I’m sweating already, can feel it beading down my spine, in the palms of my hands. The song is all synthesizer and swelling drums, throbs that climb my legs, vibrate my thighs, settle in the base of my stomach.
My hands go up, and almost immediately, fingers ghost down the undersides of my biceps, over my armpits, along my sides, to settle on my hips. Every place he touches sparks so strongly that the club won’t need their light shows—we can create pyrotechnics on our own.
“Is this okay?” The way he asks, forehead pressing to the back of my head, voice a muffled croon against the music—my body twitches with resistance.
“Don’t do that.” My arms jerk down, head angling to the side. “That’s not what this is.”
Elethior mimics my stiffness, but he doesn’t peel his hands away from my hips. “Then what are we doing?”
“Using each other.”
His fingers clamp my hips more firmly. I hiss, but it isn’t bad.
Itshouldfeel bad.
It should feel like standing on that collapsed bridge behind the grocery store when I was younger and wondering if the levitation spell would fail; but it feels like the final time I did that, when I turned away instead of stepping into the abyss. When I chose to be safe.
He feels…safe.
My heart’s been going at a sprint since he appeared beside me, so it’s got nowhere to speed up under the wash of panicked adrenaline,and it all churns together, confusion and fear andwanting,such heady, dismantlingwanting.
His voice is mostly tremors as he growls into my ear, “You want me to use your body, Sebastian?”
I don’t trust what’ll come out of my mouth, so I nod.
No thinking here. Just feeling.
Feeling those fingers conform to my hip bones.
Feeling my ass against the solid wall of his pelvis.
Feeling his face alongside my head, feeling his breath dust across my collarbone, feeling,feeling—
We sway with the music. Exploratory at first, finding the rhythm with the crowd, with each other.
The song builds and we let it take us faster, faster. The bass crashes and we jump with the other dancers. One of his hands leaves my hip to splay against my bare stomach and I loop my arm around his head, holding him there as I grind on him shamelessly. I’ll be mortified by this in the morning.
Or maybe I won’t.
Maybe I don’t have to carry this with me. It doesn’t have to be anything more than what it is now, an outlet. We don’t like each other and don’t have to. This is a safer detonation than screaming at each other. Although, not gonna lie, that’s pretty hot, too.
The energy of our dancing changes. Nothing on the surface, no new song, no new moves; but the rock of my hips against his takes on a new gravitational pull, directing us in a wordless, fluid reorienting.
My heart goes sluggish, slowing everything to the frame-by-frame shuttering of my head dropping back against his shoulder.
His hand climbs my stomach. All the air leaves my lungs in a punctured groan that he has to feel, the rumble of it; he moves his hand up under my shirt, sliding between my pecs until he’s gripping my neck and the lights go scarlet.
The beat falls again, but we miss the jump.
He’s holding my body to him with his hand on my neck and fuck it if I’m not a boneless, compliant mess.
On the next swaying grind of my hips, he cants into me, lettingme feel he’s as hard as I am, and the knowledge skitters across my sweat-slicked skin like a gust of wind. Goose bumps erupt everywhere; I shiver in their attack.
My lips part, eyes pinched shut like I’m in pain. I am. It hurts, and itdoesn’t,and that hurts, too.
His fingers spasm on the pulse point in my neck. I turn my head and I know his face is right there. I can taste the heat on his mouth.
Our lips touch, a scratchy brush.
