Page 45 of Sex Positive

“I do not—”

“Come on.” He leans forward, his eyes glimmering with mirth. “Close your eyes.”

Her insides feels like they’re melting into a puddle on the ground.

She closes her eyes.

“Open your mouth.”

His voice dips, and she has to suppress a shiver. She doesn’t know if he’s doing it deliberately.

Something smooth and round presses against her tongue. Instinctively, she bites down. When his thumb glides over her bottom lip, her body erupts with fissures of heat, and she has a sudden image of pulling those fingers into her mouth, licking and sucking cream off his fingertips. She’s light-headed from the sensation, but she tries to focus on the sweet flavor bursting across her taste buds as the macaron practically melts in her mouth.

Her eyes flutter open to find him watching her, his gaze dark and full of something heady, piercing her with another rush of heat.

His lips curve. “Good?”

She swallows. “Pistachio?”

He nods, revealing the other light green half in his palm. When he pops the rest of it into his mouth, her skin flushes at the thought of his lips touching the same place hers were moments ago.

Despite the crisp autumn air, she’s warm, overheating under her jacket.

Wes closes the box of macarons and rises to his feet. “Come along, Rogers. We’re on a tight schedule. Places to be, things to do.”

He slings her backpack over his shoulder before she can grab it off the ground.

“I can take that—”

He shakes his head. “Don’t be silly.” He passes her the macarons instead.

She follows him, glaring at his confident stroll, the long lines of his legs, his broad shoulders.

“You’re so annoying,” she mutters.

He laughs. “I’m aware.”

They pause at a crosswalk. Across the street is a large stone arch and the entrance to a park. The trees are already half bare, the remaining leaves various shades of red and orange. People mill about in front of the arch—tourists taking photos, parents chasing children, bikers navigating down the walkway.

The signal changes, and they cross. Wes presses a hand to the small of Charlie’s back, guiding her out of the way of a group of sightseers standing in the middle of the sidewalk. She jumps at the sudden contact but doesn’t pull away. She faces straight ahead, the feeling of his hand, warm and reassuring, confusing her. What is he doing? She’s certain he has better things to do than take her to award-winning bakeries and stroll around New York City, certain he wouldn’t have a problem with her returning to the train station and hanging out in the terminal by herself. This feels too similar to how things used to bebefore, when it was easy and natural to spend any extra time with him.

“How far are we from Times Square?” she asks, desperate to occupy her turbulent thoughts with something other than Wesley Quinn’s motivations and the sensation of his hand pressed comfortably against her back.

He gestures vaguely to his left. “It’s quite a ways up there. If we stayed on this street, we’d run into it, but we’re not going to Times Square. We can do the touristy things next time.”

Next time.What the fuck is he talking about,next time?

She files it away as a slip of the tongue and casts it from her mind. “And Central Park?”

“Same direction, but farther.” He grins. “If I knew you’d never been here before, I’d have planned a full itinerary and insisted you take a later train.” He shrugs. “But New York will still be here when you come back, so I’m taking you to a place I know you’ll love and might have trouble leaving.”

She laughs. “Oh? You know me that well?”

“Please.” He smiles, but her chest throbs when she catches a hint of sadness at the edges. “Don’t insult my knowledge of you.”

He drops his hand from her back, and they lapse into silence.

They’ve never spoken about what happened freshman year. After leaving the party in tears, Charlie spent the entire next week avoiding him, ignoring his texts, and finding new places to study in the library. She’s not proud of it, knows it was cowardly and immature. But she was so hurt, and she couldn’t bear the thought of facing him, of telling him the truth, of seeing ridicule—or worse, pity—on his face once he found out she thought there wassomethingbetween them. That she thought Wesley Quinn could ever be interested in her.