Addicted to You (23 page)

Leah grimaced. “My roommate made me promise
to attend twenty sessions for getting us burglarized.”

“And that first time you kissed me, you told
the counselor you’d been attending for twenty weeks.” A slow smirk
twisted his mouth. “You didn’t have to keep coming back, but you
did.”

“Don’t look so satisfied. You said you quit
the project, but you kept coming back too.”

He gave a short laugh, and his smile turned
sheepish. “That’s true. But you wouldn’t give me your name so I
didn’t know how else to find you.”

There was a brief silence as both of them
awkwardly acknowledged attending therapy and listening to the lurid
tales of their fellow members for no other reason than to see each
other. What would the counselor think of that?

Leah was admiring the way the smoky air
added a dreamy quality to his blue eyes when a rough hand came down
on her shoulder.

“Hey! Remember me?” a scruffy-looking guy
with a goatee asked, leaning in much too close.

He was kind of cute. And vaguely
familiar.

Shit
. Dread spilled into her stomach.

She pushed his hand off her shoulder and
fixed him with a look of cool distaste. She hoped it would make him
leave. “Should I?”

The guy leered. “I could remind you,” he
said, before dropping his eyes to her cleavage. Her face grew warm
with anger and embarrassment.

She wasn’t ashamed of her past. She might
have used sex as a substitute for a real relationship, but she
wasn’t defined by who she slept with. And whatever Helena believed,
it wasn’t an addiction. She had screwed up, and she had learned
from it. She didn’t care what anyone thought of her anyway.

But she did care about what Will thought of
her.

Will stood, a dark look tightening the lines
of his face at the same time Goatee gave Leah a lewd smile and
said, “I heard there’s a nympho on campus. Know who it might
be?”

A hand gripped Goatee’s shoulder and pulled
him back. Finn inserted himself neatly between Leah and Goatee, and
released a dramatic sigh before she could even think of a
response.

“You’re completely right,” he said, stepping
into Goatee’s personal space. “It’s me. Want to join me in the
men’s bathroom?”

Goatee gave Finn a disgusted look before
stumbling off in confusion.

Once he was gone, Finn turned to face them
with a triumphant grin. “I owed you one for being a dumbass at the
theater.”

“Thanks,” she said and meant it.

Will laughed and brushed his fingers over
her arm. Warmth tingled through her skin.

“So,” she said once Finn had wandered back
to his corner of the bar, “where are you taking me for our second
date?”

Two months
later

Leah had given herself one rule in her
relationship with Will. No sex for two months. She maintained she
never had a full-blown addiction, and the fact she hadn’t had sex
in over six months—not since the burglary—reassured her of this.
Even Helena had begun to ask when she would put them both out of
their misery and just sleep with him. But Leah wanted to be
absolutely, one hundred percent certain that sex wouldn’t play a
factor in how she felt for Will.

She hadn’t told him this, of course, but he
seemed to understand because any time a kiss got too heavy and she
pulled away, he responded only with a small smile and gentle
fingers against her cheek. He’d been excruciatingly patient, taking
only what she would give while still making her head spin and her
heart pound.

Now, as they stumbled into his bedroom, she
was more than ready to resume what she had stopped over two months
ago.

Thirty minutes earlier, she and Will had
been leaving the theater where they’d gone to see the final showing
of Finn’s play. She had nudged Will’s jaw with her hand while
lifting to her toes to whisper in his ear.

“You once promised to let me feel you inside
me, pressing me into the bed.”

Will had gone perfectly still. And then he’d
turned his head and caught her mouth in a kiss so hot that the sun
might have burned with envy.

The drive from campus to his apartment had
felt impossibly long, especially with him thwarting her attempts to
undo his pants while he drove. Admittedly, that was probably smart
of him.

The moment the apartment door shut behind
them, she had wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around
his waist. Limbs and mouths tangled, they had careened down the
hallway into his bedroom and collapsed onto the bed without
breaking the kiss.

She felt too hot in her own skin, as if a
fire had been ignited inside her bones, burning everywhere he
touched her. Heat crackled between them, making her arch her hips
up into Will's and moan at the sweet pressure.

He pulled her shirt off, eager hands making
him clumsy, and he laughed when the shirt caught on her elbow. She
freed herself before allowing a laugh to escape as well. They had
been looking forward to this for so long that neither could believe
it was finally happening.

He grasped her arm, gently turning it so he
could place a light kiss on her elbow where her shirt had left a
red imprint in her skin. Smiling, she dragged her fingers through
his tousled hair.

Somewhere in the back of her mind remained
the lingering fear that she would lose interest in him after this,
but it was hard to imagine that happening.

With how much time she spent in his
apartment, she practically lived here already. And Elijah was quite
attached to him as well, which doubled the stakes.

That's what Leah told herself anyway, as
Will trailed a series of hot kisses down her chest to the edge of
her lace bra.

It had absolutely nothing to do with the
fact that she was utterly, crushingly in love with him.

He unclasped her bra, this time with
careful, deft fingers, and she shrugged it off, tossing it aside.
With one hand at the small of her back, and the other tracing the
bottom swell of her breast, he lowered his head and closed his
mouth over her nipple. She gasped, his mouth chasing away her
sanity as she fumbled to release the button of his jeans. He drew
away, sliding off the mattress to finish undressing, and she
shivered at the loss of his heat. Impatient and wanting, she
quickly discarded the rest of her clothes as well, kicking off her
panties in what was probably an incredibly unsexy move.

By the smile on his face, her impatience
amused him, but she could see the same desperate quality in the way
his eyes roved over her. The way he looked at her, as if he
couldn’t get enough, as if he didn’t want to miss a single detail,
made her feel self-conscious as she hadn’t felt since the first
time she’d lost her virginity to a German exchange student. Will
made her feel like there had never been anyone else before him.

He tugged off his shirt until he was left in
nothing but dark boxer briefs. She sucked in her bottom lip,
basking in the sight of all that smooth, golden skin. Too many
times in the last two months, she’d caught him coming out of the
shower, damp and gorgeous and begging to have the lingering water
droplets licked off his skin. Every time, she had resisted. But not
this time.

She crawled over the mattress until she
reached the edge and her fingers found the waist of his boxer
briefs. She helped slide them down over lean hips and corded
thighs. Once he’d pushed them aside to join the rest of their
clothes on the floor, she straightened, kneeling on the very edge
of the bed. Her fingers gripped his hips, jerking him forward so
that they were pressed skin to skin, her aching breasts against his
chest and his hard length pressed tight against her stomach. Her
lips skimmed over the curve of his shoulder, the ridge of his
collarbone, the muscle in the side of his neck. She bit down
gently.

With a groan, he tipped her face up and
kissed her again, his tongue sweeping through her mouth and making
her tremble. Unable to wait any longer, she drew back and tugged
him with her onto the bed.

She lay back against the sheets, cool
against her flushed skin. Will followed, kneeling over her, his
lips never leaving her for more than a breath.

His hands traced the curve of her waist,
frustratingly light, before his fingers trailed down her stomach
and lower. She bit her lip and released a quiet moan. Those deft
fingers flitted over her and then pressed in. She gasped and spread
her legs, drawing up her knees. Her toes curled into the sheets.
His mouth lowered to her nipple, pressing a kiss to it before
taking it into his mouth. Lifting up onto her elbows, she leaned
into him and dragged her teeth down his shoulder.

She wanted him so badly and she’d been
waiting for so long that she didn’t even care for foreplay. She
reached down between their bodies and took him in hand, relishing
the way his blue eyes darkened with hunger and the way his lashes
fluttered shut.

“I don’t want to wait,” she whispered and
hooked one of her legs over his hip. She dug her blunt nails into
his chest as he slowly withdrew his fingers.

She held her breath as he drew away just
long enough to slip on a condom. Then he pulled her other leg over
his hip as well and positioned himself. When he finally entered
her, she whimpered with pleasure and allowed that strange thing
that she only felt with this one guy take over.

Trust
.

Will rested his weight on his elbows as he
began to move. Lifting her head, she pressed her face into the
crook of his neck as the world spun. Her legs tightened around his
waist, needing him deeper, faster, even as she laughed breathlessly
at the bliss running up and down her spine. Her hands glided over
his shoulder blades, his back, lower until she gripped his ass. His
muscles contracted and shifted against her palms as he thrust into
her, and she tightened her grip, encouraging him to move harder,
closer.

She had never felt this happy during sex.
For the first time, she knew and loved and trusted the guy she was
in bed with, and it felt like something Jane Austen might have
written about. If she had been prone to writing erotica. (She would
bet that would have made a lot of Mr. Darcy fans happy.)

She held him close as he moved over her,
inside her, reveling in the intimacy in a way she never had—never
could—before. His fingers dug into her skin as he thrust faster,
and she gloried in the delicious dominance of it. She would never
admit it to Will, but allowing him full control, at least this
time, felt right. Exhilarating even.

But next time, she got to be on top.

She cried out as he hit
just the right angle. The sound seemed to push him into some wild,
uncontrolled place, and he pressed their mouths together, kissing
her deeply. His movements became more frenzied as their shallow
breaths grew uneven against each other’s lips.
The heat grew overwhelming. Her nails slid on skin damp with
sweat as her orgasm corkscrewed ever tighter.

“Will,” she gasped as she came, muscles
clenching, shuddering into his embrace.

“Almost there,” he said,
and she could hear the smile in his voice even now. A moment later,
he
lowered his head to breathe into her
hair, and then the muscles in his back tightened beneath her hands
as he thrust deep, once, body trembling. She felt him pulse inside
her, and her thoughts unraveled at the knowledge.

Afterward, as they lay entwined, she stared
up at the shadows carved across the ceiling and breathed. It seemed
all she was capable of at the moment, the steady inhalation and
exhalation of air.

She found that was perfectly fine with
her.

She didn’t remember much of what happened
afterward. She must have fallen asleep because Will woke her up
right before dawn for another round, which she happily
accepted.

Another few hours of sleep later, Leah awoke
to a warm block of sunlight falling across her face from the
window. The space beside her was empty, but she wasn’t worried. She
recalled briefly waking when he’d gotten up, along with the feel of
his fingers sliding down her cheek and his lips against her
temple.

As she allowed her brain the time to fully
wake up, she thought about everything she had to do that day. Bake
cookies and watch an episode of their latest anime favorite with
Elijah. Tease Helena about her date with Jay. Brave the mall and
her first time Christmas shopping for Will, who had refused to pick
out a gift for himself. She supposed she’d just have to surprise
him then.

She also had to finish settling Elijah into
her apartment. After nearly two months of flimsy protests from her
mom, Leah had finally lost her patience and moved Elijah and his
things to her place without their parents’ permission. Aside from
an angry voicemail demanding Leah call her back, her mom hadn’t
done much in retaliation. Leah should have expected as much, but
she had still stupidly thought the woman might care about Elijah
enough to actually fight to keep him.

Anyway, she had told herself that she
wouldn’t think about that anymore. Elijah needed her, and that was
all that mattered.

What else was on her list today? Oh, yes.
Finish decorating the Christmas tree. It was their first, and she’d
only gotten it because Elijah had asked. Helena was having a blast
color coordinating the decorations. She also wanted to finish the
last essay of the semester before final exams and winter break.

And all that in addition to dinner with
Will. And more sex.

It sounded like a headache in the making,
but she looked forward to it.

She smiled as the sound of bacon sizzling in
a frying pan reached her ears. She drew a deep, contented breath
and gave a languid stretch. No guy had ever made her breakfast
before. The fact Will had been her first in this made her smile
stupidly into her pillow.