My neck goes hot, and it’s not from thinking about robots.
“Okay. So we’ll just . . .”
TJ doesn’t finish. Instead, he reads her lines, and as we get closer to the kiss, he’s slower with each sentence, more deliberate with every word.
“I’ve been thinking about the other night,” he says.
“What do you mean?” I ask in character as the scientist, though I know damn well what my robot means.
“Our kiss. The one we never got to finish.”
“What about it?” I ask, wanting the kiss but knowing how risky it is.
“What if it lasted longer?”
And this is when our scientist gives in to his desires. “I think about that too,” I say, breathy and hungry.
And curious.
TJ’s still looking at his phone, not at me. But I’m studying him. The way he swallows, his Adam’s apple moving up and down, the stubble lining his jaw. I’m recording every detail, staring at the man next to me and wanting him so much.
TJ raises his face. “And then you kiss the robot,” he says robotically.
“I do,” I say, and my skin is on fucking fire.
He glances back down to the screen, licks his lips, and reads his next line. “I wanted to—”
I shut him up when I grab his face.
His eyes lock with mine. His brown irises darken.
“Practice precedes perfection,” I whisper.
Give me your permission, TJ. I want it so badly. Want to kiss you so very much.
My roommate’s quiet, just breathing as he looks at me, my eyes, my mouth. He darts out his tongue, flicks it across the corner of his lips.
My breath catches, and I slide my thumb along his stubbly jaw. The scrape of his beard drives me wild.
He drives me wild.
Another few seconds tick by. He closes his eyes briefly, opens them, and angles his face.
Then, the American crushes his lips to mine.
It’s not a chaste kiss at all.
It’s full of passion, yet we don’t even open our mouths. It’s just his lips pressed hungrily to mine and mine locked greedily with his. His aftershave goes to my head. My body thrills everywhere at the feel of his mouth hunting mine.
Then it’s his hand on the back of my neck, his fingers playing with the ends of my hair.
And still, we never part our lips. We never stroke our tongues together. We just kiss with so much restraint that the holding back makes it the hottest kiss I’ve ever had.
After ten, maybe twenty seconds, he lets go, breathing out hard. But his hand stays in my hair, mine remains on his face, and I don’t want this moment to end.
“You should do that in the audition,” TJ says, his voice full of gravel.
“Yeah?”
“That’s how you should kiss your robot lover,” he says emphatically.
“Like I’ve wanted nothing else for the last week?”
His lips twitch. He likes what I said. “Exactly. Do it just like that. You’ll capture the longing perfectly. I felt it.”
I felt the longing fucking everywhere. In my bones. My cells. My dreams. I still feel it. “So, I should do it like I’m kissing the man I’ve been dying to kiss?”
He snaps his gaze away from me like eye contact is almost too much, and his breath shudders out. “You should. You really fucking should.” Then he squeezes my thigh. “Let’s walk around the park and run lines.”
Olivia’s words march from my subconscious to front and center in my brain.
I must have picked the park because I wanted to find a way to kiss him. I wanted to find the loophole in the roomie code. I wanted to practice.
And if we’d practiced at home, I don’t know that I could have stopped.
But I know we should stop.
We really should.
17
It Will Be A Wonderful Death
TJ
* * *
I daydream more than I should the next few days at the office. Normally, reporting on the falling pound and the Bank of England’s plans for interest rates keep my mind trained on the here and now.
Also, you know, deadlines.
But that didn’t help me on Monday. Tuesday. Or today.
This article is due at four, and I’m only half done, and it’s one-thirty. I need to call another source, but as the rain patters down on the city outside my office window, I’m someplace else.
I’m in the park three days ago, my fingers threading through Jude’s hair.
I’m outside in the rain this afternoon, kissing him in an alleyway, up against a wall.
I’m at home in our flat tonight—
And I can’t.
I have to shut down those thoughts. They’ve zigzagged through my head since Sunday.
I swivel my chair, return to my laptop, and crank up the music in my earbuds. I need to drown out the sounds of the office, of other phone calls in other cubicles, of reporters tapping furiously on keyboards, of editors barking out orders.
Need to focus.
I laser in on the next few sentences in my assignment. But one paragraph later, my fingers itch to recheck my phone. I give in and tap out a quick text.
* * *
TJ: Any word yet?
* * *
Jude: No. It’s been eighty-four years, and I’m dying.
* * *
TJ: Don’t die before you get the part.
* * *
Jude: It’s no use. I’ve keeled over. It was lovely knowing you.
* * *
TJ: Does it normally take this long to hear about a callback?
* * *
Jude: This is a message from Jude in the afterlife. He says that waiting to know if you got a gig takes approximately a millennium.
* * *
TJ: Well, if you need a distraction, there’s a band playing tonight at The Cat’s Meow. The lead singer is in some show on the West End called Wicked (*shudders*) but when the theater is dark, she moonlights with her band, Ten-Speed Rabbit.
* * *
Jude: There is so much to unpack in that text that you raised me from the dead. First, is the band named after a vibrator? Second, YOU MEAN AMELIA STONE? Third, you don’t like Wicked????????
* * *
I smile as I reply, the music ricocheting through my head—a sexy, dirty song from Ten-Speed Rabbit.
* * *
TJ: I hate musicals. And before you ask why, it’s because no one breaks out in song in real life. And yes, it seems Amelia named her band for a very specific sex toy. I’m guessing because Sex Toys was taken, or maybe she went with Ten-Speed Rabbit out of cheek.
* * *
Jude: Never underestimate the value of cheek. But the flaw in your rationale for your dislike of musicals? International teenage spy Rhys Locke didn’t actually rappel from buildings to save millions in stolen sapphires, and yet you still like those Alistair Edwin’s novels. Since when did something have to be real for you to like it?