Page 101 of Level Up
I sigh and sit next to him, taking one of his hands between mine. “Let’s put it this way: if you trust me to tell you when it is what I want, then you can trust me to tell you when it’s not.”
“Okay…”
“And I’m telling you: it’s what I want now.”
“You mean…” He looks at me and swallows. “Like,nownow?”
Well, no, I didn’t meannownow. But when he looks at me like that—hopeful and awestruck andhungry—maybe I do meannownow.
He still waits for me to kiss him, but as soon as I do, it’s like something snaps. For both of us. We’re fumbling to undress each other as we hunch under the upper bunk, though he stops once my t-shirt is in his hands and he holds it up to examine it.
“You think I can get one of these?” He holds it to his bare chest, face out, showing off theHAD ENOUGH?design.
“Yeah, Victory’s brother has one of those heat transfer press thingies,” I tell him somewhat breathlessly.
“Awesome.” He grins and then tosses the shirt to the ground before dragging me down onto the bed horizontally to kiss me some more.
It occurs to me now, as I’m helping him remove his jeans, that part of the reason he’s always stayed fully clothed when we’re together is that I made no effort to change that. I never tried to undress him or asked him to do so—I just assumed that, if he really wanted to strip down, he’d do it.
Even though he told me, right at the start, that I’d have to take the lead on everything. I’d have to be the one to make the first move.
“Oh, shit!” I sit up in a panic and bonk my head on the wooden planks above me, causing Damien to immediately start fussing over me, asking if I’m okay, but I assure him that I’m fine. “Sorry, yeah, it’s just—I just realized thatIwas the one being my ex, this whole time!”
He frowns in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“I made no effort to ensure that you were satisfied, any time we did sexy stuff,” I explain, too frazzled to care about the silliness of my words. “I was just like,I got mine, who cares if you enjoyed it? This is all my fault! I’m so sorry!”
He snorts a laugh and pulls me back down to the bed before rolling on top of me. “You’re hilarious.”
“I’m serious.”
“You’re forgetting one thing.” He gives me a long, deep kiss and presses his body against me so I can feel how hard he is, with nothing but our underwear between us—I can feel himthere. “I was very,veryinto it.”
“But—How?” I ask, unable to resist rocking my hips against him, just a little.
“Because,” he says, rocking into me as well, like a less-haphazard reenactment of our first make-out in the Pit. “I really like making you come.” My nipples are rock hard through my thin cotton bra as his bare chest brushes over me. “I really likewatchingyou come.”
How the hell can he just say stuff like that?
“I—I think I’d like watching you, too,” I tell him, though my cheeks burn when I say it. “Because it’s you.”
He swears under his breath and kisses me hard, but his hips suddenly jerk back and he’s apologizing. “Not yet,” he says with a self-deprecating laugh.
I end up completely naked in his bed for thefirst time—first time completely naked with him and first time in his bed—and like most of our previous rounds of this sort of thing, he’s entirely focusing on me. Although this time he’s nearly naked as well, at the very least.
I urge him to stop before he completely takes me apart with his mouth on me—which, as we learned just last week, Idolike—and he does. Stop, that is. He looks up at me with concern and I bite my lip.
“Just—Now.”
“Now…what?” he asks, like he honestly doesn’t know what I’m telling him.
“I want to. Rightnow.”
His eyes go wide for a second and he reaches up to kiss me before he bolts out of the bed and goes over to the top drawer of the dresser. On the other side of the room.
“I thought this dresser was yours.” I point at the one next to the bed with my thumb.
“Well, Malcolm’s the one who’s always well-stocked, so…” He holds up a small square packet and I almost start laughing. I don’t even know why this is funny. I think I’m just deliriously happy.
