At Your Most Beautiful by Harper Bliss (best free ereader .TXT) 📗

“I’ll be quiet,” Quinn murmured. “Just fuck me please, Maya. It was torture to be so close to you all night.”

“Torture, huh?” Maya slid two fingers all the way inside. “You youngsters with your hyperbole.”

Quinn probably didn’t register what she was saying any longer. She let her head fall back, exposing her neck, as she let out a half-suppressed groan.

Seeing Quinn like that, and having her fingers deep inside her, quickened Maya’s pulse. Fatigue made way for something else—even more feelings of infatuation for Quinn, Maya guessed. She kissed Quinn’s sweat-salty neck. Because Maya, too, had dreamed of a moment like this while they were out there on the floor.

She hadn’t only felt like royalty, she’d felt like Quinn’s one and only princess.

A bead of sweat pearled on Maya’s forehead. She wanted to take some space from Quinn, but the bed was so small, there was nowhere to go. Maya didn’t much feel like pressing herself against the wall either. She didn’t actually believe the apartment Quinn lived in was dirty, but it gave a too-lived-in impression and Maya might as well be honest with herself, she was used to a different standard of living. She had swanky wallpaper on her bedroom walls that was soft to the touch. Her kitchen had marble countertops instead of cheap plywood, and in the unlikely case one elevator broke down in her building, there was always the second one.

Maya understood that people in their thirties lived like this, although Tommy wasn’t even thirty yet and he most certainly didn’t live in a ‘Greenpoint walk-up’ as Quinn had put it. But Tommy was married to a TV news anchor and people who were on TV got paid a hell of a lot more than people who weren’t. Rationally, she knew it was perfectly normal for Quinn to live in a place like this in a city like New York with astronomical rents, but it did drive home a point to Maya as she lay squeezed against Quinn, who seemed totally out of it. If Maya listened closely, she could detect a soft purr coming from Quinn’s mouth at regular intervals.

Even though her body was exhausted, Maya’s mind refused to quiet down. When she heard a noise outside the closed bedroom door, she gently extricated herself from Quinn’s bed, found a robe that was hanging off the foot of the bed, and got up. Maya guessed she was about to make the acquaintance of Griff.

The apartment was so small, it wasn’t hard for Maya to find her way back to the kitchen in the dark. A woman of about Quinn’s age with short, tousled hair and dressed in a tank top and shorts sat at the tiny kitchen table, drinking a glass of water.

“Hey,” she said. “You must be Maya.”

“And you must be Griff.” Maya thought it a bit silly to offer her hand for a formal handshake in the middle of the night.

“The one and only. Do you want some water?”

“Sure.” Maya sat on the other chair and once Griff had rejoined her, found herself almost touching elbows with Quinn’s roommate.

“I hope we didn’t wake you,” Maya said.

“Nah. Sometimes I just wake up in the middle of the night for no reason. I suspect it’s hormonal.” She beamed Maya a warm smile. “How was your night out? Did you like the club?”

“I loved it. Have you been there?”

“It’s been a while.” Griff took a sip of water. “Couldn’t sleep?”

“Hm.” Maya chuckled. “Must be my hormones as well.” Maya couldn’t very well tell Griff the truth. For all she knew, Griff’s bed was even smaller than Quinn’s.

“New surroundings and all that, probably,” Griff said.

Maya nodded. “You didn’t go out last night?” Maya figured she might as well make some conversation, if only to take her mind off the issues that were keeping her awake.

Griff shook her head. “I’m keeping a low profile this year.”

“This year?”

Maya could see Griff hesitate, but then she nodded, and said, “I’m doing a ‘year of no’. It’s an experiment I’m doing for a book I’m writing.”

“How does it work? You say no to everything?”

“Nothing as drastic as that.” Griff laughed. “One full year of no flirting, no sex, and no relationships.”

“Seriously?”

“Oh yes.”

“Where did that idea come from?” Maya was intrigued. Quinn hadn’t told her that much about Griff.

“I’ve always been interested in how much of what we do and how we act is influenced by what we’ve internalized just by living in society, in this world that we’ve created. Being romantically involved with other people has been the norm for so long now, I wanted to experience what it would be like to actively go against the grain.”

“And? What does it feel like?” Maya had been single long enough to know exactly what it felt like. “For the record, I’ve had multiple years of no.”

“Until Quinn came along?” Griff asked.

“Kind of.” It wasn’t entirely true, although it felt like it had some truth to it.

Griff smiled at her again. “To answer your question, now that I’m a few months in, I had truly believed that it was going to be a lot harder. But maybe you should ask me again after spring. Or at the height of summer when everyone’s strutting around frisky as hell.”

Maya chuckled. “I can’t wait to read that book.”

“Quinn’s totally nuts about you, by the way,” Griff said.

Warmth bloomed inside Maya’s belly. “She’s, um… Well, I’m quite fond of her as well,” Maya half-said, half-stuttered.

“I’m just happy to see her like this again after Morgan did such a number on her.” Griff sounded concerned for Quinn. Either she was a really good friend or she had more than a friendly interest in her roommate.

Maya didn’t know what to say to that. She didn’t know what to think of any of this, which was why she was sitting at this kitchen table instead of lying in bed next to Quinn, soundly asleep. “We had a lot of fun tonight, but…”

“It’s complicated?” Griff emptied her glass