Until the World Stops - L.A. Witt Page 0,51

instead of, well, offering each other a hand?

Oh, hell. Why not? Because now I was going to be thinking about it nonstop, so I might as well throw it out there and see what happened.

I cleared my throat. “So, that whole thing about hookup apps…”

Casey turned to me, an eyebrow up. “Yeah?”

“Since that’s not an option right now…” Fuck. It had sounded fine in my head. Why was I getting tongue-tied now?

“Go on.” He sounded suspicious.

“Well, um…” I dropped my gaze for a second, then met his again. “I mean, we’re both here. We’re stuck together. We’re not going to up each other’s risk of COVID because we already live together, so—”

“Are you suggesting we”—he gestured at each of us—“hook up?”

I gulped. “Why not?”

His eyes widened. “You serious?”

I’d run out of air, so I just nodded and hoped for the best.

“Oh. Uh.” He chewed his lip and avoided my gaze. A blush crept into his cheeks, and there was heat rising in mine.

Except…that wasn’t the only thing rising. Casey’s gym shorts didn’t do a lot to hide the beginning of a hard-on. My heart beat faster. I tried not to read too much into it. As long as we’d both gone without sex, he might’ve just been getting a boner because he was thinking about sex. That didn’t mean he actually wanted it with me.

I tried my damnedest to be slick about shifting and adjusting my own dick, but his gaze went right to my hand, then to my eyes.

He grinned, and oh fuck, if I hadn’t been getting hard already, I would’ve been now. Sweeping his tongue across his lips, he faced me. “So, what? We just screw around with each other?” He actually sounded interested. Cautious, but interested. “The way we’ve been screwing around with other people this whole time? Or, well, before everything went to shit?”

“Like, no strings attached?” Why was I winded? “Yeah. Yeah, that’s, um… That’s what I was thinking.” I licked my own lips and tried not to notice the way his gaze went right to my mouth. “Everything else stays the same. We just…” I shrugged. “We just fuck.”

Lips quirked, he nodded slowly. “No strings?”

“No strings.”

When he took a step closer, my heart slammed against my ribs. Were we doing this? Oh God, we were doing this.

“So you’re… You’re serious about this. For real.”

I couldn’t speak, so I nodded.

Casey studied me, and my heart raced. I couldn’t read his expression at all. Had I just made things between us exponentially weirder? Or were they about to get exponentially hotter?

After long seconds of silent stillness, Casey put his drink on the counter, which didn’t do a damn thing to pull my pulse back down. Then he stepped even closer, and my knees shook. “You’re really serious?”

Still mute, I nodded again, and his subtle grin gave me a rush I’d never experienced before. Especially when he closed some more of that space between us.

“Just hookups.” He slid a hand over my waist, giving me goose bumps. “Since we’re stuck together.”

“Mmhmm.” I gulped, and with a nervous laugh, I said, “There are worse ways to get through something like this, right?”

Oh God. That grin intensified. Casey leaned in, but then he hesitated and drew back a little. “You kiss hookups on the mouth?”

“Where’s the fun in sex if you don’t?”

The low growl he released made my spine tingle, and when he leaned in this time, he didn’t back down. He kissed me, and oh…fuck…yes. Maybe I just hadn’t been kissed in too long, but Casey’s mouth was…wow. Experimental, not tentative—like he intended to figure out what I wanted, but he was still going in for what he wanted. Assertive without being overbearing.

I wrapped my arms around him, and he slid his hands around to the small of my back, and suddenly our bodies were pressed together against the counter. I was immediately drunk off his kiss and high off the heat and the need in his hands as they slid under the back of my shirt.

Or maybe it had just been too damn long since I’d been touched, and now that I had my hands and mouth on someone—especially someone this hot and hungry—I couldn’t get enough.

I pushed him harder against the counter, and he moaned as our dicks rubbed together through our clothes. He raked a hand through my hair, then grabbed a handful of it, but he didn’t pull my head back. He just kissed me harder as he gripped my hair tight enough