“I was already going to say this place was cool, but that might earn an upgrade to amazing,” he says. “I can promise you that none of the apartments I looked at came with a naked juggler.”

“It’s usually in the morning . . .” The implication of my words—sleepover!—lingers between us as he steps closer, clearly moving past the Exploring Evie’s Apartment phase of the evening and into just Exploring Evie.

Carter is only a step away from me and his hand comes out, curling around my hip. A few beats of silence pass.

“Are you thirsty?” I ask, jittery.

Traffic on the street blares past, and a dog barks obnoxiously in the building next door.

Carter shakes his head. “No, I’m okay.”

“Okay.” I chew my lip. “Hungry? Or need to use the restroom?”

He laughs. “No.”

My hand is shaking when I take his and lead him down the hall.

“Evie?” He hooks his thumb back over his shoulder. “We can stay out here . . .”

I shake my head, and he follows me wordlessly down the hall into my bedroom.

He pulls up short just inside the door. “It’s just that . . . I don’t think we should . . .” He glances to the bed and then back to me. “Yet.”

“That’s okay,” I agree in a nervous whisper. “I just want to be in here. My parents gave me all the furniture in the living room, and I don’t want to be thinking about this the next time they’re over here sitting on their old couch.”

His eyes crinkle behind his glasses when he smiles at this. “You’re a trip.”

He says it like it’s a good thing. Like it’s a great thing. In my room we stare at each other for a few seconds. I keep waiting for the weirdness to descend, but it doesn’t.

Carter lifts his hands, cups my face, and smiles at me.

Oh God, my heart is going to jackhammer its way out of my chest. I am definitely not planning a wedding to Daryl tonight.

“You okay?” he whispers, just an inch away from kissing me.

“Yeah.”

He leans in, putting his lips against mine.

I can’t—I honestly can’t describe the way it feels to kiss him. I marvel at the smooth firmness of his lips and the contrasting sharp stubble on his upper lip and chin. I imagine it scraping the skin of my neck and down, down. I marvel at his hands, holding me right up against him, sliding around my back.

A current runs through me when his tongue touches mine; it’s even stronger when he makes a quiet little groan and slides one hand down over my ass. I feel like a teenager the way I’m unable to get enough of his mouth, and just come at it from every angle, needing every kind of kiss he has: bigger and smaller, deeper and just these tiny little kisses like raindrops.

I feel like I’ve been kissing him forever, and also like I’ve never really been kissed before tonight. He’s taller than me and I’m on my toes, stretching to get closer, like I need him inside me however I can.

Gently, his hands slide to my hips, guiding me back toward the bed and down.

He follows, helping us both toward the pillows, and I haven’t felt this hunger in so long. The consuming kind of want, where kissing like this is nearly overstimulating but my body keeps pushing for more and more.

Carter is over me, and we’re moving together and I feel him, hard between my legs. His bare hand cups the back of my bare leg and I bring my knee toward my chest, opening myself, wanting him closer. He lets out this small grunt before telling me we seem to be really good at this.

The way he moves, rocking just right against me, I know I’m already close because, God, it’s been so long and it’s so so good. We are good at this. And if almost-sex with our clothes on has me on the edge already, how would I survive naked Carter, Carter that has access to every part of me? I can feel that tension and warmth just there, but he pulls away. I start to tell him to come back, reaching for his hips, but his hand is there, warm and steady, up my leg, down inside my underwear, and he groans into a kiss when he feels me, slippery under his fingers.

I feel frantic, like I’ve been twisted in a wringer, and I have to clench my teeth so I don’t cry out.

Instead, a shaky whine escapes, and it makes his breath catch. He pulls back to look at my face.

“You’re wound so tight,” he whispers before bending to kiss my neck. “How do I make you unravel?”

His hand is moving and his mouth slides from my neck to my jaw, and even when I arch away, eyes closed, I feel him follow me, his lips chasing my skin, telling me to come here, kiss him, tell him what I like. When I open my eyes, he’s still watching me. He smiles, leaning in to kiss me again.

“This okay?” he says, eyes clear and earnest.

I nod. Relief is like a drug, warm, rushing through my limbs.

We’re doing this.

I work at his belt clumsily, no longer concerned with when and where we have sex, and his laugh is a tiny warm burst of air against my lips. I get that he’s not laughing at me, he’s laughing at this, at the frantic, fumbling groping.

I smooth my palm down his stomach and gasp at the feel of him, the thrill of making him hard like this, the rush from the power of it. He moves into my touch and I slide my leg over his hip and like this we shift together, letting our hips do the work, letting our mouths move in this easy, hungry tandem.

I’ve forgotten the fevered powerlessness of letting someone else touch me, the desperate hope that they’ll get me there. But very soon I realize that he will, and he does, his hand steady against me. I try to keep my eyes open as it builds, but he watches me with such a singular intensity that I close them so it’s just the sensation of his fingers on my clit and his cock in my hand . . . and I dissolve.

His sounds propel me on, quiet grunts, and he’s moving faster, so hard against my palm, fucking, and then he comes with a helpless groan: living and vital in my grip, his relief so warm against my skin.

He laughs again, stilling my hips with the hand he’s used to touch me; it’s wet, and the intimacy of that—the knowledge that he knows how I feel and just made me come—makes me ache all over again.

We fall quiet in the darkness.

Carter’s mouth finds mine and he kisses me with that telling, satisfied laziness.

“Still okay?” he asks in a deep, scratchy rumble.

“Yeah. You?”

“I’m great, are you kidding? I didn’t have to do that by myself later tonight.”