Singe (3 page)

“Bossy,” he tells her, leaning down and sucking lightly on her tongue before sliding both hands underneath the dress she’s wearing, hooking his fingers in the elastic of her nylons. Addie shivers as he peels them off, rough thumb pushing against her bare instep. When his mouth takes over a second later, Addie gasps.

“That’s better,” Eli says, stringing a line of kisses from her knee to her calf to her ankle. “I’m supposed to be working for it, you know?”

“Mm-hmm.” Addie smiles. There’s something about how unapologetic he is that she likes, his easy smile. Still, when he reaches for the side zip of her dress she feels herself go just the slightest bit tense.

Eli feels it too. “You sure?” he asks, voice in her ear low and quiet. “Addie.”

Addie bites her lip. “Yeah,” she says finally, wrapping her bare legs around his. He’s okay, Eli. He’s not a bad guy. “I’m sure. So long as we keep it out of the firehouse.” Only then that sounds like she’s talking about a long-term thing, rather than a one-night stand. Not that it’s really night yet, Addie guesses. God, is there a five o’clock rule for casual sex? “I mean—”

“I know what you mean, princess.” Eli laughs, leaning in to plant a kiss under her jaw. His mouth is warm and chapped. “We have to keep it on the down low anyway, otherwise Jim’ll get jealous.”

Addie busts up laughing, giddy relief more than anything. God,
Eli
Grant,
his dumb jokes and his dumb player moves,
you wanna get out of here
at a frickin’ funeral. Letting him get in her pants for an evening really isn’t the end of the world. It might, she suspects, even be fun. “Yeah right, okay. Don’t worry, I’m discreet.”

“I guessed that about you, actually,” Eli says, fingers worming their way back to her zipper. He’s watching her this time though, Addie can tell. He’s watching carefully. “You look like a girl who can keep a secret.”

Addie grins. He’s such a bullshitter, talking to her in that bright coaxing voice like he’s trying to talk a cat out of a tree. “Yeah, yeah, I’m a wonder,” she says, arching slightly to encourage him. His hand brushes the side of her breast as he works the zipper down. “Listen though, I don’t have any…” She trails off. She should. As a modern adult woman, she should. She swore that was the first thing she was going to buy as soon as she moved out, condoms and a vibrator. She managed one half of the equation. God knows what it says about her. “Are you…?”

Eli nods, like,
of course
. He has her zipper undone to her waist now, dress gaping at the side. “But we don’t need it just yet, do we?” he asks, peeling one thick strap down her arm. “Remember: said I gotta work.”

Oh. Well. “I did,” Addie agrees, shifting her weight so he can get the other strap down too. It’s really more of an up-over-the-head affair, this dress. Watch it get stuck around her hips, that’ll be nice and charming. “That is a thing I said.”

“So.” Eli is supremely unconcerned about potential wardrobe malfunctions or about anything else, it seems like, eyes flicking between her face and her bra, which is in fact black and strapless. Her boobs are pretty okay, Addie knows. “Let me work.”

Addie laughs again, reaching up to run her palms over his chest and stomach, the raised tight skin where his scars are and the flat packed muscle down lower. She scratches lightly with her nails for the pleasure of hearing him inhale. “Sorry, sorry,” she says, lifting her chin to give him access to her neck and her collarbone and the pale soft tops of her breasts above the bra cups; he ducks his head and bites her nipple through the satiny fabric and it’s Addie’s turn to let out a gasp. “Do your thing.”

Do his thing
. Jesus Christ, this girl. Eli doesn’t totally know what to make of her is the truth. He thinks it’s possible she’s about to have sex with him ironically, the way Eli watches old monster movies or his ex-wife, Chelsea, used to listen to Taylor Swift. And it’s not that Eli
minds
, exactly—he’s
into
her now, Addie Manzella, her quick wit and the Jessica Rabbit body, all dangerous hourglass curves—but it’s not an attitude he’s encountered a whole lot of in his recent endeavor into encountering as many women’s attitudes as humanly possible.

But Eli really likes old monster movies is the actual truth of it. Chelsea really liked Taylor Swift.

So.

“Come here a second,” he murmurs, sliding a hand underneath her back. Addie raises her arms as she sits up, thinking he’s after the dress, but it’s her breasts Eli wants. Her bra, specifically. It’s not the kind of underwear Eli expected to find hiding under Addie Manzella’s funeral blacks. Everything shifted when she sat up, reorganized itself, and now she’s resting so heavy and full in the molded cups it nearly kills him.

“Jesus, Addie,” he says, abandoning the hooks for a minute to trace her. “Look at you.”

That makes her smile, a real one. She reaches back to flick the clasp herself, a one-handed pinch the shoves everything up and out appealingly. Eli just can’t get over her
skin
, olive pale and sweaty. He’s leaning over to taste the freckles on her chest when Addie stops him.

“Wait,” she says, peeling off the bra and chucking it in the direction of the beanbag. Eli starts to lean back in but already she’s reaching up again, this time for the clasp of her necklace, a delicate cross Eli’s noticed on her before. She sets it on the IKEA coffee table and does her earrings too, two tiny knots of gold. “Okay, now go.”

“Now
go
?” She turns back toward him and Eli finally gets a good look at her.
Fuck
, but she’s a pretty girl, pink nipples and all that wild Renaissance hair spilling over her shoulders, a baby mole the size of a pinprick on the side of one round breast. It occurs to Eli that everyone’s body ought to be punctuated so nicely. It’s almost enough to make him forget to roll his eyes. “Oh I’ll
go
, princess,” he tells her, touching his tongue to the beauty mark because he wants to, turning his head a couple of inches to suck. She tastes just as sweaty-good as he thought.

Addie gasps—that’s working for him too, the shaky breath on her, how it makes him wonder what exactly an ironic orgasm is going to sound like—and grinds her hips up into his rib cage, where he’s dropped down enough that he’s flush against her lower body. The dress is still bunched around her waist.

“You like that, huh?” he asks, reaching up to knead one breast while he kisses his way down across her ribs and the soft plane of her stomach, narrow middle and the dramatic flare of her hips. Then, biting when she doesn’t answer, “Hmm? Addie.” She doesn’t seem like a girl inclined to give very much in the way of feedback, but Eli wants to get this right.

Addie sighs noisily, shifting her weight on the futon. “I
mean
,” she mutters, eyes on the ceiling and that teasing, exasperated tone in her voice. “It’s not the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“Oh no?” Eli smiles. It feels like a game now, how much he wants to get her to admit to something. How committed he is to making it good. “Lift,” he murmurs, fisting his hands in the dress and tugging ’til she arches her hips up. He takes her underwear too, when she does. He doesn’t get much of a look at them—plain cotton with a wide, lacy waistband—but it hardly matters because there she is, Addie Manzella buck naked on her crappy futon. The hair between her legs is even darker than the hair on her head, more than Eli’s seen on a girl in a while. She looks almost like a page from a vintage porn spread, the really old stuff that only comes in black and white, something about her curvy body just not quite of this century. Beside her, the futon seems space-age new.

“Oh Christ, don’t just
stare
at me,” Addie complains, covering her face. Eli laughs and yanks her hand away, crawling back on top. Underneath her palm she’s glaring at him, dark eyes narrowed and those straight, boyish eyebrows drawn together. Her eyelashes are as thick as a doll’s.

“You’re beautiful,” he tells her, which is the God’s honest truth. Addie rolls her eyes. She seems to be trying to keep her legs closed but Eli bends her knees back up anyway, fitting his hips in between. He’s going to work for it, he is, but right now—right now, his dick is fucking aching.

“No, don’t,” Addie whines, twisting like an eel. For a second Eli’s heart drops. “I’ll get you messy.”

Oh. Eli nearly laughs with relief. “What, princess?” he can’t resist asking as he undoes his belt. “Did the not-worst thing that’s ever happened to you get you a little worked up?”

Addie groans, both hands up over her face now; she sounds like a teenager whose dad is embarrassing her at a family barbecue. But the idea has taken root now, the idea that she might already be—Eli stops what he’s doing.

“Is that what’s going on?” he asks, swinging an unresisting leg open and running a hand up her thigh. His fly is down at least, breathing room. “Is that what I did? I work you up?”

Addie huffs noisily. “You’re an asshole,” she accuses him. She’s watching him now though, Eli notices when he glances up at her, both hands fussing in her glossy, soft-looking hair. When he smiles at her, she smiles back like it’s in spite of herself. “I swear to God.”

“Uh-huh.” She can call him whatever she wants, pretty much, Addie with her pinup girl body and her skeptical face. Her inner thighs are warm and damp, sweat or arousal or a combination of both. Eli feels his heart trip inside his chest. He flips his hand and opens her up, testing with just his thumb to start. He finds her clit and rubs gently for a minute, chances sliding his middle finger inside. Addie makes a soft, quiet sound.

She is—fuck, she is
tight
.

Wet too; Eli can smell her, private and sharp and mixed with that same faint perfume, gardenias maybe. He thinks there used to be gardenias in the yard when he was a real little kid. Eli wants his mouth between her legs just as bad as he wanted it on her nipples.

“Here,” he tells her, wrapping his hand around her ankle and canting her leg as wide as he can get it, resting her slippery heel on a wrinkled
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on the coffee table. Sliding his ass down the mattress and ducking his head.

Addie almost kicks his whole face off. “Seriously?” she asks, popping up onto her elbows so fast she whacks one of them on the arm of the futon.
“
Eli, come on. It’s a hundred fucking degrees outside.”

Eli raises his eyebrows. This is his move too, or one of them. He hasn’t been turned down yet. “You told me to do my thing,” he says slowly, tracing patterns on her inner thighs. Addie shivers. Still, she doesn’t have the look of a girl who’s kidding around—Eli is in the way of her closing her legs so she’s brought her knees together in midair like a contortionist instead, heel coming up off
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to push at his chest.

“No way,” she’s telling him. When Eli looks up, her face is determined too, that pale-plush mouth set in a pinching line. “No. Not part of your thing today.”

Well
okay
then. Eli turns his head to kiss her instep. He likes her feet, all red, sexy polish. “Sure,” he says, sliding back up her body and putting his hands on the wicked curve of her waist. She’s warm and damp along the underside of her ribcage. “What do you want then, hmm?”

Addie pulls a face, like asking is gross and possibly—possibly, Eli can’t entirely read her—even embarrassing. “You’re the guy,” is all she says.

“I’m the—” Eli frowns. He’s not sure what she means, like
you’re the guy
in a George Clooney heist movie-type way or just
you’re the one with the penis, ergo you should know what to do here
. He pauses for a minute, takes a breath. “Okay,” he says again once he’s collected himself a fraction, reaching between them until he finds one of her hot, sticky hands. He laces his sweaty fingers through hers, squeezes. “You’re the boss though.” He shifts his weight to his elbow and slides one finger back inside her, then two. He leans down and sucks at the hinge of her jaw. “That okay?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Addie relaxes right away, all that worried muscle smoothing out at once underneath him. She feels so, so warm. After a minute her hips start to move, fucking his fingers as her thighs fall back open, slow and lazy. Eli twists his wrist, gets the heel of his hand on her clit so she can grind. “
Shit
,” she says breathlessly, sounding surprised. “Yes.”

Eli bites back a grin. “That’s a girl,” he murmurs into her neck. He’s relaxed himself again now too, enough to push against her hip just slightly—he’s
hard
, fuck, can feel the wet spot on the front of his boxers. He’s gonna want her on top of him when they get down to it, he knows that much already. He wants to watch everything move.

He lets her go like that for a while, liking the feeling and the faces she makes, how she reaches up with her free hand to yank at her own hair. It’s working for her at least, that much he knows; she was wet before but she’s wetter now, slippery across his entire palm. When he pulls out to rub at her clit for a second she gulps air, arching fretfully. “Feel good?” he asks. Addie nods.

It’s warm, pressing up against her like he is. Even with the AC Eli’s still sweating, along the backs of his knees inside his pants; he’s just pulling back to finish wiggling out of them when Addie grabs at his wrist. “Wait,” she gasps. “Just—just wait a sec?” Her face is flushed a bright, solid pink.

Absolutely no part of her is relaxed anymore, Eli notices with a start, tense thighs and stomach and all those private muscles up inside. The hand that’s still in his squeezes tight tight tight.