He shakes his head and reaches for the hem of my shirt, but it’s nothing like the times he’s touched my clothes before, and I don’t know what comes next. I trust that he does, and I keep my eyes locked with his, even when he moves to tuck his fingers into thefront pockets of my jeans. The placement of his hands helps keep a careful distance between us when Darren finally leans forward to drag the tip of his nose over my beard, his mouth open just below my jaw.
“I’m not going straight home, but I’ll get there eventually. And because I have no plans to hook up with anyone before that, there’s a damn good chance I’ll be horny and eager to come. You’ll already be sound asleep, so I can't comewithyou, but that might not stop me from coming while I’m thinking about you.” He pauses when I shiver, and then I feel him exhale against my skin. “Is that okay?”
“Yes,” I say just before I clear my throat, sharply aware he must be able to feel it. “I did it the other night.”
His breath catches and he pulls back to look at me again, his eyes wide. “You did what?”
“In the shower. I thought about you.”
“Tell me.”
“Darren—”
“You don’t get to bite your tongue either,” he argues. “This has the potential to be a lot of fun, but it only works if we talk. I don’t want to hold anything back. Not if it’s about us.”
When he saysus, I know he’s referring to our little agreement, but something about it makes me shiver a second time—that single-syllable commitment from a man who must’ve told himself not to make them anymore. I don’t have that kind of vow left in me, but I can do as he’s asked and thank the wind for sweeping it away.
“The night after the accident.”
I stop and take a deep breath, and when our foreheads are pressed together, I’m not all that sure how it happened. It doesn’t matter, except for how much I swear I can feel him against my lips while we’re still too far apart for that to be true.
“Tell me,” Darren says again.
“I wanted to take a hot shower. I wanted to relax. My whole body ached, but when I looked at the water running down my body, I thought about you touching me like that.”
“Good. I’m glad you thought about me.”
“Are you?” I ask.
“Of course,” he says. “Did thinking about me make you hard?”
“Your fingertips tracing the path of the water. You telling me to relax. Yeah, I—it did.”
“Say it.”
“It made me hard,” I sigh.
“And then what?”
I nudge the tip of his nose with mine. “I don’t know what to say about it.”
“Had you ever gotten yourself off while thinking about a man?”
“No.”
“Have you ever told someone you got off while thinking about them? Said those actual words? ‘I made myself come while I was thinking about you?'”
“No.”
“Will youdo it now?”
My hands have been at my side, curled into loose fists when I wasn’t paying attention, but now I lift them to Darren’s forearms and hold on. He wants this, and I want to give it to him, but I take a moment to wait for the shame several priests once promised I would feel for a few different sins.
It doesn’t come, and I’d never really expected it to.
Maybe Darren wants to reassure me of something, though. He finally lets go of my pockets and rids us of the last couple of inches between our bodies, and just as I notice his arousal, his mouth skips past mine and stays closed when he presses it to my neck.
I lick my lips and remember sangria and showers. “I made myself come while I was thinking about you.”