One & Only (Canton) (25 page)

“You’re impossible.”

But Dylan just grinned wider.

As we walked up the path to the Swift building, my skirt twirling about my thighs, Dylan slipped his arm around my waist. When we reached his floor, I saw two guys exiting the room across the hall. They stopped and waved. He told me their names—John and Gary— then introduced me. “This is my girlfriend, Tess.”

I had only a moment to revel in the title. I don’t think he’d ever used it aloud before. But then I saw the boys’ reaction. John’s eyes widened. Gary said, “Oh—well, nice to meet you.”

I felt the words he didn’t say. The ones that included
What happened to Hannah?
Awkward.

Still, why did I care what someone else thought? It was Dylan who mattered, Dylan who called me his girlfriend to anyone who cared to listen. It was a fact that he’d recently broken up with Hannah. Oh, well. The salient point was that they were broken up.

All thoughts of Hannah fled as Dylan pushed the door open and pulled me inside. He shut the door with his foot and pulled me against him.

“You didn’t really make dessert,” I murmured against his mouth.

“You underestimate me.” Hand in hand, he guided me down the hall to the main room of the studio. What I’d taken for lamplight from the hallway coalesced into something soft and flickering. Mason jar candles winked at me from the bookshelves and the bar countertop of the kitchenette. The effect was magical, sweet, unprecedented. I spun around to look at him. Already setting out plates in the kitchenette.

“You shouldn’t leave candles burning when you aren’t around,” I admonished teasingly.

“You don’t know I didn’t ask a friend to light these right before we came back.” He put down two forks.

“You didn’t…” I trailed off. He didn’t what? Ask a friend? Fill a room with candles for me? Choose me over Hannah? Love me? He’d done everything else. My mouth went dry as I watched him arrange napkins and silverware, as he whipped the foil covers off a dish of pastry with a flourish. Dylan was a constant mystery. He’d picked me, loved me, and now had made some kind of truly complicated dessert in order to…impress me? Get me into bed?

Come on, Kingsley,
I thought.
Last time I slept with you, you hadn’t even bought me dinner first. Don’t you know I’m easier than this?

Yet just because I was, didn’t mean he didn’t want to impress me anyway
.

I realized he was waiting for some kind of response.

“It’s baklava,” he said at last. “I made it myself.”

I swallowed, then came up to the counter to meet him. “Thank you.”

“You haven’t even tasted it yet,” he said. “There’s nuts and honey and filo dough—and really, it’s the most complicated dessert I’ve ever made—”

“And you made it for me.”

“Well yeah, but hopefully, you’ll share…”

“For me.”

He regarded me carefully, then reached over and dipped his finger in the honey dripping off each triangular piece. “For you,” he repeated and brushed his honey-laden thumb across my lips.

I captured the tip of his finger in my mouth and sucked all the sweetness off.

His breath hissed through clenched teeth. “Careful, Tess,” he warned. “Do that again and we won’t have the chance to eat the baklava, and I’ve been dreaming about it all day.”

“I’ve been dreaming about something else for much longer.” I hooked my arms about his neck.

Dylan tasted of whiskey and honey. I caught his bottom lip between my own and sucked on it, echoing what I’d done to his finger moments before. He moaned, and his hands slid around my waist, half pulling, half lifting until our bodies pressed together. Our tongues touched, parted, and slid together again.

“What about the baklava?” I mumbled as he started walking me backward, away from the counter and toward the futon.

“Never heard of it,” he breathed against my neck.

We fell back on the futon, a tangle of arms and legs, sliding against each other, rubbing and twisting as if we could, if we tried hard enough, entwine ourselves tightly enough to become a single person. It was with effort that I worked my hands between us to fumble with his belt buckle. He yanked his sweater over his head; I kicked off my shoes.

And then we were kissing again, breathing the same breaths, matching each touch of lips with weeks of built-up longing. And that was when I realized it: Dylan was mine.
Mine
. I could do whatever I wanted with him and not feel guilty. I had fought, I had waited, and this—this was my reward.

I laid a hand on his chest and pushed him back against the futon. He froze, staring up at me, his blue eyes curious.

I stood and grabbed the ties holding my dress together. I tugged them free, then shrugged out of the sleeves. The material pooled around my feet, leaving me in a pair of black lacy hipsters and a matching demi-bra.

There was no denying the naked lust in Dylan’s eyes as he looked me up and down. He was propped up on his elbows on the futon, staring at my body.

“Is it like you remembered?” I asked, twisting a bit in the flickering candlelight.

“No,” he replied. “You didn’t have underwear half so interesting when you were eighteen.”

I dipped my fingers below the lace trim lining my bra cups and ran them along the edge, catching one and then the other on my nipples, which had hardened into nubs under Dylan’s watchful gaze. “That all?” I leaned forward as the peaks of my breasts popped up above the lace.

I heard a gasp from the bed. “My memory isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, Tess.”

“That’s categorically untrue, Phone Boy.”

A laugh sputtered from his lips. “Phone Boy?” And then he grinned. “Ah, that. Well. Those memories certainly can’t match reality.”

“We’ll have to refresh them for you, then,” I replied and sank to my knees on the mattress, straddling him as he lay back down. His hands went to my hips, then slid up to cup my breasts as I leaned over him, grinding my hips against his. The silver T dangled between us, flashing like fire in the candlelight. “Memory jogged?” I teased.

“
Something
is jogged.” His thumbs brushed across my nipples, easing my breasts further out of the bra. “God, you’re beautiful, Tess.”

“You keep saying that.”

“I always mean it.” He rose upon his elbows and took one of my nipples in his mouth, doing things with his tongue the eighteen-year-old Dylan had probably never even dreamed of. The hollow, throbbing ache between my legs intensified, and I moved my hips against him, feeling his erection through the layers of clothes he still wore.

“You know what I never got to do two years ago?” I asked him, and then, without waiting for a response, I wriggled down, taking his pants and boxers as I went. When he was laid bare, I took his penis in my hands, wrapping my fingers around the base and tugging slightly, sliding my hands up and down in a tease. Then I leaned over and took him in my mouth.

“Tess…,” he hissed, his hands going to my hair, weaving into the strands without holding on tight or applying pressure.

I loved the feel of him, thick and heavy, the slightly salty tang, but I’d barely even gotten started when he dragged me up against him and kissed me hard, full-mouthed and hungry. His hands slid around my back to pop the clasps on my bra, then went to my waist and shoved my panties down, too. Dylan rolled so I was beneath him, whisking away the last of my clothing until I was as naked as he was. Then he stopped, staring down at me in the flickering light. The candles were doing strange things to his features, casting the planes of his face in hard shadows, in golden glow. His eyes seemed to shine in the light, and his gaze took on greater reverence, like he was looking at some great work of art in a cathedral.

“Last time I saw you like this,” he whispered and traced four of his fingers across my torso, “You were striped from the sun in my window. This time you look like a painting…” He lifted his face to mine and our eyes locked.

“I’m not a painting,” I said, reaching out my hand to cup his cheek. “I’m not a memory.”

“I want you in every light—sunlight, candlelight, twilight—”

“I’m going to have to veto fluorescent light,” I joked.

He kissed me softly, then, when I didn’t dissolve into nothingness, with more energy. His hand went between my legs, teasing, circling, stroking, as I arched in his arms, bucking my hips when the pressure, the need, threatened to overwhelm me.

He went to the bathroom for a condom and returned to find me kneeling on the futon, waiting for him.

“Tess—”

I stopped him with a finger to his lips. “Do not say I’m beautiful again.”

“I was going to say you’re brilliant.”

“That’s better.” We kneeled, chest to chest, our hands entwined before us.

“I was going to say I’m sorry it took us so long to get back here.”

“Mmm.” I leaned in to taste his collarbone, his throat.

“I was going to say that if I don’t get inside you in the next five seconds, I might explode.”

I pushed him down. “We can’t have an explosion,” I said. “It’ll wreck your baklava.”

Seconds later I was sinking down upon him, catching my breath as he filled me, stopping for a moment to look down at him. He pulled himself up again, cupping my breasts in each hand, depositing a simple kiss on one, then the other, and then, at last, lifting his mouth to mine.

We kissed and started to move, coming apart and crashing together, closer and closer each time, the years of separation disintegrating with every thrust. I could see the tension in his face, in his arms as he held himself in check for me, and it drove me wild. I wanted to make him lose control. I pushed his hands down over his head and swiveled my hips against him, moving until the silver chain around my throat slammed rhythmically against my chest, until my name on Dylan’s lips became a chant, a plea, a primal cry, until the ache wound tight within me spun free and I pulsed around him, my orgasm spurring his.

He pushed inside me one last time so deep, so hard it almost hurt, and I collapsed over his chest, our hearts beating frantically against each other’s chests, our breath coming in pants.

At last, I drew my fingers across his damp brow. “So…”

“So?” He smiled at me.

“About that baklava?”

***

We ate it in bed, by candlelight, still naked, which made it all the easier to lick dripping bits of honey off our skin when we were done. And then, since he’d already started the licking, he decided to do the rest of my body.

After I’d come back to myself, he gathered me close in his arms.

“Well, that hasn’t changed,” I said sleepily.

“Sorry to hear that. I would have thought I’d gotten better in two years.”

I felt my muscles tense at the reminder and prayed he didn’t notice. I didn’t want to think of him doing this with other women. With Hannah. “Well, it’s tough to improve upon perfection,” I said to cover.

“Flattery, Tess,” he said as he rolled on top of me and slid inside, “will get you everywhere.”

After that, we drifted off into a sated sleep, still tangled in each other and the futon sheets. At some point in the night, I felt him leave me to blow out the candles and bring us a heavier comforter. Then he took me in his arms again and I fell into a sleep so deep I didn’t even dream.

When my eyes fluttered open the next morning, the gray November light was already sifting through the windows. I rolled over to meet Dylan’s sleepy smile.

“Hi,” I said, snuggling against him.

His arms went around me. “I really wish I wasn’t going home today.”

“Me too.”

He raised himself on his elbow and looked down at me. “What are the chances I can get you to stay right here, naked, the whole time I’m gone?”

“Slim to none?” I replied, stretching luxuriously. His pupils dilated and I smiled in triumph. “I have stuff to do, Mr. Kingsley. Reports to write. Jobs to apply for, apparently.”

“Right. I’ll make sure to forward you all the information. God, spending the summer with you again…”

I chuckled and shook my head. Summer, winter, it didn’t matter anymore. I’d be with him.

He reached out to trace the T resting above my sternum. “I’m glad you like this.”

“I love it.” I ran my fingers up and down his arms as he weighed the jewelry in his hand. “Where ever did you find me something so perfect?”

He was quiet for a second, and when he spoke, his tone was soft, almost confessional. “I had it made, actually.”

“In a week?” I asked impressed. “You just found out when my birthday was.”

His smile faded. “No. I had it made two years ago, after I got home from Cornell.” He let the charm fall back on to my skin. “A cousin of mine does silverwork. I—wanted to give you something. But I never saw you again.”

I met his eyes. “I’m sorry, Dylan.”

“Don’t be,” he replied, smiling. “The wait was worth it. It was always worth it for you, Tess.”

I closed my eyes and cuddled close against his shoulder. This was real. This was really real. “And you kept it all this time?”

“I guess there was a part of me that never gave up. That never would. I don’t care how long we had to wait, I don’t care what we had to go through to get here. I love you, Tess. All my life, I’ve loved only you.”

I breathed in, deeply, as if I could draw his words into my lungs, my soul. “I love you, too,” I whispered back.

We showered and dressed, then I waited while Dylan packed up his stuff for the trip home to Pennsylvania. We ate the rest of the baklava for breakfast, and Dylan dropped me off at home on his way out of town. We talked about what we’d each need to do to finish our project before the due date, and what steps I’d need to take to apply for the internship in Colorado. We talked big game about our future.

I really believed we’d have one.

TWENTY-TWO

The next few weeks passed in a blur of classes, studying, and final preparations for the symposium. My days were spent working and reading by Dylan’s side, most of my nights in his arms. My mom didn’t even bother giving me a look on the few times she and I ended up at our apartment at the same time. She knew my bed was empty most nights, but she hardly had the moral high ground to tell me off. Unlike her, I was sleeping with a monogamous boyfriend. Unlike her, I was being very safe.