let her head loll back against the couch again. Gus didn’t know why that made him like her more, but it did.
“You’re direct.” This wasn’t said with annoyance as it sometimes was by people he cared about. “I like you, too, though I’m guessing ‘a lot’ has a different value to each of us.”
“I spent all night wondering what your kiss would taste like mixed with maple syrup. You can use that as a base measurement.”
“Gus.” She blinked at him through fogged up lenses, then pulled her glasses off with one hand and put them on the laptop table. Her lenses already sported nose and cheek prints from when he’d leaned into their kiss, so he was glad for this—he didn’t want anything in his way. He felt that warmth on his face again as she looked up at him, desire in her eyes and vulnerability in the way her teeth worried her bottom lip. “Okay. Maybe we should change this up again. Escape room consulting with benefits?”
In response, Gus followed the impulse to lean down and kiss her, a little more softly this time but with no less intensity. “That works,” he said against her mouth, and she laughed and he laughed, too, which made her laugh more for some reason. Gus liked laughing and kissing; it was something he hadn’t done enough of in life and wanted more of, if it was with Reggie.
He recalled a scene in a cartoon he’d seen, where a flight of stairs had suddenly transformed into a slide beneath the feet of the people walking on it and, instead of fear, everyone had reacted with shocked delight. That was the closest approximation to what he was feeling in that moment—a fast, unstoppable descent that carried him toward the unknown but filled him with joy anyway.
He liked running his hands over her body, outlining her waist and up toward the curve of her breasts. He liked how she held his shoulders, gripping him tightly.
Gus . . . more than liked this. The impulse to take this to the furthest extreme kicked up in him, but he was distracted by Reggie’s amazing mouth, and her hands gliding over his chest and back and biceps. He didn’t know how much longer they kissed for, how many times their mouths brushed or he swallowed her moans, but when they finally came up for air, his sketchbook was on the floor and they were both nearly horizontal on the love seat.
“Shit. I have work to do,” she said, a frown pulling at her kiss-swollen mouth. She reached out, grabbed her glasses, and put them back on. “And it’s almost lunchtime. Can we take a break to work and eat?”
Gus chuckled. “If we’re breaking for work, instead of vice versa, then I like your priorities.”
“As you’ve already established, I’m a genius,” she said. “You have a couple of weeks to get this project into shape plus a full-time job, I work twenty-four hours a day, so if we’re going to have benefits for this brief period, we have to make sure we prioritize them.”
Brief. Period.
Was that what he had agreed to? That didn’t work for him, but he fought against the need to make her explain whether or not she saw an end date on this. He might get a response he didn’t want to hear.
“Want some salad?” he asked instead. If she liked him, and his salad dressing enough, maybe after their brief period, she would want to extend their benefits.
She gave him that wide smile and a section of the Rubik’s Cube in his chest twisted into alignment. “Yes. I have mac and cheese we can heat up to go with it.”
“Like . . . the blue box?” He pushed himself up into a sitting position. Reggie rolled her eyes playfully as she sat upright too.
“Oh, you poor thing. No, I made this myself. Get ready to have your mind blown.” She scooted to the edge of the couch and transferred herself into Blanche, and Gus followed her back toward the kitchen, ready for whatever she would give him.
Chapter Seven
Reggie could see in retrospect that this entire scheme had been ill-advised, but the following Friday evening as she waited for Gus to arrive, the enormity of it really hit her. Why hadn’t she just taken sleeping pills to cure her insomnia, like a normal person? She’d told herself she needed Gus to sleep because her work was slipping, but now instead of insomnia brain she had sex-on-the-brain,