“Where the hell did Silas and Wyatt go?” he huffs after another minute. “I’d like to get out of here.”
“We could just leave,” I point out, shifting a little closer. “Didn’t Reid say he was getting another ride home?”
“Silas has a scratching post in his car for me,” Gideon says, and I don’t even ask why. Men.
I put my lips right next to his ear, because a scratching post? Is he serious?
“It’s a long drive,” I murmur, my mouth directly on the shell of his ear. “We should get started.”
Gideon’s whole body tenses, and he takes a careful breath.
“Especially if Reid won’t be back until later,” I go on.
“Why?” he rumbles, turning his head so our mouths nearly meet. “You got plans?”
Yes, I have plans. I’d like to get railed over the kitchen table while still wearing my garter tights, for example, but I physically can’t make myself say that out loud, so instead I lick his ear and listen to the way he hisses.
“Andi,” he says, and sounds a little pained.
“Mmm?”
Gideon doesn’t answer, but he turns around, tilts his head up, and kisses me with a hand around the back of my neck. The angle is weird because I’m taller than him like this, sort of bent over, and I take my face in his hands and come down on his mouth with more force than usual.
He groans. It’s quiet, but holy shit. I pull back and slide a thumb along his lower lip and he watches me, eyes mottled in the dark. I remember him on his knees, unlacing my boots, how he looked like this then, too.
“God, you’re pretty,” I whisper, and I don’t really mean to, but Gideon swallows hard and pulls my mouth back to his. It’s gentle for a second and a little feral after that, his teeth on my lip and my thumb gently tracing down the line of his throat. He presses himself against me then his hands are on my hips, my thighs, under my skirt. His hands are warm and calloused, and they scratch a little as he strokes the skin right above where my tights end, then finds both garters and snaps them.
It doesn’t hurt. I can barely feel it, honestly, but I know it and then he snaps the ones on the backs of my thighs too and holy fuck, his house is so far away.
“You like the tights, then?” I murmur, my lips barely leaving his.
He frowns slightly. “Of course I like the tights,” he says, very seriously. “I haven’t thought about anything else since we got here.”
“Nothing?” I tease, nipping at his lips again.
“You want an inventory of thoughts?” he says, and squeezes my upper thighs, skin on skin. “Fine. It was tights, Reid trying to drink my beer, tights, roller derby, tights, tights, put away chairs. Then tights again. Exactly like you wanted.”
“I didn’t mean—”
Gideon sighs, then wraps one arm around my upper thighs and lifts me off the bleacher. I squeak in surprise before he sets me down on the floor, at our usual heights, and then makes a whole show of pulling my skirt down.
He takes me gently by the chin and pulls my face up so we’re looking at each other.
“Yes,” he says. “You did.”
“Then I’m glad it worked.”
“You thought there was a chance it wouldn’t?”
I take a tiny step closer in. He releases my chin, and my hands find their way under the bottom of his shirt, my fingertips on warm skin. Gideon makes a noise in the back of his throat.
I did think there was a chance it wouldn’t work. For all his enthusiasm I swear sometimes I can see the tiniest flicker of hesitation on his face. I keep remembering him, in the dark, saying sometimes this feels wrong, too, and I know that for all his grumpy bluster and stone-faced exterior, Gideon’s soft as a kitten on the inside and just as easily hurt. It’s easy enough to feel one thing and think another, and some of my buried, latent fears are afraid he thinks I’m a harlot.
“There’s always a chance,” is what I say, and Gideon snorts, and then his mouth lands on mine again, more desperate than before.
The plan was, as far as there was a plan, to cheekily show him the garters on the drive back to his house, then launch myself at him once we were through the door. I didn’t mean for him to grab my ass and haul me against him in an old high school gym, but plans change.
“Fuck,” he mutters, and pulls away. He breathes like he’s trying to catch his breath. “We should get going, it’s a long drive.”
“How well do you know Blythe?” I ask, and he frowns.
“Some,” he says. “Why?”
I tuck my fingers below the waist of his jeans and slide one thumb along his erection before I realize I’m doing it, and he makes a noise in the back of his throat.
“Any good lovers’ lanes?” I ask. “Your house is pretty far away.”
“I think that’s illegal,” he says, voice hazy.
“Then we won’t get caught.”
Gideon’s staring at me in the dark like he’s trying to collect his thoughts and failing, pupils wide, lips parted. His hair’s curling at the ends and he’s not disheveled yet, all of him still in order, but everything about him is begging for it.
“How do you know?” he asks, sliding one hand up my body, along my jaw, one thumb featherlight against my lower lip, the way I did to him earlier.
“Be inconspicuous,” I say, then lick his thumb. “And quiet.” I close my lips around it, my tongue against the rough pad, and Gideon looks like he might pass out for a moment.
“You think—” he starts, and then we both freeze at the sound of a door shutting. It echoes across the empty gym, bouncing from the bleachers behind us, his thumb still between my teeth. There are footsteps. I bite down, gently.
“Fuck,” he whispers, and I put a hand on his chest and push.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
GIDEON
“You know my car’s the other way,” I say, low enough that my voice won’t carry.
“Oh, oops,” she says, still pushing me backwards. There’s a light in her eyes bordering on unholy, and she grins. “Let’s take refuge in this dark hallway while I get my bearings.”
“If you’re confused, I could guide you.”
“You know I’ll never learn if I don’t figure it out myself,” she says, then grabs my wrist and tugs me along.
At the end of the bleachers there’s a dark hallway that runs parallel to the back wall. It probably leads to locker rooms or ball storage or something, and it’s lit by one emergency light all the way at the end. Andi pushes me against the wall in the darkest part, the painted-over cinderblocks cool against my back, her hand splayed over my chest. Another door opens, out in the gym, footsteps fading, and Andi stands up on her tiptoes and kisses me more carefully than I’m expecting.
Now it’s slow and lazy, as if we’ve got all the time in the world. As if no one will come looking for us any minute now, as if we won’t get locked into this building before long. I slide my fingers into her hair and tilt her head back as she presses against me, her warmth sinking through my clothes and lighting my skin on fire.