The Plan (25 page)

D
ARKENED
T
HEATER
. We found our seats at the last possible moment. I may have skewered some toes.

He’s holding my hand. My hand is in his, and our hands are on his thigh, and that means he is holding my hand.

Alaric Canon is holding my hand.

Sure, sure, he’s been, um,
down there
…but this somehow feels different…more intimate.

Good thing I’ve seen this ballet several times, because I’m paying attention in the range of nil.

My lipstick is gone. Eaten off, as it were. All that pondering about whether to wear it or not a waste.

Smeared makeup would normally torque me off. But as long as I’m not channeling Tammy Faye Bakker after a cloudburst, I’m feeling pretty peachy about it. Hell, I have never been so happy about…anything.

Canon is fixated on the stage. Or he appears to be. His thumb traces my life line. Every once in a while, I feel him hold me tighter, press my hand between his own and his thigh.

Looking around, I can’t see anyone we know. I’ve wondered if this was a work-related function or motivated by guilt about the extended trip making me miss the holiday with family.

Realistically, I know it might well be a date.

There was no asking, no explanation. I want to ask. I want answers.

But I don’t; I’m now sure my reticence stems from fear of confirming that the demure-by-day-freak-by-firelight way I have been acting has been what he finds appealing enough to date.

In over my head here. I care about this quiet, complicated fucker.

I need to show him me.

In small doses.

After the curtain closes, we walk along the Plaza. White lights. Soft snow. Horses pulling decorated carriages
clip-clop
in the midst of the idling cars. That can’t be healthy.

He hasn’t said anything since we left the theater. Just held my hand and walked among the carolers and shoppers.

“What are you thinking?” I ask as we pass a store that smells of gingerbread and spices.

“As little as possible.” He pauses in front of a bookstore. The glow from within clears any trace of shadow from his face. “For the first time in as long as I can remember.”

On the surface, his words are dismissive; his face is not.

Still staring in at the books, he brings my hand to his lips and kisses two knuckles.

10:25 p.m.

*
Limousine
: Plaza Tour Circuit.

*
Back Partition
: Up.

*
Resistance
: Low.

O
UR
L
IMO
C
IRCLES
A
ROUND
for a prime view of the fountains and Christmas lights for which the Plaza is famous. And the cow statues which defy justification.

The leather squeaks under us. A rustle, and he’s flush against me.

Every cell is alight. My mind races. We need ground rules and limits and—

“You are…breathtaking,” he says brightly, and miraculously evades cliché. I feel my ears tinge, and in the space of time it takes me to mentally form even the glimmer of an idea that I need to say words that would probably have been about “let’s take this slowly” and “a single kiss and a
pas de deux
does not a relationship make,” his arms are under and around me, my hair draping around us to brush against my exposed shoulders, and I swear I’m not going to let myself worry if he feels emasculated in the future when I recall that he gasps like a maiden when I grab the hottest part of him and stick my tongue past his tonsils.

My hands run under his jacket. Slide it off and toss it aside. Over his shirt, tracing his sides, skim his skin. Run his lines.

He hums and smiles and works so hard at kissing it seems as though he’s making up for lost time. Like he’s trying to get as much experience logged as possible before the ride is over and we have to stop.

Or should stop.

He presses my torso so closely against his chest that I can feel all the tension in his body. Every breath. Every tremor. I try to memorize every time he shudders when I touch a certain spot—behind the ear, under the eye, along the jaw—or move my lips against him a certain way—wet along his neck, pressure over his pulse—and file it away so I can make it happen again.

He tastes so good. If you left Santa a plate of Canon cookies, he would stuff the whole North Pole into his red velvet bag and lug it down your chimney.

I run my palm flat along his heated length. A shiver wracks his frame. I wrap one arm tightly between his back and the seat, fingers splayed just above the hem of his pants. I’m vaguely aware of my other hand as it skates lower. Thumbs rub circles. Fingers dig. I fist his shirt, stretching the collar to expose his neck. He quakes and holds me tighter as my tongue traces his collarbone.

Every gasp and touch is precious. We can’t always be doing this, giving in. I have been afraid to start. He’s like human Nutella: I’m afraid once I’ve started tasting I won’t be able to stop until I’ve had all of him.

His fingers trace upward, along my face and into my hair, finding new places, each with its own color. The realness of it all assaults me. This is really him…in my arms, this is Canon…Alaric Canon…how he tastes of coffee, smells like sunshine and fresh linen, feels like…nothing feels as good as he does.

My fingers twist into his hair, and I kiss him with everything in me, the way I have envisioned for months, except now it is him.
Him.
Not the nice butt or the great profile or any other part that warrants its own centerfold, but the sum of them. The whole is greater because it is this particular man.

He stills, as if sensing that I’m in need now. My lips skim over his, soft fingertips pressing against his skull, and he opens and I explore his mouth. His body rocks against mine softly, hands sliding under my dress, bunching it up under my arms. Suddenly, the leather is deafening, and he’s maneuvering out from under me. Greedily, I grab for him in protest. My mind whirls, tries to suss out what I could have done wrong, but before anything makes sense he’s back and draped over my torso. All I sense is relief…for about a second until I realize there’s nothing covering his chest.

I’m necking with Houdini here.

Dress shirt and tie: Evaporated.

His shirt must be a discarded wad somewhere in the back of this limo. The lights still flow rhythmically through the windows, but I can claim zero interest in seeing anything but this guy’s very personal O-zone.

I bend forever and suck in skin. Break out the teeth. Gentle, but not.

The sound that escapes him would be frightening in any other situation. Guttural. A near roar. Excellent timing as I doubt I have much more patience for gentle left in me.

His one hand on my hip anchors me against him and the other drags up my ribs, skin lightly tugging to stay in contact with his, until he cups the swell of one breast in his palm.

So much skin. So much of us in contact, electric and raw.

Desire threatens to swallow me, consume me—and not just for him, for this—but the wish, the need to show him with every choice in how I touch him or move my lips against him or the whispered words that sneak past my breaking filter that he is valued and adored and
wanted
. This man wrapped up with me, that I’m wrapped up in, he doesn’t understand that I often wake to thoughts of him, that it has become a small kind of mourning whenever we part.

Every part of him calls to me.

My hand grazes his inner thigh. He wants more. I want more.

I passed simple wanting somewhere around the Mouse King.

Softly, as softly as I can manage with what little blood is left in my head pounding in my ears, I cup his ass (again! finally!) and squeeze my fingers into the flesh I have watched walk away from me so many times. Savor it more than the first time when I grabbed it and everything was so different, so angry and intense. It’s firm and soft at the same time. They’re like cream puffs or stress balls or my God why am I even trying to describe them when I could just be feeling them?

I dare say: I relish his buns.

Pun intended.

I digress…

His heart races against my chest, pounding so hard I can feel it through my dress. Kisses and touches and discoveries.

Want. Want is all I am and all that propels me.

I wonder why I have been procrastinating on more intimacy. We can handle more.

Well, not handle it right here under the Mayor’s Annual Christmas Tree.

Handling is maxed out at the moment.

He pulls my lip into his mouth, sucking it. Between his shoulder blades, his skin is smoother than silk. My leg bends across his thigh, and my hand slips along his pants just enough that my fingers unexpectedly land where his ass meets his thighs and excited heat.

Fuuuck. So warm.

I hear my moan in both our throats.

Ragged breaths. Fingers burrow into my shoulders, and he places tiny kisses on my collarbone this time. I sigh, try to make it deep and throaty to belie how nervous and exposed I feel. The only thought I can piece together is that I need to not fall to pieces.

His hands slide under, scoop me unceremoniously on top of him. Short, hard sweeps push, almost row like sailors in a galley, where our bodies meet together. So good. So, so good. My head falls against his brow and I pant, “God, yes…there, baby.”

A gasp escapes me as he lifts his head away from me, and I panic because I may have just crossed a line here.

“I—” he starts.

“I-I didn’t mean…” I say and make to slide from over him, but he holds fast.

“No, don’t.” His voice carries some form of desperation. “Don’t…stop,” he practically yells and begins to rock against me. He clings to me as if he were slipping from a high branch, his breath harsh in my ear.

Everything is warm and want and pressure. Grinding against one another clothed is not glamorous, and I know it, and we deserve better, and whatever this is we may or may not have deserved better, but there is no way I’m going to risk rejection at this point. I hold his face in my hands. Amid elbows and bumps and gasps and wholly graceless acts, I kiss him as gently as possible.

All of my thoughts flow together, overlapping. He rocks and we slide and I grip and pulse and it is all too fucking much. He is not even in me and I think it is the happiest my nether bits have ever been—the happiest I have ever been.

Through fog, his voice reaches me. “I want…I…”

It’s a sentence he can’t finish; he doesn’t know what he wants.

I pull him against me and roll until he’s over me and I’m under him. Feet tangled in the armrest, seatbelt digging into my back. I find I cannot care because there are only scant layers of fiber between him and where I want him so very, very badly. We move against each other, mimicking so closely what I want with him that it’s all I can do not to tear at my seams and hope it can happen, too. A part of my mind tells me this is an excellent idea and that we are consenting and adults and have done plenty of intimate acts already and why not because I am so much in…so deeply in l—

“I’m…I’m…I…”

My plea’s heard. Hands go under me. Hold my ass. Rock against me that much harder, that much faster. My feet dig into the backs of his knees, lifting and meeting each thrust. Hot and damp, he plows against me, over and over again.

More passes and he meets me every time and mumbles half thoughts against my neck, and damn, I want him inside so much it snatches the very breath from my lungs. A hollow fire inside. I tell him this in a ragged whisper, and his breath catches and his arms wrap around my neck as he groans out, low and coarse.

I want to feel every change, swallow every sound, but coals inside me burn white hot, my ears close, and then I’m gone too, saying his name and trying to find air.

When clouded edges finally fade from my sight, I remember where we are. Scant Christmas lights manage to filter in through the back glass. Canon’s shed clothes barricade off ninety percent of it.

Maybe we need to buy some Dramamine. Bet that driver is hella dizzy from circling the block.

11:35 p.m.

*
Car
: Hands folded in my lap.

*
Elevator
: Hand in his.

*
Hall
: Other hand added over his.

*
Room
: Hands everywhere.

M
Y
C
OAT
S
LIPS
from the hanger and hits the floor. He looks at me as if to say it looks just fine there.