Chapter 11: Two in the Morning

At two in the morning, the kitchen was dark except for the little light over the stove.

Randy was standing in it with a glass of water and no shirt.

I'd slid out from under his arm and shoved the dresser an inch, then another.

Then I'd squeezed through the gap in a tank top and nothing else.

The living room was a landscape of air mattresses behind a sagging curtain of bedsheets.

I could hear two people breathing in it.

The nurse was on shift, and the students were asleep ten feet from the sink.

"Couldn't sleep?" I whispered.

"Couldn't stay in bed without you in it."

"I was in it."

"You were a foot away."

He set the glass down and crossed the kitchen in two steps.

The kitchen was a galley, a narrow strip of counter on either side, with a chipped sink and a window onto the fire escape.

He backed me against the counter beside the stove.

"Quiet," he mouthed.

"You first."

His mouth landed on mine, warm and certain and slow.

I slid my hands up into his hair.

Between us, on the counter, sat a glass dish of Gloria's tuna casserole, wrapped in foil.

A note taped to the lid said For the newlyweds, with a heart.

He picked it up, set it on the stove, and lifted me onto the counter in its place.

The laminate was cold under my bare thighs.

I gasped, and he put a finger to my lips.

"The cold's the point," he murmured. "It keeps you quiet."

"It does not."

"Let me try."

He pushed my tank top up to my collarbones and put his mouth on my breast.

He took the nipple between his teeth, gently, and a hot line of pleasure shot down to my knees.

I bit my own lip until it hurt.

He kissed his way down, over my stomach, to the inside of my thigh, and stopped.

"Put your foot up," he said.

"Where?"

"There."

He nodded at the opposite counter.

The galley was so narrow that I could just reach it.

I planted my left foot flat against the cabinet across from me.

Then my right, and spread myself wide in the glow of the stove light.

My heart drummed.

He looked at me from his knees.

"Christ."

"Don't talk. Do."

He grinned against my thigh.

Then his mouth was on me, slow and sure.