I kneaded my thumb into the arch of my foot. “How do you think they went?”
“I thought you were going to buy new shoes.” He knelt and took my foot into his hands. Powerful thumbs dug into the cramped muscles.
Painful pleasure coursed through my body and I fell back onto the bed, gripping the sheets. “Don’t you dare stop.”
“Why do you keep wearing these?”
His fingers were torturous magic.
I groaned and hissed with each deepening massage pass. “All those PT sessions have paid off.”
He switched to the other foot. “No one’s home.” The dance of his fingers moved from my foot to my ankle to my calf.
“I mean, I’m home.” Propped up on my elbows, I dropped my head back trying to pull together the strength to lift it.
The magic of his fingers bordered on obscene.
“Risa, pay attention.” He stopped moving and I growled, actually bared my teeth and growled.
The massaging stopped, but not the movement of his fingers. They crept up my legs, over my knees and to the insides of my thighs. “No one else is here. Berk is with Jules and Keyton has class.”
“Oh.”
He pressed on the insides of my thighs, spreading them, rubbing the sensitive skin. “Which means we have some time to ourselves.”
“It’s been a while.” My breath hitched. The nervous, twitchy side of me fought against the hunger blooming in my body and centering on the throb between my legs.
His fingers inched higher, and, being the helpful friend that I was, I lifted my hips, letting him pull my panties from under my ass. “It’s been too long.”
Almost two weeks. Between my museum shifts, tutoring, and LJ’s practice and game schedule, our paths felt like they were crossing less and less. Most people would think finding time to have sex with your roommate would be easy, not so much when you were trying to be secretive about it and our beds were noisier than a construction zone.
Other than some under-the-blanket action on Movie Thursdays and him tracking me down in the Art History department for a mini makeout in the alcove of Renaissance art replicas, the drought had been long and hard.
He bunched up my skirt.
I’d never been happier for that clearance rack purchase than when he dragged his hands over my legs.
His thumbs brushed along the crease where my thighs framed the prize his eye was most definitely on.
“I need to do this more often.” His breath whispered against my pussy.
My muscles tightened in anticipation. The throb deepening and ripples fluttering through my stomach.
The first brush of his tongue sent liquid pleasure rushing through my veins. The added fingers ratcheted my back off the bed. The combination with the addition of extra attention to my clit flooded my body with a sexual tsunami. All sounds were drowned out by my moans and the blood hammering in my ears.
My fingers clutched at his hair and his ears were nestled—well, more like clamped between my thighs.
Panting and flushed, with dots dancing in front of my eyes, I fell back onto the bed. The collapse was complete.
LJ chuckled still on his knees, his belt jingling.
“Hey, guys—” Keyton’s voice broke through the sex daze with the silver lining of a round two. “Have you seen my…wallet.”
A bucket of ice water drenched on my body would’ve been less jarring.
We all stared at each other.
Keyton’s mouth hung open, keys still on the keyring on his finger.
LJ was on his knees between my thighs.
I lay on my back with my skirt hiked up to my waist, sex-flushed.
Those football reflexes kicked in first. Keyton slapped his hands over his eyes like a six-year-old during a kissing scene.
LJ jumped up and flung the blankets over me, while standing in front of me and faced the door.
“Sorry!” Keyton turned his back to us. “I was looking for my wallet. I didn’t see anything.”
He saw everything. As much as I wanted to be horrified, the fact that we’d been tiptoeing around this for nearly two months and still hadn’t learned to close the door was pretty hilarious.
Giddy panic laughter bubbled up.
Drawers opened then slammed shut in Keyton’s room.
LJ retrieved my panties and handed them over.
I shimmied into them still under the blankets with my heart ping-ponging in my esophagus. Kill me now. Send lightning bolts straight through my bedroom window. Maybe I could slam my head in my closet door, or just walk in there and never come out. He’d seen everything. I would have laughed if the panic hadn’t strangled the air out of my lungs. All these months of being careful and I did an OBGYN spread right in front of my open door.
Damn LJ and his talented fingers and tongue, distracting me from the front door opening and the creaky-as-hell stairs.
LJ peeked his head out of my room.
I dragged myself off the bed and gripped his arm, partially hiding, partially using it to keep me upright.
Keyton froze coming out his door, sliding his wallet into his back pocket. The scarlet crawl of embarrassment crept up his neck under his collar and up to the bottom of his jaw.
It matched mine.
LJ skirted along the wall, walking toward him like a horse he didn’t want to spook. “I was…”
“Checking a bite. A sting. I had a bee sting.” Wow, I was next-level brilliant. The entire time I’d been putting on my underwear and that was the best excuse I could come up with? A bee sting. In November. A week before Thanksgiving.
Keyton’s nervous laugh filled the hallway. “If you say so.”
Joining LJ in the hallway, I faced Keyton. “Could you not say anything to anyone?” A panicky edge crept into my voice. “Please?”
This wasn’t how I needed anyone to find out about me and LJ. Plus, there was the whole draft, graduation and Italy thing looming in the distance. The more people who knew about us, the more people who’d have an opinion on what we should do, and I didn’t even know what I wanted to do—or what he wanted to do.
“Don’t worry about it. I won’t say a word. But you might want to close the door next time.” He jumped down the stairs and back out the front door.
Watching him retreat like he’d walked in on a bear foraging in the hallway, I laughed. The kind of laugh of relief you do three minutes after your non-bang buddy roommate had seen you naked from the waist down.
“Why didn’t you want to tell him?” A trace of disappointment ran through the question.
I dragged my fingers through my hair. “Tell him you were going down on me?”
“No, tell him about us.”
“You’re the one who said you wanted to keep it quiet.”
“Months ago.” He rubbed his hand over the back of his neck. “But we’ve been…”
“We’ve been LJ and Marisa with sex. Things have been busier than ever this semester. It’s only going to get worse. Do you want Berk to know? Reece and Nix? The gloating alone would be annoying. Then questions about how long and what next—we don’t need to deal with all that pressure.”
He sighed. “You’re right.” Not sounding a hundred percent convinced, he stepped closer. Maybe he didn’t think it made sense now, but in five months, after we’d graduated, it would. Once the real world intruded and we began to drift apart.