Following Grandpa Jess Read online

  “How romantic,” I said dryly.

  He gave me a rueful smile. “You’re heavier than you look.”

  “And a flatterer, too.”

  David sank onto the bed beside me, and it hit me about then that we were, you know. Together. On his bed. Which wouldn’t have been a big deal any other night, but given all that had led up to this, I was kind of starting to wonder what the hell was going on. I mean, the guy had taken me out for a surprise dinner, treated me like a date, plied me with alcohol, and had now carried me into his bedroom and dropped me onto his bed. This was slightly less than subtle.

  And even so, I still couldn’t believe that this was seriously what he had in mind. For God’s sake, this was David. I’d known him for more than a year now, and in all of that time, he’d never expressed any interest in men, least of all me, and now all of a sudden…?

  “Look,” I said, “maybe now’s not the right time for this, but seriously, what is going on?”

  He looked a little confused, but there was an edge to the expression that made me pretty sure he knew what I was getting at. “What do you mean?”

  “This thing tonight.” I had to struggle to get the last two words out. “With us.”

  He let out a long breath and lay back on the bed, folding his arms behind his head. His shirt rode up a bit as he did it, affording me a glance of a smooth, taut stomach that I did my best not to stare at. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m doing this all wrong, aren’t I?”

  “Doing what all wrong?”

  “I was trying to...” He pressed a hand over his eyes. “There’s just no way to say it that doesn’t sound ridiculous. To woo you.”

  “Woo me?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re right,” I said disbelievingly. “It does sound ridiculous.”

  He sat up with a sigh, suddenly seeming to have found the courage to look me in the eye again. “I’m not good at this, Jess,” he said. “I never dated anyone before Jen, and...well, you know I never dated anyone after. I don’t know how it’s done, or what I’m supposed to do, so I just...I figured dinner, drinks, a movie—”

  “A movie about a girl with a terminal disease?” I burst out, perhaps because I was nearing hysteria at that point.

  “You picked it out. You said the cover looked interesting.”

  “Oh. Um. Well...”

  “The point is, I don’t know what I’m doing, so you’re going to have to help me out a little.”

  I felt a light touch against my wrist, and saw his fingers grazing over my skin, moving gently back and forth. I fought to stay focused. “Help you with what?”

  His fingers paused, then slid lightly up the length of my arm until his hand settled on my shoulder, warm through the fabric of my T-shirt. I swallowed.

  “You look nervous,” he said softly.

  “I am.”

  He leaned a little closer, the hand on my shoulder sliding over to rest lightly against the nape of my neck, gently massaging. “Why?”

  “Why am I nervous?”

  He nodded. His face was close to mine, his gaze flickering from my eyes to my lips and back again; I barely dared to breathe, as if the slightest movement would break the spell and send him leaping across the room in revulsion.

  “Because,” I said, barely above a whisper, “I don’t want to screw this up.”

  The answer seemed to surprise him. He looked me straight in the eye and I didn’t even try to look away. “I don’t either,” he said.

  “I’m not a girl, David.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you?” I kept thinking about dinner, the chivalry, the gallant knight to my blushing damsel. More than that, though, I was thinking about how his mouth was barely an inch away from my own, and how my entire body was buzzing with the closeness and how badly I wanted to drag him into me and kiss him senseless. Instead, I took a hold of his free hand and pulled it gently to me, first to my chest, then sliding it down over my stomach and lower, lower, until there was no doubt of what waited under his palm, or of what being this close to him was doing to me.

  “I’m not a girl,” I said again. “Really, really not.”

  He stared back at me, and for the first time he looked a little uncertain. But he didn’t take his hand away, and he didn’t pull back, and after a second, his fingers stroked down over me with just enough pressure to make me let out a ragged breath.

  “It’s not...something I’m used to,” he admitted. “I’ve never done this before. I never thought I’d want to.” He swallowed and finally took his hand away. “But I do.”

  There it was. All evening, it felt like I’d been waiting for something—some cue, some magic combination of words, something...and that was it.

  I slid closer to him, until our noses nearly touched and I could wrap an arm around his back, low and near his waist. I could feel his breath against my lips, warm and a little fast, and it seemed to take an eternity to slowly lean in—keeping my eyes locked on his, my palm flat against his back—and press my lips lightly to his.

  There was barely any pressure at first; I let him get used to it, feel it, have one last moment to pull away before there was no going back. When he didn’t pull away, I set my attention to his upper lip, warming and caressing it, sliding my tongue gently against it in a light, tingling graze that I knew ought to feel pretty damned good. And I guess it did, because he let out a heavy breath, closed his eyes, and pressed into the kiss with eagerness.

  Suddenly, it was a trade, a back and forth. I pressed in, kissing his upper lip, his lower lip, sliding my tongue lightly in between the two, and he followed suit, matching me kiss for kiss, pressing closer and deeper until I felt his tongue slip in past my lips. I shivered and pushed closer, my arms going tight around his back, and the last ounce of sense dribbled out of my brain. This was David. David. David was kissing me, his fingers buried in my hair, his eyes closed and his cheeks flushed. David was pulling me to him, kissing me harder and faster and more desperately, letting me slip my fingers down under the hem of his shirt and over warm, bare skin.

  Somehow, we ended up lying down. One moment we were sitting up, the next we were curled together on the bed, our legs intertwined and our hands beginning to rove in a more frantic way against each other’s skin. It felt fantastic, but it was going in a definite direction, and some stupid, nagging voice made me come up for air before we went any further.

  I pulled back from the deepening kisses, ready to speak up for rationality and not regretting this in the morning, but before I could say a word, David leaned in and pressed a kiss to the side of my neck.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and let out a breath that came out shaky with need. There was nowhere else on my body—with the exception of one very important place—that made me lose my mind faster than right there, and if David kept at it, I was a goner. Good-bye, rational thought.

  He noticed. He noticed my reaction and knew what it meant, and for a few seconds, we just looked at each other. I didn’t dare say a word, because I might’ve begged him to kiss me there again. He licked his lips, hesitated for a second, then leaned down and placed another firm kiss against the side of my throat, just over the pulse point.

  I couldn’t help it; I let out a little moan and turned my head, giving him better access. He kissed me there again, warm and slow, and this time I felt the flick of his tongue against my skin, tracing a warm, circling line toward my collar. Kiss, trace, kiss, trace; we rolled until he was on top of me, supporting his weight on knees and elbows, and it was all I could do just to grab the back of his shirt in tight fistfuls and wrap my legs around his.

  “It’s so strange,” I heard him murmur, the words buzzing against my throat as he kissed me. “Seeing you like this. Doing this to you.”

  “I’m not complaining.”

  He grinned. “Me neither. It’s just...”

  “Kind of fast?”

  He stopped kissing my neck long enough to lift his head and look at me, questioning. “We cou
ld stop.”

  I thought we probably should, but God, I didn’t want to. “Do you want to?”

  “I want to kiss you again,” he said softly. “Touch you.”

  The answer was easy. “Then do it.”

  Something ignited in his eyes, and he almost leaned back in to start again. But then he paused, shook his head. “I got you drunk.”

  “I’m not drunk now.”

  “Maybe. But if we keep going, I’ll always wonder.”

  “What, if I only slept with you because of the saké? Trust me. Not the case.”

  “Still,” he murmured, and I realized that he was really serious.

  “You couldn’t have decided this ten minutes ago?” I burst out.

  He smiled at me and kissed the edge of my jaw, my chin. “I guess we don’t have to stop entirely, do we? We can just...take it slow, not go too far?”

  “How far is too far?”

  He looked away, flushing a little. “Well, I mean, I don’t have any condoms or anything.”

  I couldn’t help it; I laughed. “We wouldn’t do that right off the bat. That takes some prep work.”

  “Oh,” he said, looking a little embarrassed. “Then...”

  I licked my lips and pulled myself into a sitting position, then pressed my back against the headboard of the bed. “Come here. Sit in front of me.”

  He did so a little uncertainly, leaning back so his shoulder blades pressed into my chest. It felt good to have him there, sitting between my legs with my arms wrapped around him, his head resting back against my shoulder. I kissed the hinge of his jaw and began a slow caress of his chest and stomach, drawing my hands warmly and lightly over his shirt. He let out a long breath and relaxed back against me, letting me get my fingers under the hem and lift his shirt slowly up over his head and off. I set to work smoothing my hands over his skin, kissing the top of his shoulder, the side of his neck, the little groove under his ear.

  He responded exactly how I’d hoped, arching into me when I kissed him, reaching up to touch my hand every now and then. Finally, when he was pressing harder into every kiss, I slid my hand down to the waistband of his jeans and undid the button, then pulled the zipper slowly down and slipped my hand inside.

  It was warm in there, close, and more intimate than I could’ve imagined. He let out a huff of breath when my fingers brushed against him, and he leaned his head back against my shoulder with a whisper that might’ve been please. I grazed my fingers slowly along the length of him, wanting it to last, wanting to keep him senseless and happy in my arms for as long as possible. He was quiet, patient, but I could feel the tenseness of his muscles, how badly he wanted it.

  I slipped my hand past the last bit of cloth and wrapped my fingers around him. He jerked in my grip, letting out a soft, moaning sigh, and as I worked at sliding and circling and massaging, I rubbed my free hand over his bare chest and kissed the side of his neck, loving the way he didn’t seem to know which touch to react to, which to press into, and so tried to push into all of them. He was rocking against me soon, and I rocked with him, building up a steady rhythm and increasing the pressure of my grip little by little, finding the spots that made him cry out and focusing my attentions there, wanting him completely out of control, completely lost in this, in me.

  It was over too soon; we rocked harder, faster, faster, and then he went tense and still against me, and it was all rushing out, making him tremble and clutch my arm and press back against my chest.

  When it ended, he sagged against me and just breathed for a while. I extracted my hand as gracefully as I could and managed to snag a tissue from the bedside table, wipe most of the remnants on it, and toss it onto the floor. It was a long time before either of us said anything, during which time I did my best to get my body used to the idea that this was as far as things were going tonight. I couldn’t really find the logic, since I definitely wanted more and was sure David would be glad to continue our activities in a more me-centric direction, but for some reason, something inside me just said no.

  After what seemed like a long time, David turned to face me, knelt between my legs, and trailed his fingers along my cheek as he kissed me. It was a slow, deep, lazy kiss, and it felt good—really really really good—but I forced myself to pull back from it before it went on for too long.

  “We should probably get to sleep,” I said, and miraculously my voice sounded casual rather than desperate and strained.

  David frowned at me, tracing his fingers over my shoulder and down the length of my arm. “You sure? Don’t you want me to…”

  “Definitely,” I said, my voice just a little hoarse. “But you look pretty tired, and I know I’m exhausted, and so it’s probably better to just…you know. Wait until we’re both…more…less…less tired, and then we can really…make sure to…you know…”

  I trailed off with the vague realization that I was making no sense, and concluded with an uncertain, “Yeah.”

  David smiled and brushed a strand of hair back from my face, and to my immense surprise, accepted my babble with a light, “Okay. But don’t think this excuses you.” He slid away just long enough to pull the blankets up around us—and then his eyes were right there in front of me, big and dark and staring straight into mine. “Next time it’s your turn.”

  Next time.

  The words seemed to echo in my head, and a feeling like vertigo crashed down on me as I realized again that this was real, this was really happening—I was lying in bed with David, and he was interested. In me.

  If this turns out to be a dream, I’m gonna be really pissed.

  We curled up together under the covers, arms around each other and our heads sharing the same pillow, and for the first time in what seemed like forever, I fell asleep smiling and wrapped in warmth, lulled by the slow in and out of David’s breathing. The feel of his body against me followed me into my dreams, a lazy weaving of reality and the usual indulgent fantasies.

  And now here I was. I was conscious, sober, and relatively sane, and for all that my influence on the evening’s events had been minimal, I still felt a hot, cringing rush of embarrassment over the various ridiculous things I’d taken part in over the course of the night. Getting drunk. Grabbing at David’s hand in the restaurant. Snuggling shamelessly with him on the train. And, of course, picking a horribly depressing movie and then refusing to watch more than ten minutes of it.

  Granted, what had happened after that had done a lot to make up for earlier disasters, but even so, the thought of facing David now kind of made me want to sprint out the nearest door and keep running. And...crap, it was a workday, wasn’t it? What kind of epic unfairness was that, making a guy go into work after something like this?

  Yes, hello, this is Jess Madison. I’m afraid I’m not going to be in today. Yes, unfortunately, the guy I’ve been lusting after for the last year has finally come around and let me molest him, and I’m really just not feeling up to coming in after something like that.

  Right.

  I raked my fingers through my hair and headed for the kitchen, figuring I’d at least feel a little more human after some coffee and something to eat. And hey, maybe David would oversleep and I’d have time to get the hell out of Dodge before he got up, thus forestalling the Morning After moment for a bit longer.

  And then we could have that moment at work instead, in front of a sea of fresh-faced little witnesses. Much better.

  I was fiddling with the coffeemaker buttons when I heard the bedroom door creak open, and like a mature adult, I froze up with terror and had a sudden impulse to dive, flailing, out of sight. Squeezing myself into the cupboard underneath the sink seemed preferable to facing David at the moment, but somehow I managed to stand my ground by focusing with herculean concentration on the coffeemaker. As such, I didn’t see whatever expression flitted across his face when he first stepped into the room, or even the expression after that, since I very carefully kept my back to him as the seconds ticked by.

  “What are
you doing exactly?” he said after a few moments.

  I glanced over my shoulder, getting a blurred glimpse of him leaning against the door frame with his arms crossed, then turned back to what I’d been doing—i.e., staring at the tiny letters printed on the side of the coffeemaker. “I’m making coffee.”

  There was a pause. “With your mind?”

  “I’m reading the fine print.”

  “Those are safety instructions. I don’t think they actually have anything to do with how to make coffee.”

  I stared harder. “They might.”

  “Jess,” David said, now unquestionably sounding like he was trying not to laugh.

  “Okay, fine,” I sighed, and finally turned around to look at him. He was grinning at me, and his hair was all mussed and he looked fantastic, because he was David and he would’ve looked fantastic covered in pudding and wearing a clown suit. “Your coffeemaker is made from some kind of alien technology and I can’t get it to work. Satisfied?”

  He just smiled and came to stand beside me, where he managed to get the coffeemaker loaded up and making happy gurgling noises within a matter of seconds.

  I folded my arms. “Impressive, young Skywalker.”

  “So,” he said, apparently deciding to ignore the immense wit I was capable of in the early hours of morning, “are we past it, then?”

  “Past what?”

  “Being awkward.”

  “Oh.” I felt my face heating up a little, but forced myself to smile. “Sure. No awkwardness here.”

  “You sure?”

  I let out a breath. “Well, it is a little weird, isn’t it? I mean, it’s not just me who thinks this is completely bizarre, right?”

  David leaned his back against the counter and was quiet for a moment. “It’s not just you,” he said. “But I kind of like bizarre. And I think it’ll seem less bizarre the more we live with it.”

  I tried to keep my tone casual, to not sound like a whole hell of a lot was banking on how he answered this next question. “What exactly is it that we’re living with?”