Noelle August - Boomerang

“What’s all this about?” she asks.

My face goes a little warm, but I ignore my embarrassment. No more holding back. “Let me take care of you.”

I need to. The need to ease her worry has been consuming me from the moment I saw her on the phone in Vegas.

She nods, and I pull a soft throw blanket from the back of the couch and tuck it around her. I bring her a glass of water, and put her cell phone on a pillow beside her. Then I turn off the lights, leaving only the small lamp on the side table lit.

“I’m going to throw something together,” I say. “Give me ten minutes, and I’ll be right beside you.”

Isis is named after a goddess for a reason. Before she and Jason left tonight, she stocked the refrigerator. I see exactly what I was hoping for. Fresh bread. The right kinds of gourmet cheeses. In ten minutes, I have my mom’s world-famous grilled cheese sandwich prepared. I wash a few strawberries and make some hot chocolate, and bring it all out to Mia.

She’s lying down when I come back out to the living room. For a second, I think she’s asleep, but she sits up and brushes her hair back and smiles.

“That smells so good.”

“Wait until you taste it.” I sit beside her and hand her the plate. “Good luck taking that apart,” I add, remembering her habit of deconstructing sandwiches.

“Will you share it with me?”

“I’ll eat what you don’t finish.”

We share the sandwich, hot chocolate, and strawberries—each and every taste sweeter, sharper in the almost dark. The moment feels familiar, like that afternoon after Winning Displays on the park bench, but better. I was fighting so hard to stop myself from liking her then. Nothing’s standing between us now.

“Jason asked around,” I say, setting the empty plate and mug on the coffee table. “He said your grandma’s in the hands of the best specialists in the world. She’s going to be all right, Curls. She’s strong. She’s a fighter, like you.”

Mia pulls the blanket up and curls against me. It stops my breath how naturally she does it.

“I’m like her,” she says, then adds, “Thank you, Ethan.”

I tuck her close to my chest and her arm comes around my waist. We sit for a few moments, getting the feel of how we fit together in this new way. I take a lock of her hair and coil it around my finger. Right away, I know it’s my new favorite thing to do.

Sounds drift up from the street. A car driving by, playing a thumping base. People walking past, their voices cheerful and laughing.

“Did I ruin the job for both of us?” Mia says.

I’ve been texting with Rhett throughout the day. They’re making the booth work, he told me. But I don’t want Mia to waste a single thought on Boomerang.

“I don’t give a shit about the job.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“I’m right where I should be, Mia.”

Which I didn’t feel for a second at that booth this morning.

The thought surprises me, and suddenly the feeling I had at the bar last night of my life’s compass spinning around crazily is back. But this time it’s calmer. It’s settling toward north again, and I know Mia is part of that, part of me finding my way again. There’s more though. I’m on the verge of making sense of something else. It’s almost within my reach.

Mia looks up at me, and the feeling fades, making room for only her.

“I don’t want to go back yet,” she says.

“Then we won’t. I’ll stay here for the next month if it’s what you want.”

“But we’d run out of food.”

“There’s always pizza delivery.”

“People might worry we’d joined a cult. A pizza-eating cult.”

“Eff ’em. Pizza cults rock.”

“What would we do with all that time?”

“Trust me, I’ve got you covered there, Curls.” I can think of a hundred things I’d do with her if we had a month alone. I have thought of them. Over and over as I stared at her picture, or looked up at her across our workstations. But then I realize my ideas might not be exactly appropriate to point out right now. Seems rude to tell her I want her trembling beneath me, with everything else that’s going on.

Mia’s eyes drop to my mouth. “Ethan . . .” she says.

Damn. Looks like we’re on the same page.

“Soon, Mia. I promise.” I press a kiss to her forehead. “We have time.”

I won’t do this with her as a way to forget pain.

Instead of tucking back into my side, she leans up, bringing her lips to mine. I kiss her and gather her closer. She tastes like strawberries and chocolate, warm and sweet and perfect.

Mia’s knee comes up over my leg, and she nestles against my thigh. My self-control was already hanging by a thread, but now it buckles. I draw her leg over me, shifting her hips until she’s straddling me. Awesome job on not taking advantage of her, Ethan. But I’m drowning in her. In seeing her how I’ve imagined her a million times. In her sweet scent and the soft coils of her black hair brushing against my cheeks.

Her hands find the top buttons of my shirt. “I want to feel your skin,” she says.

I grin. “Okay.”

She laughs, like I said something amusing.

It feels like it takes forever for her to undo the buttons, but my shirt finally comes off. Mia sits up, and studies me with her photographer’s eye, but better. Like a picture could never be enough. Then her hands glide over me. Over my chest and my shoulders, and I let her until I can’t be a passive participant anymore.

I lean up and take her mouth, and my hands slip under her shirt. I tug at her bra and the garment unclasps. Leaning down, I lift her shirt and explore her with my tongue, convinced I could do this—taste her, touch her, make her mine—forever. Mia lets out a whimper and arches her back. Her core pushes against me. She sucks in a breath, her eyes sparking with surprise as they meet mine and then drop lower.

Her looking at me—at us together—is unquestionably the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.

“That’s what you do to me, Curls,” I hear myself say.

“Good.” She smiles and leans down, peppering soft kisses around my lips. She shifts her hips and grinds against me, and my mind empties of everything. I have one solitary need. One goal only. I might have rocked her world before, but I’m going to give her the universe this time.

My fingers find the top button of her pants. I pop it loose, and at that moment, there’s a corresponding click in my brain. A downshift as a sliver of reason returns, and my hands freeze.

“Mia,” I say.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Come on, Vance. Do the right thing.

“Curls . . . we shouldn’t. Not yet. Not now.”

The tension in her back relaxes, and she melts against me, burying her face into the crook of my neck. I wrap my arms around her and hold her close.

I know I don’t have to say anything else. We got carried away. It happens every time we touch. But I want to make sure she understands.

“Mia,” I say, smoothing back her hair, “you said something at the bar yesterday. You said I didn’t choose you. That every time we’ve ended up together, it’s been because of circumstance. Because we just happened to be at the same place at the same time. You were right. It has been that way, and you deserve better. I’m going to give you better. I want you to know that. When this happens between us, it won’t be because we’ve been thrown together. It’ll be because we both choose it. Okay?”

“Okay.” Slowly, she slides to the side a little, still half on me, and says, “But you already did choose, Ethan. You came back with me. You’re here with me.”

I think about what she says for a long while as I hold her. How sometimes we’re already doing the right things, and we don’t know it. Long after she’s fallen asleep and there are no more sounds drifting up from the street, I think about how sometimes, all we really need is the wisdom to see what’s been there all along.

Mia

Q: Best night of your life?

“First we need to get you out of these wet clothes,” Ethan says. “And then I’ve got a few ideas.”

He slides my panties down, and I lift my hips to help. Then I sit up and unhook my bra, flinging it to some corner of the room. A surge of giddiness washes over me. It’s like I’m drunk in waves tonight, and I’m back at high tide.

Ethan rises from the couch, my underwear in his hands. The blanket slips off to the floor, but I don’t mind.

“Wait . . .” I reach out for him, but he’s already weaving off toward the kitchen. Guess I’m not the only one at high tide. “Where are you going?”

“We need to dry these off,” he says. I hear him crash into something and curse, but he’s back in no time. He mumbles something that sounds like “toaster,” but I’m too focused on his full lips, his perfectly masculine features, to really take in his words.

I sit up and pull him toward me, my whole body practically vibrating with need. I want more of his lips, more of his hands. I want to make him feel as good as he made me feel.

He kisses me, and his tongue teases my lips, slides slowly, playfully, into my mouth. I moan because I’m so ridiculously hungry for him. And I can’t remember feeling this way before, like my body is a live wire, throwing sparks.

His lips still pressed to mine, he eases me back onto the sofa. Finally, I think, desperate for his weight, for the full, gorgeous length of him against me.

But he moves away to kiss my throat, his teeth grazing its hollow, tongue and hands darting everywhere. “Jesus, Curls,” he says, as he brushes his lips over my nipple. “I’ve never seen anything as beautiful as you.”

Again, I reach for him, dying for more. For everything.

And again, he eases my hand away. “Still your turn,” he tells me, and his lips and tongue start a slow, maddening journey down my body.

“That’s not fair,” I protest, but his mouth grazes my navel, and he spreads my thighs apart with warm hands.

“Home team advantage,” he says and dips his head lower.

I wake in Ethan’s bed, and this time I know where my panties are: unfortunately, still on my body.

I can tell it’s still nighttime, but I have no idea how long we’ve slept. Vaguely, I remember him leading me to his bedroom, helping me out of my clothes and giving me one of his t-shirts to wear. And I remember lying with my head against his chest as the final bits of our first night together filtered through my mind.

That night, he couldn’t stop touching me, teasing me with his tongue, giving me pleasure over and over again until it felt impossible, like my body had been replaced by one meant to respond only to him.

Now he’s stretched out next to me, a shaft of moonlight catching his strong jaw and angling down to his muscled shoulder and arm. His chest rises and falls, and his warmth surrounds me, along with that delicious fire and salt scent of his.

We need to get back to Vegas. But I can’t move from this moment. Or I won’t. Instead, I slide closer, brushing my lips against his throat, rising up against his body.

“Wake up,” I whisper and run my tongue over his ear. I need him to be awake, to be fully with me the way I want to be with him.

“Mia?” He opens his eyes and smiles at me. I can’t remember ever seeing something as beautiful as that. “What are you doing?”

“I’m choosing,” I say, and kiss him. He tastes sweet, still, like the strawberries he fed me.

My body, my mind, every bit of me wants this. No more Sleeping Beauty. “I can’t wait any more. Can you?”

He laughs and pulls me closer. “Hell, no.”

We kiss and kiss until I feel drunk again, like that first night, like every molecule in my body wants to crash into every molecule in his.

I slip my hand under the sheet, brushing my fingers over the soft material of his boxers. My touch grows insistent, and he groans. The sound undoes me. It’s possible I’ll lose my mind if I can’t have him. Not just in this moment but always.

I slip on top of him, straddling him, my thighs pressed against his hips. My eyes locked on his, I pull off the t-shirt he put on me last night. Then I smooth my body against his, brushing my breasts against his chest, skin against skin. I run my tongue over the delicious groove of his collarbone, up his throat, to his lips. I get lost there, in the taste of him, the feel of him beneath me. I slide my hips down, fitting myself against his hardness.