Page 45 of What Happened Last Night

I wasn’t quite sure who this man was who couldn’t stop swearing and talked like an asshole. He wasn’t me. Then again, he was. For once, I couldn’t follow the rules. What had following the rules gotten me? Luna was leaving. She was fucking leaving. The thought made me want to vacate my own skin.

“Luna?” I said in the darkness. I could barely see a thing.

“Wait there,” I heard her say. “We keep an emergency flashlight in the closet.” She stepped forward, and I heard her palm slide on the wall. She took a few more steps with the wall to guide her, and then I heard the creak of a door opening.

The storm was in full force overhead, the wind making the windows moan as, by the sounds of it, someone threw fistfuls of hail at the glass. I moved along the wall toward Luna.

There was the sound of rustling, then her voice came in a low murmur, as if the darkness meant someone might be listening in. “I think this is it. The batteries should be—”

I reached out unerringly and grasped her wrist.

She let out an audible gasp, as if I’d burned her, but she didn’t pull away. Her skin was warm and smooth under my hand, and when I slid my fingertips over the delicate skin inside her forearm, I could feel the throbbing race of her pulse.

I could guess what that sensitive skin would smell like. It was different in the dark, without seeing her. I wanted to run my hand up to the inner crook of her elbow. I wanted to shape her with my hands, feel everything while I breathed her in.

What I did was tug on her wrist. Gently, so gently—she could easily have pulled away. But the tug was my invitation, my message that I wanted her closer in any way I could get her.

Luna let out a shaky breath, and then there she was, right there, her body pressed lightly to mine in the dark. I could hear her breath. I kept my hand on her wrist as I leaned down to the spot where her neck met her shoulder and inhaled. I caught the faint tang of sweat, the perfume of something she used in her hair, and arousal. That particular scent—aroused Luna—that haunted my brain.

She moaned—the softest sound, involuntary. I kept my face where it was as I breathed her in. Then, because I couldn’t help it, I let my mouth press against the skin, sucking it in a gentle kiss.

When I broke away, I said against her, “I’m tired of doing the right thing. I’m tired of not having you. I’m tired of thinking about you while I sleep alone. I’m tired of imagining what you like, how to drive you crazy. I’m tired of not getting what I want. I’m tired. Aren’t you tired?”

Somewhere in a far-away corner of my hearing, the flashlight clattered to the floor.

Luna’s hands touched my chest, her palms pressing through the fabric as she slid them upward. I wondered if she could feel my heart pounding behind my ribs.

Her hands were cool where they touched my skin, moved up the back of my neck. Her body pressed against mine as she rose on her toes. Her lips grazed mine in a kiss, a brush of her breath that made me shiver, and then she took my bottom lip between her teeth and gently bit it.

A groan came from somewhere deep in my sternum. I backed her up and pressed her against the wall, caging her with my hands on either side of her head, and I took her mouth with mine. I parted her lips and swept my tongue inside, being none too gentle, but Luna responded greedily, using her tongue, then biting my lip again. The sting made me feral.

I nipped her lip back, making her emit a sound that pulsed straight down between my legs, and kissed her more deeply. I dropped my hands to her hips as I broke the kiss, squeezing, feeling the damp denim of her jeans against my palms.

“If we’re doing this,” I said against her lips, “then we’re really doing it.”

I wasn’t even sure what I meant. That I wasn’t going to hold back. That I wasn’t toying with her or fooling around. That she wasn’t leaving here tonight, or tomorrow night, or the night after that.

Her response was to grab the hem of my tee and drag it up. As I raised my arms to let her pull the tee off, she said, “Yes,” and dropped it to the floor.

I found her unerringly in the darkness again, this time sliding my fingers into the curls of her hair and kissing her again. I broke the kiss and said, “Say it, Luna. I need to hear it.”

She slid her palms down the bare skin of my stomach, to the hem of my sweatpants and below. “We’re doing this, Will,” she said, rubbing the hard length of my cock through the fabric, making me suck a breath in through my teeth.

Keeping the barest grip on my control, I bent and found the flashlight on the floor. I grabbed Luna’s hand in the dark, switched on the light, and navigated to the bedroom I’d been sleeping in. I switched the light off, and as lightning flashed, I turned us and put Luna on her back on the messy bed. I started unbuttoning her jeans.

We worked fast in the dark, undressing ourselves, undressing each other. I couldn’t see her except in flashes of lightning, but I explored her with my hands, running them over her hips, her belly, her breasts, the insides of her thighs. I kissed up her body, letting my lips travel the plump underside of her breast, my beard scraping the vulnerable skin there and making her squirm and gasp.

I sucked a nipple into my mouth, making the most divine sound come out of her, and then I moved higher. I was kissing along her collarbone when the power came back on, bringing the lamp on the nightstand to life.

I pressed up on my arms and looked down at her, able to see her in the soft light for the first time. Luna lay beneath me like a gift, her hair spread on the sheets, her sweet body relaxed, her skin flushed. “You look fucking delicious,” I said.

She was looking at me, too. Her gaze stopped on my left pec, the ink there. She stared, fascinated.

My throat tried to close for a second. My ink was only a few months old, and except for me and the artist, no one had seen it. No woman had seen it, because I hadn’t been naked in bed with a woman in a very long time.

I was more vulnerable about her seeing my ink than I was about her seeing the rest of my body. “Surprised?” I asked her. “I know I don’t seem like the tattoo type.”

Luna’s hand lifted and she traced her fingertip over the dark profile of a wolf. It was midleap, its jaws open, its teeth bared. Its eye was both ferocious and wise. It sprang across my pectoral toward my breastbone, forever in motion.

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