs, and a faint, gruff laugh rose out of him as he threw his other arm over his eyes and shook his head.

“What?” I asked, still catching my breath. I turned onto my side and Gus did the same, his hand falling from in front of his face to race up the side of my thigh and hip. He leaned forward and kissed my sweat-sheened shoulder, nuzzling his face into that side of my neck now.

“I just remembered what you said about the bookshelf,” he said in a gravelly voice. “You can’t even stop roasting me when I’m losing my mind over your body.”

Warmth flooded through me—embarrassment and giddiness and something softer and harder to name. Before that, I heard him whisper in my mind. I lay back, dropping my head onto a throw pillow. Gus’s hand trailed from my hip bone to my stomach, spreading wide as he leaned over and pressed a slow kiss to it.

My limbs felt exhausted and limp but my heart was still racing. Even if I’d known something had to give between Gus and me, I never would have imagined him like this, keeping his hands on me at all times, his eyes on my mouth and body and eyes, kissing my stomach and laughing into my skin as we lay naked, wrapped together like we’d done this a hundred times.

What does it mean? I thought, followed by, Stop trying to make everything mean something! But my chest was pulling tight as the full force of everything that had just happened settled on me. I had loved touching Gus, being touched by him, like I’d known I would, but this … this was unexpected, and it was possible I loved it even more.

He rested his head on my chest, his hand tracing a lazy, featherlight path back and forth in the slight valley between my hip bones. He kissed the gap between my breasts, the side of my ribs, and even in my state of near-total relaxation, a shiver went through me. “I love your body,” his voice thrummed against me.

“I’m a fan of yours too,” I said. I prodded the scar on his lip. “And your mouth.”

He broke into a smile and propped himself up on his elbow, hand still splayed across my belly button. “I really didn’t show up to your sex dungeon to seduce you.”

I sat up. “How do you know I didn’t seduce you?”

His smile crooked higher. “Because you wouldn’t have had to.”

His words reverberated through me again: I’ve wanted you for so long. No. Before that. My heart leapt in my chest, then jolted again at the sudden sound of a phone ringing.

“Shit.” Gus groaned and kissed my stomach one last time before rolling off the couch. He snatched his pants from the floor and pulled his phone out of his pocket.

The smile melted off his face as he stared at it, lines of consternation rising between his dark brows.

“Gus?” I said, sudden worry coursing through me.

When he looked up, he seemed a little off balance. He jammed his mouth shut and jerked his gaze back to the phone. “I’m really sorry,” he said. “I have to take this.”

“Oh.” I sat up, immediately aware of how thoroughly naked I was. “Okay.”