You know in the movies when one character suggests to another that they should hook up? “To get it out of our systems…”?
Well, that’s the most ridiculous idea ever in the history of the world.
Because if you’re that attracted to someone, chances are that messing around with them is only going to make you more attracted.
Case in point:
It used to be possible for me to be on the same trip as Hanna and not be focused, one hundred percent of the time, on where she was.
Not on this trip.
On this trip, I always know where Hanna is—whether she’s helping someone with a pack or offering her GORP to a hiker who didn’t pack good snacks or checking maps and compass directions so Bear can focus on being famous and available.
I know how many times she’s taken a bio break since we left the parking area, how much water she has left in her bottles, and how many snack bars she’s eaten.
I know that she’s wearing a pair of hiking shorts that were doubtless not designed to make me crazy, but that bare enough tender thigh to leave me obsessed with the question of what her skin tastes like.
I know that the backpack’s chest compression strap is not supposed to make tits look more appealing, but Hanna is apparently the exception.
I’m also pretty sure she’s avoiding me.
She’s not outright ignoring me. She’s being friendly. She’s just making sure we don’t take breaks together or hike near each other.
So when we make camp, I wait for her to choose a tenting site and start setting up. Then I choose the one next to hers.
“Really?” she whispers. “You think that’s a good idea?”
“I think it’s the best idea I’ve had all day.” I cross my arms and eye her. There’s a question I’ve been wanting—needing—to ask her ever since we got off the phone the other night. “Hanna,” I say. “Did you tell Bear that it’s over?”
She doesn’t look at me. “Yeah,” she says. “Yesterday afternoon.”
“Why didn’t you text me?”
For obvious reasons, I’d wanted to know when Hanna was unencumbered. I’d had this idea that I’d show up at her place with a gift I’d picked out for her. But then she hadn’t texted, and I hadn’t wanted to seem like I was harassing her to get on with the breakup.
Her fierce gaze tackles mine. “Why didn’t you tell me the Bear job meant you would be moving to Colorado?”
I wince. “Oh. He told you that?”
“It was after I told him I didn’t want to keep seeing him. We were trying to make not-totally-awkward conversation, and then he asked me if I thought you were really interested in leaving your family’s fold, even if it meant going to Colorado.”
I won’t claim I’d forgotten about the Bear job, but I had put it out of my head, probably because my head was filled to the brim with Hanna and what I wanted to do to her. “I’m sorry,” I say, meaning it. “Honestly, I haven’t been thinking about the job much. I’ve had other things on my mind.”
She casts me a quick mischievous look that makes my blood heat.
“Yes. That,” I say. I take a step toward her, but her frown stops me.
“So, you’ll take it? If he offers it?”
“I mean… I think so?” I say. All of a sudden it feels like a far more complicated question than it used to.
“So,” she briskly responds. “That puts a good end date on this whole thing. Which is handy.”
Somehow, I hadn’t quite put all the pieces together—the Bear job, relocating to Colorado, things with Hanna. And I don’t want to think about all those pieces, not yet—I’m not ready to even admit they all have to be reconciled.
I tug her hand, bringing her closer to me. “Han,” I murmur. “I’m not thinking about this ending. I’m thinking about it starting. About what I want to do to you tonight when you crawl into my tent. Or when I crawl into yours, if you’d rather.”
Her eyes darken and heat. She likes the idea as much as I do.
“Did you pack condoms?” she whispers.
“Mmm-hmm,” I hum.
I watch a flush of red peek over the top of her crew-neck, and I want to set my lips right where the red meets the pulse beating in the notch of her collarbone. To lick and suck until she groans.
“But don’t rush me,” I tell her. “I have lots and lots of things I want to do to you before we’ll need condoms.”
The evening crawls towards dark and the moment I’ll get to kiss Hanna again.
When excusing ourselves for bed finally seems reasonable, she goes first, yawning widely and claiming she was up early, unable to sleep. I wait a respectable fifteen minutes, then make my way to our tents.
“Han,” I whisper.
The zipper parts, and I ease inside.
“Hey,” she says.
She’s sitting cross-legged on her sleeping bag. She changed out of the t-shirt she was wearing earlier and into a clingy light-green tank-top, and as I lower myself to the tent floor, I can’t look away from her luscious curves.
“Look at you, beautiful.”
She scowls. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t use the panty-melting skills on me. They don’t work on me.”
I raise my eyebrows. “At all?”
“At all.” Her scowl deepens. “Stop smirking!”
“I’m not smirking.”
“You’re totally smirking.”
I shrug. “Because I like a challenge.”
“That’s what you got out of what I said? You think that was a challenge?”
“Mmm-hmm. Maybe even a bet. I bet you my so-called panty-melting skills work on you, and you bet me they don’t. Loser has to get up to make the camp coffee and oatmeal tomorrow morning.”
She narrows her eyes. “What’s the metric? How do we know if you’ve won or lost?”
“Oh, you’ll know when you’ve lost.”
She looks away, but I see it. The pupil flare and the rising tide of red in her cheeks. And even if she could hide that reaction, her nipples are tight, hard beads under her revealing tank.
“C’mere,” I say.
She doesn’t move. I scoot myself in and bring my lips so near hers that I can feel her breath on my skin. Then I move away again, gauging her response. Her breathing is quicker now, her mouth falling open a smidge, showing me the inner curve of her lower lip. I bend and test it between my teeth, just a nip to feel if it’s as lush and giving as it looks. It is, but even better, I can feel the tension in her body, how hard she’s working not to react to me, and it already feels like victory. “Your lip,” I tell her. “So fucking soft. I want to lick into your whole mouth. I want to feel every texture. I want you to let me fuck your mouth with my tongue, and I want you to fuck me back.”
I settle my mouth against hers, but I don’t do what I’ve just described. I let the kiss be butterfly light, a tease. A torment—I hope.
And gratifyingly, she makes a small, helpless sound.
“You want more?” I tease.
She won’t give me the satisfaction of saying yes, but when I draw back, her eyes are on my face, searching for a sign that I can feel it too, the thin wire of need stretched tight between us.
And yeah, fuck yeah, I can feel it. I can feel it across the surface of my skin and buried deep in my flesh and throbbing through my veins. My cock, flush now, strains against my hiking shorts.
“That’s okay. You don’t have to say it. I know you’re still pretending you aren’t turned on. But I know you are. I can see it. I can see it here—” I lightly run my thumb over the flush on her cheeks—“and here—” I touch her lower lip, soft with need— “and here—” I brush my fingertips across the pink on the upper curves of her breasts— “and here—” I drop a hand so my palm barely scrapes the sensitive tip of those hard nipples, and she gasps involuntarily, her eyes flying to mine.
I grin.
She frowns so deeply it looks like it hurts.
“You’re probably wet, too, but I won’t make you admit that, not yet.”
She crosses her arms, hiding her nipples from my appreciative gaze.
My grin gets bigger. “Even if I weren’t looking at you, I could tell you’re turned on.”
She throws her arms out, exasperated. “That’s just bullshit.”
“Yeah? Okay. Close your eyes.”
I watch as she does, eyes falling shut. Her long lashes are charcoal-black, her skin still fair despite her midsummer tan. “Snow White,” I murmur, not quite meaning to, but even though this is my game and I’m in charge, I’m rapidly learning that I’m never completely in charge when it comes to Hanna.
“What?”
“Nothing. Listen,” I say. “Hear your breathing?”
We listen together, her breath rapid and needy, then slowing a little as she gets it more under control.
“And you smell so fucking good, Han. So fucking good. I don’t know flowers, but I feel like I’m walking in a garden.” Her breath speeds again, and I push my luck. “By the sea,” I add.
She makes a choking sound. “Did you just—?”
I open my eyes to find her outraged and also trying not to laugh.
“Oh, yeah, I did,” I say. I put a finger in the middle of her chest, above the neckline of her tank top, and I run it down into her cleavage, over the curve of her belly, to the V of her pussy. “You smell so good right fucking here. If you let me lick you, I know you’re going to taste so good, too.”
Her breath catches. No mistaking it. I raise my eyebrows, and she rolls her eyes.
I’m so hard it hurts, but there’s no way I’m going to stop this game, not until I win it.
And I’ll know when I have.
“Lie back,” I tell her.
She narrows her eyes at me. “Will you claim victory if I do?”
“I told you, Han, you’ll know when you lose this fight.”
I put my hands on her hips. She unfolds her legs and I ease her down onto the sleeping bag, lowering myself next to her. I want to be on top of her, but I need her to want it more.
I tug one tank top strap off her shoulder, then jerk the fabric lower to expose her breast. I draw her nipple into my mouth and tongue it, feeling her body tremble and twitch under me. Then I slide down the other strap and tend to the other breast. She’s panting now.
I ease her tank top down her torso.
“Lift up,” I say, and work her top over her hips and ass, her delectable thighs, her curvy calves, and off. On my way down, I bury my face between her legs and take a deep breath, full of her salty scent. Her thighs twitch like they’re aching to squeeze together.
“You can if you need to,” I tell her. “If you want to squeeze those gorgeous thighs together, you can.”
“Fuck you, Easton,” she says roughly, like she’s hanging onto the last shred of her control. “Fuck you.”
“Do you want me to?”
She’s quiet.
“You don’t have to say it, Han. I know it.” I set my palm over the perfect triangle of her mound, and press, working the pressure around until I find the spot that makes her arch and push back. I give her friction, pressure, and when she jerks her hips hungrily, I cup her tight through her hiking shorts and tug on her flesh, kneading her sensitive outer lips.
A moan escapes her.
“What? What was that? You like it? You want more?”
“I hate you,” she says.
“I know,” I say. “Tell me how much. Tell me how much you hate me.” I trail kisses from her breasts, over the silky skin of her belly. When I reach the fasteners for her shorts, I unsnap and unzip her. “Lift up,” I say again, and she does, and I slide her shorts down and confront the reality of her in nothing but a pair of black cotton boy shorts.
So fucking hot. I stare at her for a few moments, unable to believe my luck, unable to look my fill.
“What?” she asks, and despite my own all-consuming hunger, I catch the uncertainty in her voice.
“You’re the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“You’re full of shit,” she says.
“No,” I tell her. “I’ve seen a lot. But I’ve never seen anything as pretty as you, Han.”
“I wish you wouldn’t—”
She sounds flustered and frustrated, so much so that my impulse is to apologize, but I don’t. I ease her underpants down and find an unexpected surprise. Her pussy is bare. It’s so completely at odds with Hanna’s uncompromising practicality.
“Whoa.”
“I do it for myself,” she says stubbornly. “I like the way it feels.”
“You—”
She’s rendered me speechless, with her pretty bare pussy and the words she’s just said.
“The way it—” I repeat, dumbly. And then, because I need to know, I stroke a finger over her bare lips.
They’re the softest thing I’ve ever felt. Soft as velvet, as flower petals.
“Fuck, Hanna,” I curse, and that’s when my self-control cracks. I fall on her, my mouth sealing over her seam, my tongue seeking her clit, my hands reaching up to tweak and twist and pinch her nipples.
My tongue finds its goal, her clit swollen, pushing out from its hood and reaching for me. “Tell me,” I demand, lifting my face just long enough to say it. “Tell me what you want. Exactly what you want.”
Because I know she knows. And we’re done playing games.
“Your fingers in me,” she says. “And suck.”
I slide two fingers into her, her wet core already clenching around me, her clit starting to spasm against the onslaught of my tongue, and it’s just another second of that, of Hanna all over and around me, before she’s coming, crying my name.
I ease myself up on one elbow, wiping my face with the back of my hand, grinning at her.
“There,” I say. “Told you you’d know when you’d lost.”
It takes her a moment. She raises her head first, her eyes sleepy and satisfied, which makes me feel like I won something incalculably valuable. Then she grins.
“You think I lost?” She laughs. “Whatever that game was, I definitely won.”