Page 21 of Evolved

This must be serious.

I burrow into him, even though it hurts, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, his naked chest pressing against mine, naked thighs, hard and hairy, sliding between mine.

He hisses when my toes touch his calves, and so do I. My toes feel like they’re being shoved into an open flame.

“Ottilie?” he whispers. My name on his lips feels insanely personal somehow. “Ottilie?” His lips brush my ear, hot as a brand. “Say something,” he whispers. “You can’t fall asleep. Not yet.”

“M’awake,”I manage, and he pulls the drape-slash-blanket higher to cover over my wet hair like a hood.

“Stay that way,” he says, those lips dragging against my temple again as he pulls me even closer against him. “Talk to me.”

“About what?”

“Mmmm… you hate peanut butter cookies. What’s your favorite kind?”

“I … like peanut butter fine,” I mumble, words sluggish.

“Just not with tea. What do you like?”

“You,” I say without thinking, our hips are tucked together, one of my thighs between his, the other curled around his, like we’re two halves of a puzzle, and I’ve never done this before, notwith anyone, so it’s hard to focus. I remember vaguely that I just said something embarrassing. I should say something to make it go away. Anything. And fail. “Oops,” I say.

He pulls me in a little closer, and the burn shifts from my skin only to the deeper layers beneath, and it feels like I’m being burned from the inside out.

“Your grandmother’s making tea. You can sleep after you drink it.”

I nod, my nose bumping against his jawbone, where the smell of him is indescribable, like vitality and man and hope, and I let my fingers slide around his ribs and up his back. If my cold fingers bother him, he doesn’t comment.

I scramble for something to say and settle on cookies and arrive at the worst one.

“I’d eat rum raisin for you.”

That’s not what I meant to say.

There’s no time to be embarrassed, though, because he laughs, his body rolling with it. “I’d eat rum raisin for you too.”

And then my body starts to shake, my teeth chattering again, and every nerve ending I have realizes it’s on fire.

Shivers wrack me, too, which has my body spasming against his in ways that make it undeniably awkward. There’s no pretending that wasn’t my frozen nipple dragging up his chest or my bare vagina against his thigh.

“Shivering’s good,” he says when I’m just about thinking the awkwardness might be so bad it’s worth risking freezing to death. “You’re warming up,” he says, and his voice is slightly stiff and pained.

“It’s not good. It fucking hurts. It f-feels like you’re on fire.”

And that was definitely an erection I felt.

“Sorry,” he says faintly, and from the way he says it, I think he means his penis, not the fire. He shifts to move it away, butall it does is move it so it’s pressing against my low belly instead of my hip.

By then, Gran comes back, and I can’t decide if that makes it more awkward or less.

“I diluted it,” she says as she hands the mug to Knox, and a waft of icy air comes in as the covers shift so he can take it.

More awkward.

Definitely more awkward.

“It’s not hot enough to burn,” she says, and for a single second, I’m sure she must mean his penis, but then the frozen blood in my brain must warm because I instantly realize she means the tea. “The heat is working now. Set to sixty-eight to conserve power. It’ll take a while to get there, though. I’m going to go sleep in a real bed. You two are on your own.” Her words are pointed, deliberate, like she’s aware of how awful it is to have my naked pressed against Knox’s naked with my grandmother in the same room.

The sound of her steps retreating loosens some of the discomfort inside me, but not all.

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