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Wil followed her down the hallway, catching her breath.
Reminding herself of everything she knew about Katie, and had always known, and leaving room for what she didn’t.
Chapter Sixteen
When Wil put her hands against Katie’s neck, it was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to Katie in her entire life, and Katie’s life was a case study in excitement.
She’d watched Wil Greene kiss a lot of people—watched carefully, watched rapturously, watched enviously. The kisses had turned her on or made her laugh or made her cry. She had learned what Wil did to make herself safe, to encourage the other person, to reassure them, and sometimes, every once in a while, to let them know she wanted them.
With her hands gently against the sides of their necks.
Katie didn’t know why itsurprisedher so much that Wil wanted her, and wanted her so badly. She was surprised, though. Wil’s hands had been shaking a little, but she’d been smiling at Katie with her indecent, terrible, ruthlessly hot mouth, and then surprise whooshed up through Katie’s body and she thought,it’s me, it’s me, it’s me. That’s what she’d tried to give back to Wil in her first kisses—it’s you, it’s you, it’s you—until everything started to fray at the edges and a pulse hit her down low so hard, she couldn’t breathe.
Until she had one hand driven into Wil’s hair and the otherclamped onto the T-shirt at her waist and was pulling her in the direction of her bedroom, Wil’s tongue rubbing against hers, both of them making noises that Katie marveled at because these weretheirvoices, they sounded like themselves gasping and moaning, but also like an entirely new thing they were making together.
“This is my room.” Katie pulled Wil to the bed and sat down on the edge of the mattress, kissing Wil’s neck and her jaw before leaning over to find the switch for the lights beneath the floating shelves that gave the room a romantic glow.
In the light, she looked at Wil. Her kisses had swollen Wil’s lip line into a gloriously pink mess without definition, and her hands had destroyed Wil’s hair like they’d been to bed already.
God. How long had she wanted to see what she could do to Wil Greene? To have the attention of Wil’s brain and her body and her racing heart?
How long could she have this? She’d already let it go once, before it had even started.
“There aren’t any windows.” Wil was looking around, her eyes flicking from the textured cream duvet to the array of shelves around the bed to the open doorway, but she had kept the same grip on Katie’s hip that she’d managed as they’d gotten to the bed, and her voice was husky and impatient.
“They’re up there.”
Katie pointed until Wil’s gaze found the ring of clerestory windows and the skylights set into the ceiling. “For privacy?”
Katie nodded and leaned close to Wil. It was so quiet in the house. In Green Bay, there had always been the Bronco’s engine or the sounds of her parents’ footsteps and activities above them. Here, she had Wil to herself, which had always been what she wanted. “And because sometimes I have to sleep at odd hours. There are motorized blackout blinds that can turn the room into a cave, and, like, this white noise machine so I can make it soundlike I’ve been tossed up on a beach in the blackness, which is kind of amazing or extremely annoying, depending on my mood.”
Katie wasn’t tracking her own words. Wil’s eyes on her face had gone dark blue and hot. The pulse between Katie’s legs got so insistent, she was pretty sure she was seconds away from her clothes rending themselves from her body and fluttering to the floor, charred at the edges.
Wil’s indulgent smile told Katie she had not failed to notice how fast Katie was talking or how many words she was making about nothing. “What’s your mood right now?”
Wil sounded so calm. That was how she got, Katie knew, when things were overwhelming. She was going to be an alarming attorney.
“I feel… excited?” She showed Wil her trembling hands and laughed. “Maybe a little nervous? I haven’t…” Katie looked away for a moment, trying to think how to capture the feeling in words.
It wasn’t about how long it had been since she’d had sex. She’d already had sex with Wil in a way that very much counted to her, and hugging Wil in the Bronco counted, and watching the kissing video with her, and watching Wil’s videos on her own while she was thinking about Wil.
Katie knew her own body and what she liked. Her life had not lacked sensual pleasure or intimacy with other people, even if she hadn’t been sexually intimate with anyone but Wil since Ben. She wasn’t afraid of Wil’s experiences or hung up on worrying she lacked them.
It wasn’t about Wil’s gender or sexuality, either, some perceived difference between man-sex and woman-sex that didn’t feel remotely real or important to Katie inside her body.
“It’s the knowing,” she said, squeezing Wil’s hands. “Sometimes I get like this in my trailer on set when I’m about to do a scene and Iknowwhat it’s going to ask of me and what it’s going togive me. I know I’m ready for it, because I can feel that inside my body, and I’m intensely looking forward to it. But I’m also afraid. Because I know it’s going to roll through me and use me and knock me over like a wave. And because, maybe, I know that’s what I’m for. It’s why I’m here. Why I’m alive.”
She looked at Wil’s blond eyelashes and her pale hair swooping down over her forehead, almost covering one of her blue eyes. Her mouth was so serious. Wil’s serious listening face. Then she smiled, and it made Katie want to laugh because she knew this smile, too.
This was how Wil smiled when she was pleased with whatever had just been dealt to her.
“Oh, no,” Katie said. “I mean, I think I just made it sound like it’s my life’s purpose to have sex with you.” A snort-laugh escaped her, and she covered her mouth with the back of her hand. “Which sort of feels true at this moment, but is probably not the coolest thing I’ve ever said.”
Wil laughed, too, but then she slid her hands up Katie’s thighs with enough firm pressure and intent that Katie’s eyelids began to feel heavy. “Can you do something for me?”
“Probably, yes, I will do whatever you ask me to do.”
As soon as she said it, Katie knew it was true, and it was something she could hang on to.