her eyes and sighed before opening them again. Her hands gripped the push rims on her wheels. “I’m just nervous, I guess? I mean, I have to be honest here. I’ve listened to your voice so many times over the last couple of years. Do you know how intimate that is? I listened so much that I thought I needed it. What happens now, when you touch me? When we . . . if we . . .” She licked her lips, a contrast of bright pink gliding over dusky rose. “What if I need that, too?”
Gus wasn’t great at word puzzles, though he could muddle through, and that was essentially what she was presenting him with. What she was saying didn’t make sense if taken at face value. Was she really worried that she would become addicted to sex with him? That seemed unlikely given what she’d told him about her previous dating experiences. He shuffled the clues he’d collected about her over the past week, and landed on the puzzle piece that stated she didn’t like depending on others. She wasn’t worried about needing sex—she was worried about needing him.
“Then I’ll give it to you,” he said. “I’ll give you whatever you need. That’s how this works.”
“It’s not that simple.” She looked up into his eyes like she wanted him to refute that, so he did.
“It is that simple.” He crouched in front of her again, resting his palms on his knees so that he wouldn’t touch her. “I want to give you . . . something. Happiness? Pleasure?”
“And what do you get out of it?”
“We already established this, Reggie. I get you.” Gus ran a hand through his hair in slight frustration, not at her, but that maybe he was missing something. “What else would I want?”
She smiled, then sighed. “Look at me. I said I didn’t do emotional things and here we are.” She released her grip on Blanche’s push rims, flipped the brakes on, and then rested her hands on his shoulders, stroking her palms over them.
Gus closed his eyes, reveling in the sensation of warmth pressing through the fabric of his shirt. She leaned forward as her hands caressed down his biceps, so that soon her trembling palms were on his forearms and her face was near his.
He waited.
Her lips glanced over one of his eyebrows, smoothed over the jut of his left cheekbone, then settled into the notch just below his earlobe, sending spirals of pleasure radiating out, like a prism of bright color spreading over his skin and pressing down into his body. Her cheek rested against his, and the scent of her hair cream—vanilla bean, fitting because she was sweet, intense, and invaluable—filled his nose.
“Reggie.” Her breath caught, and he smiled, turning his head slightly so that his nose brushed the curls at her temple and his mouth was angled toward her ear. He reached out his own hands, gliding them up her calves and resting them at the bend of her knees, where the hem of her dress brushed the hairs on his knuckles. “You know what I’ve been thinking about all week?”
“Maybe the same thing I’ve been thinking about?” Her voice was husky, and she was hot to the touch where their skin brushed.
“If it’s my head between your thighs, then yup, it’s the same thing.”
“Oh my god!” She laughed, then leaned back in her wheelchair, eyes wide and cheeks flushed. She shook her head, and then looked down at him like she was an evil queen and he was her minion. “You’re . . . absolutely right. I’ve been thinking about that a lot, and I may or may not have touched myself while I did.”
She arched a brow in challenge.
Gus leaned up and forward on his knees, catching her lush mouth with his before she could say anything else. His cock was already so hard, and he just wanted to taste her. She held him by the front of his shirt as their tongues clashed, and he regretted having worn the button-up instead of a polo for casual Friday. He needed her hands on his body, but he didn’t want to take his hands off her.
He readjusted himself as he moved closer to her, spreading his legs so that her footrests didn’t press into his shins.
“Pull it open,” he said against her lips. “Just rip it.”
She leaned her head back by just an inch but too far for Gus’s liking. “But—”
“I know how to sew buttons back