Vanilla Read online

  I let him hold me.

  We were quiet for a while before I said his name. He pressed against me a little more in silent response. I turned to face him, both our heads on the same pillow. He pressed his knee between my thighs so we could get belly to belly. The pressure felt good.

  I wasn’t expecting him to kiss my forehead. Nor the corners of my eyes. I didn’t think he’d murmur to me again in Spanish, words I didn’t know and yet somehow understood.

  “I like these here,” he whispered, again kissing my eyes at the corner. “The lines there. And this.” He brushed his lips to my temple. “The silver threads.”

  “Another man who pointed out the things that make me look old would get a knee to the nuts, Esteban.”

  He laughed softly and snuggled me closer. “Not old. Those things are your beauty.”

  He’d told me I was beautiful before. Of course he had. But this was the first time I believed it, and the tears that had been threatening me for hours at last forced their way free. I fought them back, but even so, a couple slipped out.

  Esteban kissed them away. Then my closed eyes. Then my cheeks. My chin.

  And then my mouth.

  I tried to turn my face, but he caught me anyway. His lips, soft on mine, didn’t demand. His kiss soothed as much as his circling palm on my belly, as his embrace. As everything about him always had, and craving that solace, I opened for him.

  The kiss got deeper, but not frantic. Slow and smooth and soft. His fingers tugged the pins from my hair and freed it. He moved his mouth over my jaw and chin and throat, never biting. Never hard, though often that was what I’d demanded of him. And he didn’t turn the kiss into something else, nothing urgent. He didn’t try to move his mouth down my body, or to get something from me I’d have had to reject. Esteban worshipped me with his mouth, never asking for anything for himself, even though he got hard again almost at once.

  We kissed like that for a long time.

  Then we stayed in the dark in silence, entangled. With my hand on his chest, I felt his heartbeat slow. His cock softened. He pressed his lips to my hair. I needed to get up and take care of bathroom business, but I didn’t want to move and break the contentment.

  There was no helping it, though. I needed to deal with biology, and beyond that, both of us needed to get home. I got out of bed and grabbed my bag. In the bathroom, I took care of things then gathered my discarded clothes and shoes and went back to the bedroom.

  Esteban hadn’t yet dressed...but then I hadn’t told him to. He’d turned on a single light. When I came out with my armful of things, he took them from me without a word. He folded my garter belt and stockings and tucked them carefully into my bag, along with my bra and then my still-damp blouse. He took his T-shirt from the chair while I stood motionless. He tugged it over my head, making sure to pull my hair free. He smoothed the fabric over my body.

  “It fits you,” he said and put his hands just beneath my breasts for a moment to give me a smile I found utterly charming. “Very nice.”

  Then he took my skirt and knelt in front of me to help me step into it. But when he moved to slip one foot into my pump, I shook my head. “I have flats in my bag.”

  With a nod, he took them out and put them on me. Then he stood. He put his hands on my hips. Face-to-face, I looked into his eyes. There were words I knew I should say, but I couldn’t find them.

  “You kissed me” is what came out, instead. Too soft, too full of emotion I couldn’t put a name to. Too open and raw.

  “You needed me to kiss you,” Esteban said. “When you’re hungry, you should be fed.”

  I hugged him then, fiercely. I clung to him, thinking in that moment that I should love him more than I did. For the first time, thinking that maybe I could.

  But I was still the one who broke the hug and stepped away from him. Chin up, shoulders squared, back straight. I touched his face, looking into his eyes, but I put distance between us even as I did so.

  Distance, but not coldness. “Thank you,” I told him.

  Esteban looked pleased, a flush rising in his chest and throat. His cock thickened a little in those few seconds, and I looked down between us to cup him there as I’d cupped his chin a moment before. He shivered. Our faces turned, our cheeks brushed, but we did not kiss again.

  I stepped away from him a second time. “Good night, sweetheart. Drive carefully.”

  He nodded. I gathered my things. He helped me into my coat. He kissed my cheek at the door, and then, as I always did, I left him behind in the hotel room and I went back home.

  23

  I knew Niall was going to back out of our date-that-wasn’t-a-date on Saturday before he even called me that morning. I listened to him fumble his way through it, letting him talk without saying much of anything myself. I didn’t have much to say.

  “Another time?” he asked. “I know maybe not that movie, but something else.”

  “Sure.” If he wanted me to tell him it was okay that he was canceling on me the same day we’d planned to meet, he was going to wait a long damn time. Truth was, I didn’t really feel like going out tonight. The night before with Esteban had been lovely, but strange, and though my period was already lighter today, I’d been thinking fondly of a night with Interflix and a heating pad.

  “Sorry about it being last-minute. I’m sure you won’t have any trouble making new plans, though.”

  I actually took the phone away from my ear to look at it in disbelief before I answered. “I wouldn’t, if I wanted to.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I figured.” He didn’t sound like he was trying to be a dick about it, but I didn’t know him well enough to tell.

  I did know how to be subtle and tactful, mostly because I’d long ago decided that I wasn’t going to be like my mother and sister. I knew how to bite my tongue. But I’d also decided long ago there was no point in being coy with people when they were fucking with me.

  “Why would you figure that?” I asked.

  “Because you’re...because you have...lots of friends,” Niall said. “I’m sure lots of guys would love to go out with you.”

  “Sure, I have a whole waiting list of dudes just sitting around waiting for me to call them up last-minute, see if they don’t mind being second choice on a Saturday night. Nobody minds not being top tier, do they?”

  “Hey,” Niall said. “That’s not what I meant. Don’t put words in my mouth.”

  “Don’t assume you know me,” I said.

  We were both quiet then.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Something came up, that’s all.”

  “I’m in a bad mood. I’m sorry.” I apologized with a little less grace than he had. “No worries. Things happen. I get it.”

  “Another time,” Niall said. “Okay?”

  “Okay.” I sounded wary and knew it, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  Now it was hard to stay irritated with him, uncertain as I was about what the hell, exactly, he was trying to do. Blow me off, let me down easy? Maybe the movie thing hadn’t been meant as a date at all in the first place. Maybe I’d jumped the gun inviting him along to the Hershey show. Shoulda, coulda, woulda.

  I remembered now why I’d stayed away from dating.

  “Great,” Niall said.

  24

  One of the things I’d made clear from the start with Esteban was that I didn’t mind if we didn’t talk every day, but I could not abide having messages go repeatedly unanswered. He’d always been good about it, so I didn’t worry too much at first when a day passed without getting a reply to my last message, a breezy little joke I thought would make him grin. Then two days. Then three, four, five and I found myself checking my app to make sure nothing had gone wrong with it. I sent myself a message from another device, and that came through all right, so it wasn’t a glitch in the server or anything technical. He simply wasn’t talking to me.

  I did not message him again.

  I thought about it, though. Whether I should drop a casual He