Page 74 of Is She Really Going Out with Him?
“What do you need me to say? I want you,” I say, exasperated. Every cell in my body is alert, all doubts banished. “I want you to touch me, kiss me, fuck me,” I go on, breathless but confident.Did I just say that? I don’t recognize myself.
“Really?” he asks, his eyes locking on to mine in the darkness, his body suspended above me, rock-still. For a moment, there is no sound except for our breathing, there is nothing except him.
“Yes.”
And then it’s as though the rigid spell of control he is under breaks, and he lets himself go, twisting us around, pulling me ontop of him, finding my lips with his, pulling my lower lip into his mouth, kissing me hungrily, hot and hard, running a hand through my hair. Every cell in my body explodes.
“My God, you’re sexy,” he whispers into my mouth, and I buck into him, wanting more, wanting everything. A feral sex-starved beast inside me has just been unleashed and my head has relinquished all control. His hand strokes down my thigh, up the T-shirt I’m wearing, finding the edge of my underwear, yanking it aside, and I let out a whimper, burying my face in his shoulder.
“You want me,” he says, one finger slowly circling its way up my inner thigh. “Say it.”
“I want you, Will,” I say, my voice breathy as my whole body throbs with anticipation. And then finally there are no more words, only excruciating bliss.
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Chapter 24
I wake up smiling, stretchingslowly, like a cat after a long nap. I feel reborn. My whole body alive, revived, yet also gloriously tender. I don’t want to move, I want to melt into this bed and feel it all again, and again and again. Rolling over, I reach out a hand for Will but find an empty bed. Turning over, I see he isn’t in the cabin. Where did he go?
Stepping out of bed and opening the cabin door, I see him, hunched over the firepit, building a new fire to heat the kettle.
“Morning,” I call, waving to him from the door. I’m dressed in his T-shirt and my underwear, and though it’s oversized and comes down to my thighs, this morning I feel sexy wearing it.
“Hey,” he says, glancing back at me before adding some more kindling to the fire.
“You want to come and help me over here?” I ask, and he looks back over his shoulder to smile at me but doesn’t make a move.
“Just at a crucial part of the fire-building process,” he says. “I’m making you tea.”
He persists with his fire arranging, so I pull on my jeans and shoes and go out to join him. Twigs crack beneath my feet, andthe low morning sun dapples the glade like nature’s disco ball. “Isn’t this wonderful? Waking up in the wild, being right in the forest, the fresh smell of dew and the morning mist still hanging over the field.”
“Someone’s full of the joys of spring,” Will says. He hangs the kettle over the flame, then stands up and strides across the glade toward me, reaching to brush my hair away from my face.
“I am,” I say, tilting my head upward to look at him.
“Shall we go swimming while the water heats up?” he suggests. Then he reaches for my hand, and I laugh as he pulls me along the woodland track, following the sound of the river. Small wooden arrows point along the bank toward the plunge pool. When we get close, Will lets go of my hand, pulls off his shirt and jeans in one seamless motion, then, naked, leaps off the bank straight into the swirling dark water.
“That was dangerous,” I call, blushing at the sight of him. “You don’t know how deep it is.”
“It’s deep enough,” he says, dunking his head under the water, then bursting through the surface, breathless from the cold. He shakes his head, sending water from his hair in a circle of spray.
Pulling off my T-shirt and jeans, I keep my knickers on, attempting to retain some modicum of modesty, then take a small jump into the shallows, squealing at the viselike grip of the water. Will finds my hand and pulls me toward him, the heat of his body confusing my senses in the biting cold.
“Refreshing,” I say, struggling to catch my breath, and he laughs. We’re face-to-face now, in daylight. His eyes are full of questions, but I don’t know what he’s asking, so I lean up to kiss him. Last night felt like a fantasy, like it might not have been real, but now that I feel his firm lips, soft and probing, everything comes back in a rush of delicious molten memory.
His mouth moves down to kiss my shoulders.
“How are we going to write about this?” I ask, my voice tight in my throat.
“Heavily redacted,” he says, suddenly picking me up and throwing me across the pool so I go all the way under. When I come up, gasping, Will is already on the bank, pulling on his clothes. I put my hands across my chest as I follow him, self-conscious in unforgiving daylight. He turns toward me, and I shoo his gaze away. “Don’t look!”
“I have seen you more naked than that, Appleby, in case you don’t remember.”
“Not like this, you haven’t,” I say, scrambling to find my T-shirt on the bank and pulling it over my damp head.
Back at our camp, the kettle is billowing steam, and while Will uses a hook to remove it from the fire, I run back to his cabin to find another T-shirt. As I walk back across the glade, Will calls to me, “I remembered your code, if you want to get dry clothes.”
“What?” I ask, tilting my head in confusion.
