Chapter 2: Doorframe
The door clicked shut, sealing them in the beer-sour silence. She pressed her back against the wood, peering over the room in judgement. “This wallpaper is aggressively floral,” she muttered, her voice thin, but he was already kissing her, his mouth tasting of shots and a blunt, straightforward want.
His hands slid down her sides, gripping her hips, and her own thoughts scrambled—oh, this is happening, okay—before dissolving into the stark chemistry of skin and pressure. She let the book slip from her fingers, a dull thud on the floor, and brought her hands to his jaw, her touch tentative against the stubble.
He pulled back just enough to breathe against her ear, his voice graveled and unnervingly direct. “I kept thinking about your mouth,” he confessed, the words a bare, awkward truth. “The whole time you were talking...”
A sharp, involuntary tremor ran through her. “Oh,” she managed, her breath catching. “I—I sort of hoped you weren’t actually listening.”
He kissed at her neck, his breath warm. “Heard every word,” he whispered, his thumb tracing the line of her jaw. Then, his voice softening into something shockingly tender, he confessed, “Just need to fuck you...” The statement hung in the damp air, a brutal, lovely honesty.
Her body responded before her mind could, a low, pleased sound escaping her throat as her hips pressed against his, even as her thoughts screamed: God, that’s so problematic, you can’t just—
His mouth moved from her ear to the soft junction of her neck, and he took a gentle bite there, not hard, but with a possessive pressure. She moaned, the sound startlingly loud in the quiet room, a genuine reflex that made her flush. He buried his face against her skin, inhaling deeply—the pleasant warmth of her, the faint floral of her sweat, underneath it the stale tang of the party and her own sharpening anxiety.
“Tell me, baby,” he murmured against her pulse, the question rhetorical, a scripted part of the dance.
“Yes,” she answered too quickly, the word a rushed exhale, already ashamed of its desperate eagerness.
His hands slid under the hem of her dress, pushing the soft fabric up past her thighs until it bunched thickly around her waist. He hooked his fingers into the waistband of her underwear and pulled them down her legs in one rough, efficient motion. She stepped out of them, one foot then the other, standing there exposed and foolish in the cool, stale air.
He brought his fingers to his mouth, wet the tips with a fast swipe of his tongue, his eyes holding at shoulder. Then his hand moved down, the damp tips of his fingers finding the coarse curl of her bush and pressing against the heat beneath.
She moaned, a sharp, bitten-off sound swallowed by the dusty room. “You want this, don’t you?” he whispered, his lips grazing the shell of her ear, the question hot and unnecessary.
“Yes,” she gasped, the answer tumbling out too quickly, shamefully earnest. His fingers barely slid into her, a slow, testing intrusion that made her thighs tremble against his.
The sensation was a sharp, gathering pressure, and her thoughts fragmented into pure need. She blurted it out, the words clumsy and too loud. “Lick me?”
He gave a passionate kiss at her neck, lashing his tongue against her salt-damp skin. He didn’t realise she meant her pussy. Her own boldness hung in the air between them, a palpable, awkward heat. She fumbled with the cold, hard metal of his belt buckle, her fingers slipping on the worn leather. The coarse texture under her fingertips felt foreign, a procedural step in a script she was poorly reciting.
The buckle finally gave way with a harsh rasp, and she pushed the leather free, his hands then finding the zipper at the back of her own dress. He pulled it down in one long, shuddering descent, the sound loud in the quiet room, and the fabric sighed open. She grasped the hem of his soft tee and pulled it over his head in a single, impatient motion, dropping it to the floor beside her fallen book. He kicked his sneakers off without untying them, they thumped against the baseboard. She bent, one hand bracing on his shoulder for balance, and peeled off her own scuffed heels, letting each drop with a definitive, final click.
They stumbled toward the mattress, a clumsy, urgent tangle of limbs and muffled laughter against hot, open mouths. He guided her down onto the lumpy surface, the springs groaning in protest beneath them. His palm found her breast, the skin there flushed and warm.
“You on the pill?” he asked, the words a blunt, practical murmur against her lips. She froze for a second, the heat in her face deepening.
“Yeah,” she finally breathed out, the word tight and awkward. “I am. It’s… yeah.”
“Are you clean?” she asked, the words tumbling out in a hushed, urgent whisper..He gave a single, sharp nod, his eyes not leaving hers. Then he shifted his hips, grinding the hard, insistent line of himself against the soft, full curve of her inner thigh. The denim was a rough, hot friction against her skin, a blunt and clumsy promise.
He groaned, a low, strained sound, and pushed himself back onto his knees. His fingers fumbled with the button of his jeans, tearing them open along with his underwear in one frantic, downward shove. He remained over her, exposed and ruddy in the harsh fluorescent light, the cool air hitting his skin.
His gaze, sharp and darting, cut from her flushed face on the mattress to the scarred nightstand where a stray, foil-wrapped square lay half-hidden under a textbook. The math was simple: she said she was on the pill, but the risk wasn't zero, and the condom was right there, three steps away.
His eyes flicked from the foil packet back to her bush, and the three steps became impossible. He pushed into her, a slow, burning pressure that tore a sharp gasp from her throat. The sensation was a seamless, engulfing heat, so profoundly good it felt like a mistake. A cold, clear thought sliced through the pleasure: Idiot. His hips pressed flush against hers, the warmth of her skin a stark contrast to the chill spreading in his gut.
He groaned into the soft curve of her shoulder, his breath humid against her skin. “God, you feel… fucking perfect,” he mumbled, the words slurring into her collar bone with an unpolished, earnest ache. His thrusts, which had begun with a desperate rhythm, began to stutter and slow, the liquor in his veins turning his muscles to lead. He fought it, gritting his teeth, a soft curse escaping him as his hips lost their certainty. Beneath him, Heather went very still, her breath held in the stagnant air.
A low, shuddering moan escaped her lips, a sound of pure, unexpected pleasure that seemed to surprise even her. The sharp fullness of him, the rough heat of his jeans against her thighs, short-circuited her earlier anxiety. Her hands, which had been braced on his shoulders, slid down to clutch at the small of his back, pulling him deeper. "Wait," she gasped into the hollow of his throat, the word muffled against his skin. "Should we... the condom, I mean—"
Her words dissolved into a choked gasp as he drove into her, harder. The mattress springs screamed a metallic protest beneath them. He couldn't let her finish that sentence. So he set a blind, driving rhythm, the force of it shuddering up through her spine. Her next sound was a muffled cry against his shoulder, lost to the pounding.
Her next sound was a muffled cry against his shoulder, lost to the pounding. His head turned, cheek pressed to her temple, and his gaze snagged on the blurred green numerals of the alarm clock on the floor. Barely a minute had bled past since the door clicked shut. A harsh, desperate groan ripped from his throat. "I'm gonna—I can't—" he warned, his voice breaking, the sentence collapsing as his hips stuttered and drove deep.