Chapter 21
CHAPTER 21
A rcher
The second cup of coffee has Alicia talking a mile a minute, her legs crossed underneath her on my couch, while Ella looks on from an armchair in the corner.
I don’t blame her for sitting as far away from the trainwreck of my personal life as possible. If it were me, I’d have driven away like she was planning. Especially after Alicia recognized her and went fangirl for a full two minutes until I could settle her down. I’m not sure how I persuaded Ella to stick around, but I’m grateful for whatever gods of manifesting convinced her.
Without her purse, Alicia has no idea how to reach her friends. All of their numbers are stored in her phone, which she doesn’t have. “D’you want to log into your account on my phone and search for it?” Ella offers.
“Oh, good idea,” she says. I meet Ella’s gaze and press my lips into a sort of smile, hoping it conveys how much I appreciate her kindness to Alicia. I can’t think of many women who’d take me at my word that there’s nothing going on between us, especially after what she just witnessed with Callum. I feel even more lucky that Ella chose to come here this morning. That she chose me.
I also kick myself for not searching for Alicia’s phone last night. I could’ve set off a chime to alert whoever had the phone, saving myself the whole nightmare of carrying Alicia from my truck to my house. In other words, I could be standing in my driveway with my hands on Ella’s soft skin right now instead of staring at her across the room like I’ve been doing for the past half hour.
Ella and Alicia set about logging in, and after a minute, they’ve located her phone. “That’s Carla’s house.” Alicia slaps her hand against her forehead. “Right. I had a clutch, so I stuck it in Carla’s bag, and she hung it on the hook under the bar. Totally forgot about that.”
A few minutes later, they’ve succeeded at reaching out to Carla on a social media messaging app and arranging for Alicia to pick up her bag on the way to her apartment. Relief washes over me as I see my errand coming to an end so I can pick up where I was with Ella outside. For the past half hour, I’ve been able to think about nothing else. I keep sneaking glances at her, clocking details I didn’t notice when we were outside. Her rosebud mouth, devoid of gloss or lipstick. The way her eyes dance when Alicia tells her that I’m a big teddy bear underneath my “snarly exterior.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” I gripe, only to find Ella smiling at me from her chair, which is about as far away from me as she could be in this room. My muscles twitch, eager to pull her onto my lap and inhale a deep breath of her skin, her hair. I can’t stop staring.
“So where was I?” Alicia asks, reminding us that she was in the middle of giving Ella “all the dirt” on me since we’ve known each other forever. So far, it’s only resulted in a few stories about my football days and the cheerleaders I used to date. But then she started in on a story about a bear and I distracted her by refilling her coffee cup.
“The story about the bear,” Ella reminds her. I shoot her a frown, but she returns a sweet smile that says she’s eager to hear embarrassing stories about me.
“You should’ve seen his face,” Alicia says, telling a story she drags out whenever she wants to relive the glory days of our high school friendship. Usually it’s when she wants me to do something for her, some sort of man-power errand that requires a truck. She reminds me of how close we were once, which only serves to remind me that we’re not close anymore.
“Pretty glad you didn’t. Not my finest moment,” I say, hoping Alicia will cut to the shorter version of the story of how I thought I was defending my friends against a bear on our senior retreat.
“On the contrary, it was adorable.” Alicia sips more coffee.
“It was a normal testosterone-fueled guy response,” I explain. “My knuckleheaded friends thought it would be hilarious to pretend to be a bear when it was my turn to tell a ghost story by the campfire, and when one of them yelled ‘bear!’ I jumped to my feet and put my hands over my head to make myself look big and menacing.”
Alicia snorts coffee from her nose at the memory. “He looked like he was ready to shred the bear with his teeth.” She does her best impression of a vicious-looking face, teeth bared and jazz hands, which I most definitely did not do.
“You look like you’re auditioning to play the wolf in a bad Broadway musical,” I say, shaking my head. I drain the last of my coffee and stand up. “Anyway…we should grab your stuff from Carla’s and get you home.”
Alicia looks from Ella to me and nods. “Right. Got it. Sorry.” She stands up, straightens the hem of her short dress, and twists her hair into a knot on top of her head. “Okay, ready.” She looks around us on the floor. “Did I have shoes?”
I walk to the back door and grab her stiletto sandals. “Ready? ”
“So pushy,” Alicia says, grabbing them from me and hanging them from her finger. “I’m kidding. I’ve taken up enough of your time.”
“Do you want to hang here or come for the drive?” I ask Ella.
“I’ll come.”
“I was hoping you’d say that,” I whisper when she walks past me to my truck. It earns me a smile and I tuck it away like a gold star.
Ella insists on sitting in the back seat while I drive the quick two miles to Carla’s and then to Alicia’s apartment. “It’s on the border of Calistoga,” she tells Ella.
“Never been there.”
“Really? Oh, well, I guess that makes sense. Lotta locals hang there. Tourists mostly want to see downtown Napa or St. Helena. The more chichi places with the cute shops and restaurants.”
I worry that Ella may take offense to the assumption that she’s a fancy tourist, but she doesn’t skip a beat. “Sounds like I’d like Calistoga.”
I meet her eyes in the rearview mirror, hoping she can see my smile.
A few minutes later, Alicia gives me a wet kiss on the cheek and waves at Ella. “Thanks again.” She saunters up the walkway of her apartment building with her shoes slung over her shoulder. A second after that, the passenger door opens and Ella slides onto the bench seat next to me.
“Where to, cowboy?” she asks, pulling the seat belt across her body. I unsnap it just as fast. She looks at me quizzingly, but I put one arm around her shoulders and haul her to my side. The warmth of her body ignites something deep within me, an ember that’s been smoldering since I first laid eyes on her that day in the old brown barn. Now there’s no chance of extinguishing out that flame. It’s already consuming everything in its wake.
She takes a quick look around, but there’s no one on the street at this early hour. We’re safe from cell phone cameras. Then she gazes up at me, jaw slack, eyes hungry. Her tongue slips out to lick her bottom lip.
My cock jumps in my pants, instantly hard like it was when she showed up in my driveway this morning. It’s taken all my self-control to wage war against it, and now I’m fucking done.
Turning in my seat, I face her more squarely, my eyes roaming over her face, my brain firing off a hailstorm of ideas about where to kiss her first, which part of her skin to taste. I shut all that down and focus on her lips. They’re parted slightly. Pale pink. Wet.
I cup her jaw in my palm, finally emboldened to take what I’ve been denying myself for weeks.
Brushing my thumb across her cheek, I feel her face sink into my hand. I feel her heart beating beneath the surface. Her quiet sigh.
My hands are rough against her smooth skin. It’s a warning. This is her chance to reject the farmer, the guy from the small town, the man who isn’t her fiancé, even if he’s proven himself barely a man. But she only moves closer to me, one bent leg sweeping across my lap to drape over me. I pull her in tighter, one hand firm against her back, showing her exactly how unwilling I am to let her go. One hand still tracing the graceful lines of her face, wanting to be gentle with her until she screams for something else.
She watches me, waiting to see where this will lead. I get it—even if Callum cheated, she’s still engaged—she can’t be the one to make the first move.
Fine by me.
I tip my head to her forehead, taking a moment to inhale the scent of her, all floral and citrus and fucking perfection. Her breath is choppy and shallow, and I want to steal all of it.
As my finger trails over the apple of one cheek, I memorize every curve. Every inch of her heart-shaped face.
When I bring my lips to hers, it’s just a whisper. A promise of what I’ll give her if she’ll let me. I can barely stand to limit myself to just a gentle brush, but I’ve spent too many nights thinking about this moment to rush it.
“Princess,” I rasp against her lips. “Just say the word and I’ll stop.”
It’ll take every bit of self-control to do what I’ve just promised, but up until last night, she thought she was marrying another man. I don’t want to take advantage of her vulnerability, don’t want her to do anything she’ll regret.
“I want the opposite of stop,” she breathes. “I want it all.”
It’s all the permission I need.
I keep things slow, warming her up, guiding her to trust me, daring her to want me as much as I’m desperate for her. Guiding her into a kiss that I want more than anything in the world.
She responds in kind, deepening the kiss, pressing her body into me. Tracing her bottom lip with my tongue, I delve deeper. Her lips open and our tongues find each other. Desperate. Seeking. Satisfying beyond anything I could’ve imagined.
The heat in my truck blasts into the triple digits as our kiss goes on and on. Her quiet sighs and moans grow louder, and her hands roam over my shoulders and back before coming to the nape of my neck and pushing into my hair.
We deepen the kiss until I can’t tell where each of us begins or ends. It goes on and on. Day turns into night, for all I know. What’s certain is that I’m exactly where I want to be for maybe the first time in my life.
Briefly breaking the kiss, we stare at each other in disbelief. “God, Archer. If I’d known this was how it felt to kiss you, I’d have done it the first day we met.”
This. This is how people fall in love.
It strikes me like a shock of lightning from a storm I didn’t see coming. The obsessive thinking about only one woman. The inability to sleep. The anger about any part of my day that didn’t involve her. I’m not saying I’m in love—that’s crazy. It’s just…that th ing that always felt like other people could find it and I’d always somehow be on the outside…it doesn’t feel so impossible anymore.
From one kiss.
That’s when I realize how fucked I really am.
No matter what happens after this, I will never be the same. I’ll know what it’s like to feel this, and I’m never getting over it.
Ella slides over so she’s fully on my lap and grinds circles against my cock. I groan, “Careful. You’re playing with fire.” She gives a sly smile on her face that says she knows exactly what she’s doing to me. And she loves every second of it.
“Tell me what you want. Tell me and I’ll do it.”
I know she’s just talking about sex, but I hear the words the way I want to—I hear her tell me she’s mine.
“Not here,” I grit out.
“Why not?” she breathes against my shoulder, grinding harder. Her breathing is ragged, and I know I could make her come if I shift my hips a little bit, move up against her. But that’s not happening.
“I’ll make you a deal, princess. Let me drive us back to my house and I promise I’ll make it up to you.”
She pulls back and I chafe at the space between us, not realizing until that moment how right it felt to hold her close. It’s like she belongs there, pasted up against me.
It’s only two miles.
I drive like hell.