Some Boy (What's Love? #1) (2 page)

“Shit. Kat, sorry. I didn’t realise.”

I shook my head and tried to smile at him — Brendan looked kind of pale himself — but it was wan at best and I still felt dizzy. Then the tears I’d been holding in for days finally escaped like a dam breaking.

“Sorry. Fuck. Sorry.” I said wiping roughly at my face and waving a hand at him, telling him to go away. But he didn’t. He sat on the bed beside me and then pulled me to him, both of his arms holding my shaking body against him. I let him hug me for a while. Longer than I should have, but not as long as I wanted to. Then I sprang up, gaining slow control over my leaking face, waving him away again. “This is way more than you bargained for,” I said, trying to laugh it off. “You can go. Keep the trackies, I don’t want them.”

“I can stay if you want,” he said. He rose slowly from the bed, not taking his eyes off me, and I felt transfixed by the way he was looking at me. I forgot to breathe as he approached, stopped close in front of me, then lifted a hand to tuck an escaping tendril of hair behind my ear.
 

“I’m a mess.”

“Isn’t everybody?” he murmured back, his eyes roving over my tear soaked face. His fingers lingered on my face, a thumb wiping away a clinging drop of salty wetness from my cheek.
 

I felt out of breath. He was barely touching me, but every nerve ending in my body was zinging. His other hand brushed my arm.

“You’re cold,” I murmured dumbly.

“I’ve been in wet clothes all afternoon,” he said and grinned. He moved closer. I stayed looking straight ahead, my eyes in line with his chin. I could see his lips up close now, and they still looked soft. They were slightly parted and his breath was warm on my face.
 

I lifted my face, hesitated, then lifted it a little more. Our lips hovered close together, breath mingling, but not touching. Then he kissed them lightly. A question.

I kissed his lightly. A hesitant answer.
 

And then he pulled me against him and this time our lips met properly, open, searching. No questioning, just hard need.

Our bodies tangled, stripping each other of clothing and inhibitions at the same time. I felt only a slight pang of hesitation as my fingers slipped inside the waist band of his damp underwear to peel them from him. But he just kissed me harder and drew me with him onto the bed.

His lips grazed over my naked breasts, teasing my nipples hard in the contrast of hot tongue and cold air. Desire lanced my body. I stifled a groan as he sucked a nipple into his mouth and ran his tongue roughly over it.

Then he was sliding my underwear off and flinging it away, nudging my legs wider and pressing into me as I raised my hips to his rhythm.
 

I gripped his back and held him to me as he thrust and ground against me, feeling the rippling, growing heat building to overflow.

“Fuck,” I breathed against his shoulder. He had warmed up quickly. The scent of his musky sweat mingled with a strong fresh laundry smell, and I almost laughed. But I was overwhelmed by the piercing desire again, gasping for breath against him. His face was buried in my hair, his hot breath on my neck.
 

His groaning breaths were growing sharper, rhythmic, punctuating every thrust. I dug my fingers into him tighter, clinging, delirious on the waves of approaching orgasm.
 

I wasn’t sure if I cried out or not. I tried to suppress it, but it hit me like shockwaves, and his hips jerked hard as he panted against me in his own release.

We lay spent and entangled for several moments before I felt alive again enough to speak. Even then, all I could say was, “Fuck me.”

“I thought that’s what I just did,” he said, and I could feel his grin against my skin. I laughed, breathlessly, and then gasped the air back into my lungs. Brendan rolled onto his back beside me, still catching his own breath. We lay panting side by side like that for several moments; I felt suspended in a glowing bubble of pleasure and heat.

Brendan leant over me, kissed my mouth, ran his hand over my breast — then got off the bed.

“Are you going?”

“This was another unplanned detour. I’m actually running late.”

“Time management not your strong point?”

“What makes you say that?” He laughed, but didn’t look at me, tugging his underwear and shirt back on. He felt his jeans by the heater, but I could see from the bed that they weren’t even remotely dry.

“Keep the trackies if you want,” I said. I sat up against the pillows, and pulled the sheet over myself.

“Sure?”

“Yeah. Of course. You can…uh, you can leave the jeans to dry if you want. If you’ve got to go.”

My heart might actually have stopped while I waited for him to react to that. Moment of truth. If he took the jeans and ran, that would say it all. If he left them… well, I didn’t even know what that meant. What should it mean? What did I want it to mean?
 

Shit, I barely knew the guy. Had it even been an hour since he first dripped water all over the place in Student Services? I still hadn’t established anything concrete about him other than his name and the fact that he was disorganised enough to get locked out of his room and miss an exam wearing wet clothing. And no shoes.
 

And then come back to my house to drink and fuck me. Then leave again. Running late for… he didn’t even say what.

And all this ran through my head in the few seconds between my suggestion to leave his jeans, and his response. Which was, “Yeah, alright. Cheers,” as he pulled the trackies back on and left the jeans hanging on the chair.

And then he was leaning over me, kissing me. “I’ll be back for them.”

“Yeah. Sure. Okay.”

He grinned at me, looked me over, and then was heading out the door leaving me alone, still naked, in the bed.

“Fuck,” I murmured. And then I rolled over and buried my face in the pillow while my body still burned with the feel of his skin.

“K
AT
?”

“H
UH
?” I sat bolt upright. “I’m awake.”

Izzy laughed, and I turned my face to where the sound was coming from. Her blonde hair was up in a messy bun on the top of her head, leading the way as she poked her head through my doorway.

“Hiya, Sleeping Beauty. There’s someone at the door for you,” she said.

I pushed back the covers and sat up, perched on the edge of the bed for a moment while the dizziness faded. Then I got up. “Who is it?”
 

“I was hoping
you
could tell
me
. It’s a
boy
.” She dragged the last word out in a sing-song voice.

I’d been reaching for my trackies, but now my hand drifted to my jeans, also laying over the end of my bed. Izzy didn’t pretend she hadn’t seen that.

I raised my eyebrows at her.

“What?”

“Nothing. I wouldn’t even bother putting trousers on, though,” she said, and then ducked back out before I could ask her what the hell that meant.

I
did
put jeans on. And then I poked my head out into the hallway. Which was empty. But that didn’t mean Izzy and Justin weren’t eavesdropping behind one of the closed doors.

Why did I even care?

I straightened my shoulders and strode to front the door, pulling it open too quickly in my effort to seem confident. And I was looking at someone’s back.

He turned as he heard me there, but I wasn’t looking at his face. My eyes had drifted lower.

“I came to get my jeans,” he said.

“Huh. So you did.” And I dragged my gaze up, finally, from where I’d been staring at his cotton, striped boxer shorts. Brendan was grinning at me. I laughed, but it was an incredulous sound. I couldn’t help glancing back down at his lower half again. And his bare legs. And his grey socks. Then I noticed he was hopping back and forth on those grey socks, his hands tucked under his arm pits.

“Come inside,” I said quickly. It wasn’t so much that I thought he was going to die of cold, but that he was going to die of cold on
my
doorstep. In his underwear.

He didn’t hesitate, sidestepping past me before I even had a chance to move out the way. I could feel the chill of his body as he did. I shut the door and turned, then started. I was face to face with him — or nose to collarbone. He just grinned down at me, and looked like he was thinking about kissing me.

“They’re in my room,” I said, giving him a little shove on his arms — his bare arms, since he only wore a T-shirt — to turn him around and march him there. I heard a giggle from somewhere up the hallway and then a door clicking shut. I marched him a little bit faster. “God, you’re an icicle. Why didn’t you at least wear shoes and a jacket?”

“Then you wouldn’t have invited me in,” he said over his shoulder, as we passed through the doorway into my room. I shut it behind me and leant back against it.

“I might have,” I said. He raised one eyebrow at me. I looked over him again, and he just stood there, quite happy to be on display. “What if I hadn’t been home?” I said, dragging my eyes away and moving to turn the radiator up. Brendan moved closer, ostensibly to warm himself, but the side-effect was that his half-dressed body was close to mine again. I couldn’t make myself move away.

“Then I guess I would have had to come back another day.”

“You’re crazy.”

Brendan just shrugged and held out his hands over the heater. “I’m fucking glad you were home, though. It’s cold as shit out there today.”

I almost wasn’t home. I would have been in visiting my mum at the hospital, but when I’d gone, they’d told me she was getting X-rays and tests done and would be hours. And to go home and they’d call me when she was back in her room.

And so I’d done what I always do when I’m overwhelmed and agitated. Gone to sleep. There were three things I did when I felt agitated. One, sleep. I could check that off. Two, drink. There was probably vodka in the kitchen. And three, well, that wasn’t on my radar until Brendan showed up with no pants.

Actually, who am I kidding. Number three had been on my radar since Brendan was first in my room two days before. Also with no pants.

I stood side-by-side with him, warming my hands over the radiator on the wall like it was a campfire, even though I wasn’t cold. I just needed something to do with my hands. And my eyes; I was staring down at my fingers because I could feel Brendan looking at me and didn’t want to meet his gaze.

“Were you sleeping?” he asked.

“Did Izzy tell you?”

“No. You just look all flushed and pretty,” he said. “And you have bed hair.”

My hand flew to my head, and I tried combing out the tangles with my fingers. I frowned at him.
 

“I wasn’t expecting half-naked company.”

“It’s okay. I like you like this,” he said. And he lifted one of his hands to smooth some of my hair down. I just watched him, my breath caught in my throat. And then his hand drifted lower and touched my cheek.

“Bloody hell, your hand is freezing!” I yelped, grabbing it away from my face. And then because I was holding one of them anyway, I took the other one too, between both of mine, and rubbed them. Vigorously. And with all my focus, because Brendan had moved a little closer to me, and the flush I was feeling then was not from sleep.

When he leaned his head in to kiss me, I stepped back. I was still holding his hands, but now using my grip on them to keep him at a distance.

“What are you doing here, Brendan?” I asked. What was
I
doing? I’d thought of nothing but him for the past two days, and now he was in front of me again, I was holding him back.

“I just wanted to see you,” he said. This took me off guard. I’d expected him to make a joke again. That would have been easier to brush off.

But why did I even want to brush him off?

And then I thought of my mum and realised why. Because I felt guilty. Guilty that I’d been spending so much time thinking about Brendan while she was in the hospital. On top of the guilt I already felt for putting her there.

And all this thinking was about a stranger who kept showing up in various modes of undress.
 

I wasn’t surprised at myself. I did this, especially when I was stressed. But I always felt guilty about it too.

“I can go if you want. If I misread this,” Brendan was saying. He had pulled his hands from mine, and was moving away.

“You didn’t,” I said, and he stopped. He was just watching me, waiting for me to make up my mind, obviously. Everything in me was wavering, unable to decide what the sensible course of action was here. “I’m just not in the best place right now,” I said. “I told you, my mum, and everything.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m not trying to complicate your life. To me it’s kinda simple. You’re here. I’m here. I’ve already got my pants off.”

I couldn’t help laughing, and the grin he’d been stifling broke out. And then I felt the punch of guilt in my gut again, that I was here laughing like this while my mum was in hospital. It must have been plain on my face what I was thinking.

“This is the way I look at it,” he said, coming closer to me again. He ran his thumb over my collar bone, then curled his fingers around the back of my neck. “Life is shitty. It always will be. So you just roll with it and find the good where you can. And where I’m standing now, there’s something pretty fucking good right in front of me.”

I didn’t bother analysing that any more. His argument was good enough for me. I was won over — easily, I knew, because I wanted to be. And my arms were snaking around his neck as I pulled his mouth down to mine.

He didn’t need any more invitation than that, either. And by the time he was falling down on to the bed with me, he’d already flicked open the button on my jeans. I gasped and laughed against his mouth as his fingers slipped down inside my underwear.

“Still cold?”

“Fucking freezing,” I murmured, and then gasped again as he moved them against me.

“Want me to stop?”

“No.”

The sensation of his hot tongue in my mouth and his icy fingers against my skin was making me dizzy.