Page 76 of Even If the Sky is Falling
6
Hale
Istared at Piper who had already jumped to her feet, skirt still bunched on her thighs that were still streaked with the evidence of her arousal. “What are you doing?”
“Looking to see if someone is out there,” she whispered.
“Um...” I nodded to her exposed skin and motioned to my pretty obvious erection.
“Ugh. So what?” She pushed down the hem of the dress waved her hand to me. “Get your priorities right.”
I stood, grumbling and adjusting myself. “I thought I had.”
The hallway was still, the fluorescent lights casting eerie light over empty corners and the painted concrete walls. “Hello?” Piper called out and I tried to step in front of her, an urge to protect her from whatever or whoever had slammed the door.
“Stop walking in front of me,” she hissed, nudging me out of the way.
“I’m trying to be a gentleman. We don’t know who is out here.” I took a bigger step and braced my arm to the right to keep her behind me as we crept down the hall in the direction of the sound.
Piper tried to maneuver around me. “And you’re—what?—an MMA fighter?”
“Listen, Drake.” I glanced around and then turned to her, my palms against the surprisingly warm skin of her biceps. In the cool light of the fluorescents, she was warm with the red dress like a spot of heat. “You might be smarter than me and tougher than me, but at the very least, I’m bigger than you and since I can still taste you and I would very much like you to remain unharmed so I can taste you a few more times before this is all over. Will you just let me go a little caveman and stand in front of you in case we run into a nutjob running early for the postapocalyptic street fights and wielding a machete?”
Her stare was steely, jaw set in the way I remembered. But she finally relented, touching the pad of her thumb to the side of my lower lip and swiping it over my skin. It was such a soft gesture in the shadow of that hard expression. “Fine.”
“Thank you,” I huffed, wanting to strangle and kiss her in equal measure. I turned back toward the closed door to the classroom, the room I’d been poking around when Piper showed up. That felt like years ago, even though it was just a few hours. I wrapped my fingers around the doorknob and twisted, glancing over my shoulder where Piper was basically stuck to my back and looking pensive. “You okay?”
“You said I was smarter than you,” she whispered.
“That’s what you took from all of that?”
Piper shrugged, her eyes widening. “It just seemed worth noting!”
“You’re impossible, I don’t know why I even—” She nudged me from behind and the door creaked open like it was auditioning for a WD-40 ad.
The lights at the front of the room were still on, illuminating the low podium and table on the small stage. Piper’s fingers dug into my sides and her chest was against my back. “Hello? Anyone here?” We stepped together into the room and I knew her heartbeat matched mine in intensity. The space was cool, making me think the air-conditioning worked better in this classroom than the little graduate student suite we’d commandeered for M&Ms, scotch, sex and waiting out the end of the world.
“Is someone down here?” Piper called from behind me and we looked left and right. I had no idea what I was doing so I channeled every police procedural I’d ever seen, feeling a need to yell, “Clear!” No one stirred or spoke as we made our way along the cinder block wall toward the stage, Piper holding on to me. I liked that part despite the mild uncertainty and fear. I guess that was one way to lose the erection I didn’t particularly want to share with a stranger.
“There’s no one here,” Piper said, loosening her grip on me. She took a few steps from me, padding up the short staircase for the stage in her bare feet and putting us at eye level. “Do you think they went into another room?”
“Maybe... I liked it better when I knew we were alone.”
“Me, too.” She glanced around and I admired the curve of her neck; I couldn’t help it. The curve of her neck was part of every memory of every premed class I took. She’d rub her neck with the tip of her index finger when she wasn’t sure about an answer. It didn’t happen often, but those were the only times I had a chance of scoring higher or doing better. She touched that soft fingertip with the red-painted nail to her neck now and I was lost in the motion.
In an instant, there was a loud crash and Piper was against me, or maybe I was against her. Our arms were tangled and it took a moment to shift my brain from that fingertip to the crash to Piper in my arms. The door had slammed again with no one in sight.
“Damn air-conditioning,” she muttered, her face against my chest. “How could I forget that after four years of doors slamming?”
I willed my acute stress response, my fight-or-flight instinct, to slow. “You’re right. Shit.” I lowered myself to the top step, awkwardly since Piper’s arms were still around me and she was draped across my lap once we were seated. I stroked the spot on her neck where she’d been rubbing.
“Guess that little moment of...whatever in there didn’t calm us down much,” she said, settling against me. Piper would not acknowledge that she was willingly cuddling with me. She would deny it was happening if I brought it up so I didn’t mention how her weight on my thighs made me feel safe and surrounded and how she smelled so good.
“That moment of me giving you the best orgasm of your life?”
“I never said it was the best of my life.” She rested her head against my shoulder.
“But it was, right?” I fiddled with the zipper at the top of her back. “I guess I’m okay if I take second place to your own ministrations. How about that?”
