“I meant how was the wedding for you? We left early. Did it start raining before it was over?”

“It did! I’m glad you got home before it started. It came on kind of sudden.”

“Well, I hope you had a good time before it got rained out. I saw you dancing with that tall fellow. Who is he?”

“Oh . . .” I looked over at Daniel, who had his back to me; it looked like he was adjusting the front of his pants. The thought of what was in those pants, and what this damn phone call had interrupted, sent heat coursing through me, and I needed to not be thinking about that while talking to my mother. “That was Daniel.” He turned to me when I spoke his name, his eyes wide with alarm that I might hand him the phone. I smirked at his discomfort and waved him off; he responded with a shake of his head, scooping the forgotten towel from the floor. “He’s . . .” He’s standing right here. He was about to bang me against that door, so if we could get off the phone, that would be great, thanks, Mom.

“Well, I won’t keep you.” It was as though she’d read my mind, and I had to fight to not breathe a sigh of relief. “I just heard you come home and wanted to make sure you didn’t get too wet out there.”

“Oh, I’m soaked.” Was I ever. I winced at my choice of words but plowed on ahead. “It’s raining like crazy. But I’m okay. Thanks, Mom.” As we hung up the phone, though, I realized that it wasn’t raining like crazy. Not anymore. Rain still skittered off the skylight, but not nearly as hard as it had before. Ugh. No. I wanted the bad weather back. I wanted Daniel trapped in here with me, with no choice but to stay. I couldn’t believe Mom had brought our momentum to a grinding halt.

I turned back to Daniel with a sheepish smile. “Sorry. Um. So that’s the ugly truth.”

He raised his eyebrows. “What ugly truth?”

“That I live with my parents.” I spread my arms in defeat. “You are now welcome to flee in terror.”

He made a show of looking around the living area, then walking past me into the kitchen. “I don’t see them here,” he said. “Are they both in the bathroom?”

I rolled my eyes. “No.”

“Under your bed? Kind of a tight fit under there.”

“No,” I said again, but this time with a laugh in my voice.

“Then I don’t see the problem.” He shrugged. “You live near your parents. You’re parents-adjacent. I knew that already, remember? You’re close with your parents.”

“Literally.” But it was a sorry attempt at a joke, and in this moment I felt disappointed in myself. Here I was, twenty-seven years old, living steps away from my mother, who called to make sure I had gotten out of the rain on my own. Some adult I was.

He shrugged again and glanced up toward the skylight. I did the same, gauging the state of the weather outside. Was he looking for an out? I braced myself, waiting for his goodbye. But then he looked at me and I caught my breath. The heat hadn’t left his eyes, and he held out a hand to me. No, he held out the towel.

“C’mere,” he said. “Your hair’s still soaking wet.” His voice was hushed, and it was obvious that he wasn’t just offering to dry my hair. But I went along with the pretense, reaching for the pins in my hair as I approached him, little silk flowers scattering in my wake.

“So no fleeing in terror?” I finger-combed my hair as it tumbled down around my shoulders, and Daniel caught his breath, his eyes darkening.

“Not even a little.” The towel went right back to the floor again as he reached for me. I reached for him right back, and we kissed all the way to my bed under the eaves, unzipping and unbuttoning as we went.

“We really need to get you out of these wet clothes.” Daniel pushed my dress to my waist, and I shimmied the rest of the way out of it, kicking it away. “Your mother was very concerned about you. You could catch your death, you know.”

“Mmm, oh yes. Catch my death in July.” I let his tie flutter to the floor and tugged his shirt out of his waistband.

“I’m a little bit serious, though.” He stroked one hand up my side, around the dip of my waist and to the fullness of my breast, taking a slow journey around my curves. “Your skin really is cold.”

“Warm me up, then.” My voice was husky with invitation, and from the way he pulled me close and kissed me harder, it was an invitation he was eager to accept. I finished with the buttons on his shirt and squeaked a little as I slid my arms around his chest. “You should talk,” I said. “You’re cold too.”

“Warm me up, then.” His words were an echo of mine, and a surprised laugh sprung from me. He shrugged out of his shirt and went to work on the hooks on my longline bra while walking me backward toward the bed.

“I’m impressed,” I said, as he popped the hooks open one by one down my chest in a steady rhythm. “These things can be tricky.”

“Probably easier to get out of than into.” The last hook popped free and we both sighed: me with relief as the loosened garment fell away from my body, and him with something that looked a little bit like worship. My instinct was to cross my arms over myself: my soft middle wasn’t something I displayed all that often, and the first time with a new partner was always a little nerve-wracking. But there was nothing in Daniel’s eyes that showed distaste. Instead he reached a tentative hand toward me, curving it around my waist, his fingertips tracing a line up my skin from my waist to just under my breasts. He sucked in a breath that was less aroused than concerned.

“Does that hurt?”

“What . . . ?” I ran a hand up my rib cage, feeling the indentations left behind by the boning in the bra. Ah. He’d been tracing a literal line up my body. “Maybe a little,” I said. “Nothing to worry about. I’m used to it. Especially this time of year. Lots of corsetry in my life in the summertime.”

He huffed out a laugh, which turned into a sigh as I caught his hand and moved it up. He got the message quick. His palm was rough against the underside of my breast, his thumb circling a rapidly tightening nipple. His touch was electric, but it wasn’t enough. I needed his mouth, his lips, his tongue on my skin. I wanted everything from him. But I forced myself to take my time, running a hand across his taut stomach and then up his chest, loving the way his muscles flexed under my touch. Up and up, tracing the line of his breastbone and curving around his neck, before I drew his head back down, meeting his mouth with mine. His hands tightened on me, breast and hip, and I swallowed the groan that came from his throat. We moved together in perfect concert, toeing off our shoes and sinking onto my bed.

Which squeaked under us.

Kind of loudly.

I ignored it and ran my hands up Daniel’s back; his skin was no longer cold under my hands. He braced his hands on either side of my head and rolled his hips to mine, aligning our bodies. He rocked against me, hard, and I gasped. The only thing between us were his pants and my underwear, but that was still too many clothes. I ran my fingers down the dip of his spine—he shivered and kissed me harder—and made quick work of his belt and the button and zipper on his pants. He bucked his hips as I reached inside for him.

“Jesus, Stacey . . .” He was huge in my hand, hard and hot, and I didn’t mean to tease but I couldn’t help mapping his size and girth with my fingers. The heat of him, the size of him, I couldn’t get enough, and it didn’t take long for mapping to become stroking, in a slow glide from base to the tip. His breath came hard in his chest, shuddering in his lungs, and I couldn’t keep the grin from my face as he rocked against me, thrusting gently into my hand in a steady rhythm. He felt good. This felt good. This was . . .

 . . . loud. When had my bed become so damn squeaky?

Daniel stilled his movements and pushed himself up on his hands, looking down at me.

“So. Um . . .” There was that laugh again, that quiet one that was like a rush of breath.

He looked up at the wall behind my head, as if he could find something important there, then looked back down at me. “I don’t know about this.” He pushed himself off me, away from me, and I missed his weight immediately. Everything felt cold without his skin touching mine.

“Okay . . . ?” I hated how small my voice sounded. How defeated. He’d undressed me a few minutes ago, but this was the first moment I felt naked. But it didn’t take long for defeat to dissolve into anger. Frustration, even.

“So what’s the problem?” I pulled at the blanket I kept folded at the end of my bed, tugging it around my chest as I sat up to face Daniel, who was sitting on the other side of the bed, as far away from me as he could get.

“Problem? No . . .” He shook his head and reached for me, but I shrugged away from his touch.

“Then why did you . . .” Frustration mounted and I surged to my feet, wrapping the blanket around me like a kind of toga. What exactly had I misread here? Him dry-humping me into the mattress, or the helpless sound he’d made when I had his dick in my hand? But asking him why he didn’t want me anymore was mortifying. “You changed your mind,” I finally said.

“What? No, I didn’t.”