Page 51 of Sex Positive

He laughs again, true and clear and gorgeous. “Charlotte Rogers, if there is a poster child for Thinking Face, it is you.”

It’s obscene how her body reacts to her full name on his lips. It’s like she’s been dipped in sunlight.

Ever since she met him last Fall, Wesley Quinn has shoved his way into her life to where she’s dropped her guard. Gradually, they’ve moved from simply walking to class together to sharing a study table to sharing some of their deepest secrets and fears.

She feels unsteady now, like she’s teetering on the edge of something before a fall.

“I don’t see the point of this,” she admits. “It’s hot and crowded, and I can hardly hear you over the music. What if my eardrums blow and I can’t listen to lectures anymore without asking the professors to repeat themselves every five seconds?” When Wes laughs, she glares at him. “Don’t make fun of me.”

He shakes his head. “I’m not. I’m just glad you’re here.”

Her heart trips, her body thrumming with heat and gratification and somethingelse—the something she’s been feeling more often and trying to ignore—as he holds her gaze.

He leans down, his lips a hair’s breadth away from her ear. “Parties are supposed to befun. A chance torelax.” She fights a shiver, his breath warm on her skin. “Haven’t you ever wanted to lose control for a while?”

Her mouth pops open with a gasp. She’s about to respond, to explain that she has no need to lose control, when the notes of a very familiar intro blast through the speakers.

She laughs. “Oh my god.”

Pausing only briefly to set down his drink on a nearby table, Wes starts dancing, arms bent at ninety-degree angles, shuffling back and forth. She laughs harder.

“What?” he says, a picture of innocence.

“Thissong,” she shouts. “It’s a joke, right?”

Wes keeps dancing as the infamous chorus comes on. “I happen tolovethis song, Rogers. Didn’t take you for a music snob, but go off.”

His moves become more exaggerated, and she cackles. When she covers her mouth with her hand, he wraps his fingers around her wrist.

“Come on.” He leans close to her ear again, and her breath catches. His hand slips into hers. “Dance with me.”

Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down…

She rolls her eyes, not bothering to hide her smile now. “Fine.”

Never gonna run around and desert you.

Her body lights up with electricity, the silly, magical song loud, the crowd boisterous, belting out the lyrics. Wes holds one of her hands, and the other winds around her waist. When he spins her, she throws her head back, laughing harder than she has in weeks.

His chest is firm and defined under her hands, and in a stroke of boldness, she slides them up his broad shoulders and links them around his neck. He tugs her closer, their bodies now flush, and a growing pulse of heat unfurls in her core.

Of course she thinks about sex. Charlie often wonders if she thinks about it too much, questioning the ideals she grew up with such as the concept of virginity and why it’s so important to remain “pure.”

Because now, more than ever, she thinks about sex in the context of Wesley Quinn.

Like tonight, when his shirt fits just right. Or when he sits across from her in the library and she fixates on how he licks his thumb after finishing a bag of Doritos, imagining that tongue trailing fire down her neck. Or when he bends over to pick up his bag and his biceps flex and his shoulders roll in a way that has her imagining him lifting other more human-sized things. Or when he arrives after a workout, smelling of grass and ozone from the rain, and her heart thumps, her mouth going dry when he pulls his shirt offin the middle of the goddamn libraryand stands there half naked andwetbefore changing into a fresh cotton shirt smelling of fresh laundry.

She’s become obsessed with male anatomy in a way she’s never been before.

When the song changes, the bass is so loud it vibrates in her chest. However, neither of them pulls away.

She imagines being bold, grabbing him by the collar and pressing her mouth to his so she can finally know what his lips feel like. He would reciprocate, because she wouldn’t be mistaken about his desire for her, the attraction she wants to believe is there. His hands—those hands she’s become so preoccupied with—would trace the outline of her hips, spread flames across her skin, and draw her closer.

They’d break away and smile in that nervous, self-conscious way, and she would suggest they go somewhere quiet. Either of their dorms would do as long as she could feel his weight on her. She wants his skin on her skin, his mouth on her skin, wants a chance to explore each other’s bodies like she’s imagined so often in her wildest daydreams.

Charlie slides her hands down his neck, laying them flat against his chest. His palms are hot on her waist—one side of her shirt has ridden up, exposing a stripe of skin, and his fingers stoke the small of her back.

When he slides one hand into her curls, twisting them around his fingers, she doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe.