Page 78 of All Saints: Pledge

Kendall scoops me up, and sets me on the bench in the shower, the cold seat causing me to catch my breath. Half of my body is burning in the steamy shower, half my body deliciously freezing against the cold tile wall behind me as I press my hands for leverage. “Yes,” I manage. I sound strangled. “It’s a really great shower.”

Kendall pulls me forward until I’m just barely sitting on the bench, my legs spread wide as he kneels in front of me, his movements frenzied.

There’s silence.

“I thought I heard you crying. Do you need to talk?”

He’s back between my thighs, and I literally cannot manage rational thought. “No, my hair was too tight, I’m okay. I’m going to just… finish, and I’ll unlock your door. Sorry about that. I didn’t want to wake you.”

Beneath me, Kendall’s shoulders shake with laugher, but I don’t have a moment to think because now instead of just his tongue, he’s up on his knees, and he’s slipping a finger just inside me.

I gasp, and instead of letting me get further into trouble with Clara, he swallows my gasp with his mouth. His fingers are only a millimeter inside of me and it’s like the entire universe has snapped all of its energy to that spot. It stretches in a strange way, and I have a moment of panic before he slowly presses forward and a wave of pleasure so big sweeps over me, I gasp. The novelty of this sensation…there is no way for me to even articulate how I feel like the world, the word love, is re-arranging the fabric of everything I knew all around me.

Kendall’s lips move over mine. “This waiting has been—will be—torture. But this,” he presses me into him, his fingers circling, his body providing delicious counterweight, “this is what we could have.”

I’m shattering. I want him deeper, I wantallof him, but he resists.

“This is mine,you are mine,” he says against my mouth as he swallows my moans. He reaches down between us, pulling my hand with his. He guides my hand up and down his length. “And it means that I’m yours if you want me. Feel what you do to me, feel what you do to me every goddamned day. Now, come for me, Helena. Show me that I took care of you.”

I feel the extra hot spill of him as he comes, and it triggers a massive shudder in my own body. I grip his shoulders like a woman drowning, like he’s my life buoy until the tremblinginside of me subsides. His mouth is searing on mine, our combined breathing heavy and panting.

He pulls me to my feet, rinses off the soap suds, turns the water off and in a daze I let him pull me out and swaddle me in a towel. He wraps one around himself and then motions to the other door and slips into my room.

As if on autopilot, I walk over to Clara’s door and unlock it. She pulls it open almost immediately and peers at me in the darkness. “Are you okay?”

I clear my throat. I feel made of molten sunshine. “Yeah, it’s been a really…a really intense night. I feel much better now.”

She snorts. “You say that like it was a life changing shower.”

It takes everything in me to keep my face neutral. “You have no idea.”

She contemplates the steamy room behind me. “Maybe I need one of those.”

I cackle, then cover it with a cough. “Sorry. I mean, yes. You should. Everyone should have a shower like that at some point in their life.”

She looks at me.

“In a luxury white marble bathroom, complete with steam shower and candlelight,” I say to try and divert her. “G’night.”

“Goodnight,” she offers and watches me as I pull open my bathroom door and close it behind me.

Kendall lounges on my bed, halfway clothed again. My head is clearing and I bustle a bit in the room, pulling on pajamas while he watches in sleepy silence. Without a word, I climb up next to him, and allow him to pull me to him. This is bizarre. Foreign, yet… it’s that same familiar pull I have with Kendall. Like he knows me. I’mknown.

“Did I convince you?” He asks finally, words hushed as his hand draws lazy circles on my shoulder.

“Mmm,” I say, my eyelids drooping. “Of some things, yes. As far as the moving in? I don’t know, Kendall. I still think it’s insanity. Doesn’t it seem fast?”

“We’ve known each other for years.”

“Yeah, and hated each other…or I thought we did.”

He leans in and captures my lips again. “Quite the opposite.” The wordlovehangs improbably in the air. “I just…I get crazy when I think of what would have happened if you’d received even one bid. About what the next year would be if…”

I sit up a little. “Wait, I didn’t get a single bid?” I’m indignant. “How do you know that?”

He blinks slowly. “I…told you, I did my best to keep you from being inducted. I’m offering an alternative. You don’thaveto get a bid. I don’t want you to. I worked hard to convince everyone who would listen that you had such a high bid that no one could touch it.”

It rankles. His handling of my affairs. “But no bid exists?”

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