Page 42 of Such Sharp Teeth

After we finish eating, I offer to help him with the dishes.

“No,” he says, leaving them in the sink and pouring us each a bourbon. We clink glasses, but then he puts his down.

“You don’t want it?” I ask him.

“I shouldn’t. Have to drive you home.”

I snort. “Yeah, I’m not going home.”

He lets me finish my sip before taking my glass and setting it down on the counter. Then he holds my face and kisses me.

It’s like the swing-set kiss, only better.

I reach up to him, and he glides his hands down to my waist and lifts me up. The contact with my side, his grip on where I was bitten, doesn’t hurt, exactly. It’s vivid in its intensity but ambiguous in its pleasure. I wrap my legs around him, and he presses my back into the wall.

This want has me feral. I paw at him. His hair, his shoulders. He’s got one hand on my waist, still pressed to the bite, and the other under my ass, holding me up off the floor.

I think it’ll happen right here, and I’m fine with that, but then he lets me go.

He pulls back from me, gently lets me down.

“What is it?” I ask.

“I lied before,” he says, out of breath. “I do have expectations.”

“All right,” I say. “What are they?”

“Not expectations,” he says. “I don’t expect anything. But I don’t want this to be this and nothing else. It’ll fuck me up. If you’re back, if you’re in my house and we hook up and then you leave and it’s nothing, that’ll fuck me up. I’m not asking you to know what you want. I’m just telling you what I want.”

“It’s unclear,” I say. I’m also out of breath. “What do you want?”

“If you know for sure you’re not looking for anything else out of this, then let’s just stay friends.”

“I don’t know that,” I say, feeling the smile creep up my cheeks. I still do have the power here. Some of it anyway.

“Okay. Then let’s go upstairs.”

—

After, we lie in the wreckage of torn sheets and obliterated pillows. There are lamps knocked over, broken glass, books once stacked neatly on the nightstand splayed out on their spines. We’re on our backs, and my head rests on his chest. He strokes my tangled hair.

“You’re strong,” he says. “I think I have bruises.”

“Apologies. I’ll be gentle next time.”

“Next time, huh?”

“Unless I’m too rough for you.”

He tugs my hair, pulling my chin up toward him. “Not too rough.”

He releases my hair and kisses the top of my head. “Though rumor has it you took out a bear a few weeks ago.”

“Mm.” Sure. A bear. “To clarify, that was a very different interaction.”

“Good to know.”

There’s a moment of quiet, and I worry he’s going to persist with some follow-ups re the “bear” attack.