Men like Andrew McCormick don’t do this. They don’t lay their emotions out on the table like this. Why is he doing this?
“Then why did you kiss me again? And again. And again again—”
“I don’t know.”
“C’mon.” The driver takes us onto the Mass Pike, lights flying by like spaceships. Little orbs shooting past us, filled with people oblivious to the quantum shift taking place inside this tiny space. “You always know. You’re a CEO. You compartmentalize. You execute. You decide. You act. You can’t tell me that the great wunderkind Andrew Mc—”
He’s on me before I can take a breath to continue speaking, his body so big and bold, so impulsive and unrelenting. The limo becomes its own dimension, his hands seeking to hold all of me as we tumble into some new plane of awareness that doesn’t factor into any life we’ve known until this moment. His mouth finds mine, hands under my suit jacket, palm cupping the lines of my breasts, my waist, my hips, and he’s tasting me again, this time with an urgent need that comes from an honesty I don’t think he’s felt permission to express in a very long time.
If ever.
I break the kiss. His breath is hot against my lips, my chest pushing up as I inhale, trying to synthesize the tactile feel of him in my personal space as the rate of intimacy between us increases at the speed of light.
“What are we doing?” I ask, buying a moment of clarity as I inhale, shaky and shocked. I have never wanted anyone more than I want him right now. This sensation is wholly foreign and delightfully enchanting.
“Whatever it is, let’s do more of it.”
The reconnection of his mouth against mine, of the sensual weight of him on me in this small space as my legs pull up, closing all gaps between us, feels simultaneously pure and naughty, innocent and illicit, virginal and promiscuous. Once the boundary between our bodies is breached, we navigate every inch with negotiations brokered in sighs and bites, in tongue strokes and caresses, with touch and without words.
My skin rises an inch above my body with a pounding flush that can only be satisfied by no remedy other than his hands, his mouth, his skin, his attentiveness.
More of his skin.
The limo slows, the driver painstaking in his glide to a spot on a city street that is both familiar and daunting.
And then the limo halts entirely.
Andrew sighs, the sound like a churning ocean before a sea storm. His mouth kisses my ear and he murmurs. “We’re here. Dinner.”
Oh. Right. Dinner.
Date. Public. Food. Single words are all I can muster in my mind. Words like hair. Lipstick. Legs. Skirt.
Throb.
Pulse.
Desire.
Ache.
Andrew.
If he asked me, right now, to skip dinner, I would. One offer. One question is all it would take. I’m past the point of worrying about what he thinks of me. Long gone are the days of sobbing over ice cream and Thai food at Shannon and Amy’s apartment back in the suburbs. I’m here to get something out of this whateveryoucallit between us, and it’s dawning on me that he is, too.
And it’s not just kisses in closets.
This is not “just” anything.
Chapter Fourteen
Andrew sits up and adjusts all sorts of parts of himself, from his shirt tails to his jacket to other pieces that need to be put in place in order to make a public appearance. His hand stays on my knee, like a claiming.
And those eyes watch me.
“Hungry?” he asks, dimples firmly in place as he smiles.
I bite my lips and exhale, a little sound of frustration making the back of my throat vibrate.
“You could say that.”
We’re in front of a series of brick buildings that look like converted lofts and businesses. As Andrew opens his door, a blast of warm night air fills the limo. April in Boston is a crapshoot. You never know if you’ll get a balmy breeze or need your down winter coat.
Salty air, carrying the ocean on it, fills the small space. Aha. I know where we are.
The Seaport district. Congress Street.
I look outside and my eyes adjust. We’re just at the curb, not even in a parking spot or an underground garage. The driver simply pulled over and we’re blocking traffic.
My door opens. I reach up to touch my hair, then my lips. I must look frightfully disheveled, bright red lipstick smeared across my lips, hair thoroughly mussed.
The second I climb out of this limo it’ll be obvious what Andrew and I have been doing. The thought makes me smile.
Andrew reaches one strong hand for me and I take it, lifting up into the dark night, his palm splayed at the small of my back without interruption. He seems incapable of not touching me now.
“Is my lipstick smeared?” I whisper, the intimacy of such a simple question feeling both natural and out of place. I’m living in two different realities right now, second by second, as time flows and I am with him.
There is this dream world, where Andrew McCormick is kissing me. And then there’s reality, where I am waiting sorrowfully to wake up.
“Does it matter?”
The limo takes off like a silent jet, disappearing down Congress Street as Andrew guides me up a set of stairs. There is no sign. No obvious door. We might as well be headed into a nondescript, restored historical building that houses tech start-ups rather than a restaurant.
“Where are we?” I ask as I fumble around in my purse, looking for a hand mirror or a compact.
“You’ll see.”
As he holds open a door, I see a small brass plaque, so subtle I would never have noticed it if I weren’t on guard, nerves firing at random intervals as every cell in my body is alert and ripe.