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His eyes widen momentarily and then he drops his head to my shoulder, letting out a gorgeous, exhilarating laugh. When he lifts his head back up, I’m dazzled by the playful yet obedient look in his eyes. “Out of the two of us, you know that it would be you doing the strangling,” he teases, and I realise that he’s backing me up out of the room. My heart drops to my stomach and starts racing too quickly.Now?I think to myself.Are we doing this now?
He’s walking me backwards up the stairs so it seems likely and I’m panicking. But worse than that, after everything that he just said, I think thatImade a mistake – and I’m not talking about essentially asking him over to ravish me whilstI’m unsupervised. I’m talking about three years ago. I think that there’s a huge gigantic missing puzzle piece that is spinning tauntingly on its sharp little edge, just out of reach. Then again, I’ll never know if that’s true, so it makes me think that I should never be able to trust him again. But I do. Maybe it’s animal intuition, or maybe I’m just a moron. Maybe both. But I do trust him, and I hate myself for it.
My face must be betraying the secret nature of my inner thoughts because once we’re on the second floor landing Tate asks me, “Why are you hyperventilating?” Then, just as he presses me into a wooden door panel and says, “The water should be hot in about five minutes,” I blurt out at the exact same moment, “I’m not ready to have sex with you yet.”
This is the moment when I realise that my back is up against thebathroomdoor and he has manoeuvred me here because he wants me to shower – i.e. he isnottrying to fuck me in the first five minutes of our parents not being here.
He pins me with a look so startled that it borders on disturbed. “What did you say?” he asks, alarm managing to both raise and contort his brow. He looks shockedanddistressed. Maybe he should be. I definitely am.
I quickly attempt to deflect. I languidly waft my hand in front of my face and make a woozyoofsound. “I think I feel a little bit faint. It must be my asthma.” I do a light wobble.
His eyes are sharp but slightly hooded as he watches me. He can read my mind, and I know it. He’s thinking about the fact that allIthink about when I’m near him is the possibility of us getting it on. Or do I mean in? I don’t know why this doesn’t make him happy – I think it would for any other straight man with a librarian fetish. Instead he looks completely confused.
“Why are you trying to make this about sex?” he asks, his eyes glinting like knives.
“That’s why you’re here,” I say, confused. Theduhis implied.
His eyes narrow so severely that for a moment I feel a shiver of animal chill slithering down my spine. It’s so much easier to enjoy him when he’s like this because I can see the bad in him, and it helps me detach from all of his annoyinggood.
“That isnotwhy I’m here,” he replies gruffly. I feel the pane behind me give way, and I realise that he has opened the door and is crowding us into the bathroom. He yanks the bathroom cupboard open to grab a towel and he throws it on the counter above the sink. Then he leans us into the bath panel so that he can whip the tap around and get the hot water running. His eyes move back down to me where he does a quick sweep of my torso and then he turns me around and moves us to the centre of the room again, so that we’re facing the vanity mirror.
He rests his chin on my exposed shoulder and I gasp when his stubble stabs into my skin. Our eyes are locked onto one another’s reflections.
“You want to know how much that’s not why I’m here?” he asks, snaking one forearm around my shoulders and the other around my stomach. He keeps still for a moment and then he suddenly grips my body to his so firmly that I almost pee myself. He drops his voice to a whisper and it runs down my neck like hot syrup. “I didn’t bring any condoms,” he murmurs. “And you betternothave any condoms. So unless you want me to knock you up tonight, I’m going to need you to cut it out.”
My eyes flick down to my stomach, where his arm is shielding me tight, and when I look back up I see that Tate is looking there too. I’m sizzling dangerously down below because, whether I like it or not, IknowTate. As in, Iknowwhat he likes. And I know more than anything that his deepest fantasy involves getting a nice girl to sayI doby a church altar and then pumping her pregnant for the rest of her life.
“I’m taking you out tonight,” he says, chin rubbing side to side, stubble grazing into my skin. “So you’re going to shower,and then you’re going to be ready for me at the door in an hour.” His eyes lift to mine and his hands roam the sides of my stomach as he adds on, “If you want to.”
I don’t want to want to, but my common sense is being drowned out by the sound of blood rushing to all of my important parts. “Two hours,” I say. Yes, I do hate myself.
“An hour and a half,” he replies.
I scowl and try to push his hands off me even though that’s the last thing that I really want, but it has the desired effect. He squeezes me tighter in his grip and relents with, “Okay, okay, two hours.”
I’m evil and my insides are overflowing with the pleasure of getting princess treatment from Tate Coleson. This is what I’ve been missing for the past three years: someone to spoil me rotten.
“Is that okay? You’re… you’re going to come out with me in two hours?” he asks, eyes aglow with anticipation in the mirror. Three years of pining will do that to a man.
I huff, because I’m trying to think of a way to say yes without saying yes, and then I almost choke because in the past ten seconds the room has turned as opaque as a hot spring with all of the steam.
I take my glasses off because they’ve clouded over, and Tate removes them from my hand before I can even protest. I reach to get them back but he holds them far too high over his head, releasing a tidal wave of that heady cedar man smell. When I turn around I see a sliver of the dark happy trail running down his caramel abdomen and straight into the band of his jeans, so naturally I forget how to breathe, let alone how to put up a good fight.
“Hostages,” he says teasingly, and the lenses glint down at me antagonistically.
“Fine,” I mumble and then I push him out of the door, mainly just so that I can dig my pervy claws into his rigid abdominals. Delicious.
I slam the door, keeping up myyou’re the enemypretence, but I feel my chest pick up the pace. Whether my brain likes it or not, in my biology Tate is ninety-nine percent forgiven – and for that, it wants its parting gift.
Chapter 22
Present
He’s standing ninety-degrees to the door, his back pressed against the wall adjacent to it, with one leg kicked forward and the other arched up. When he senses me making my way down the stairs he immediately snaps his head towards me, jerks himself off the surface, and then plants his body at the foot of the stairs, a giant immovable barrier.
When I’m a few steps from the bottom and we’re roughly the same height, his arms come to hover at my sides, and he looks into my eyes waiting for an invitation to let him touch me. I do the world’s smallest nod and hell-born flames ignite behind his irises.
His hands instantly wrap around the backs of my thighs and he kneads me so roughly that I have to grab onto his shoulders to prevent myself from falling over. That’s not exactly a hardship seeing as Tate has removed his jacket and now I am gripping into a body that spends more than twelve hours a day hauling wood. At least that’s what I’ve been imagining him doing when I’m all alone in his former bedroom.
