Chapter 9 Growth
NINE
GROWTH
I woke when a hand skated down my back and put pressure on.
I accepted its cue, uncurled and fit my soft body to Gabe’s hard one beside me in bed.
He gathered my hair off my shoulder and neck so he could bury his face there.
That felt nice.
His other hand swept down over my ass, then up, taking my short nightie with it (a new one: lavender with teeny blue and peach flowers printed on it and lace at the hem and bodice).
That felt nicer.
Once he had my nightie bunched at my ribs, skin to skin, his hand curved around my waist and his nose tweaked my earlobe.
And…damn.
That felt even nicer.
Swimming in all that was him, still groggy, it took a lot out of me to say, “I need to go brush my teeth.”
Like I’d given him the invitation, he dragged the edge of his teeth along a cord of my neck.
That felt so nice, I trembled.
“Make no mistake, baby, I want you,” he said into the hollow of my throat, and as if I didn’t feel it (when I totally did), he pushed in with his hand at my waist even as he pressed in with his hips, and I felt just how much he wanted me.
Le sigh.
“But that’s gonna happen when you’re in this with me,” he murmured. “Cognitively. Decisively. I’m not takin’ that from you until you know you’re ready to give it.”
Blearily, Dreamer sighed, I just love him so much.
Logic was either still asleep, or she had nothing to say.
Gabe trailed his mouth up my throat (dayum, that beard, I’d never had a man with a beard, and I was riding the fence about us being an us like a demented cowgirl, but I still hoped Gabe never shaved his).
He opened his mouth over my chin and took a sexy bite that sent a shiver down the insides of my thighs, before he came up even farther.
He rested his forehead against mine, his nose against mine, and whispered, “Cute as fuck how you sleep like a cat, but hate it hard, even unconscious, that you close yourself off like you’re protecting yourself from the world.”
You would think having an observant, insightful man in your sphere would be good.
But it could be inconvenient.
I closed my eyes and pressed my forehead tight against his.
He trailed his fingers lightly along the skin above the waistband of my panties.
And there it was.
He gave me way, way, way more nice.
I opened my eyes, fitted myself closer to his stiff cock and watched with unadulterated awe as the blue of his eyes grew heated and lazy at the same time.
“How far did I get in last night?” he asked quietly.
Not far enough! Dreamer complained.
Yawning, Logic asked, What am I missing?
“You made sense,” I said.
“Good.”
I took in a deep breath, held it, thought about it, and made a terrifying decision.
“I’m scared,” I admitted the obvious.
He smoothed a hand over my hip and bunched my hair in the other one.
“I know.”
“I’m damaged, Gabe,” I warned him.
“We all are, Willow,” he replied.
I pressed even closer, and that was not about getting more of his stiff dick. I also glided a hand up the hot, silken skin of his back.
Dang, that felt good.
I yanked my mind from that and back into the moment.
“Can you give me some of it?” I requested, even if I knew it was unfair, since he made it clear he was willing to give it all, but couldn’t, because I was holding back.
“Not about yesterday morning.” Gabe, being all that was Gabe, didn’t delay with his reply. “But I will tell you I’ve been in love twice. One didn’t work out because it couldn’t. And the other didn’t work out because she was a cunt.”
My head jerked back.
Ummmm…
“A cunt?” I asked.
His hold tightened on me, and he soothed, “I know you women don’t like that word, but—”
“How was she a cunt?” I demanded.
“How?” he asked, watching me not only close-up, but closely.
With a hefty tug, I pulled from his arms only to sit up and frown down at him.
“What did she do to you?” I asked.
“Babe—” he started to curl up.
I slapped a hand in his magnificent, furred chest and held him down.
“Talk, Gabriel Stark.”
He pressed his lips together, but his eyes danced, and he settled on his back.
The view was marvelous.
But the fact he found this amusing was ticking me off.
“Don’t you annoy me,” I snapped. “Give it up.”
That smirk returned, but he talked through it this time.
“She wasn’t happy when I had to work on my thesis and not kiss her ass.
She wasn’t happy when her friend got a DUI, and I didn’t ‘fix it,’ and the bitch was so over the limit, not only was she looking at jailtime, she’d committed felony property damage by jumping a curb and running into someone’s porch.
When my ex got wasted, she got belligerent and often got into fights with women, and men, then she’d say shit like, ‘My man is a cop and he’ll bust your ass,’ and pull me right into her shit.
And she was a bitch to servers. Like, always. ”
I saw red.
Thus, it was a near on shriek when I asked, “She was a bitch to servers?”
“She’s long gone, cupcake.”
“If she was all of that, how did you fall in love with her?”
“Well, she wasn’t all that all at once. It took me a while to piece it together. In the end, it was about the fact we were young, but I was the only one in our relationship who was getting any older.”
Ah.
That made sense.
He grinned. “And she gave great head.”
I rolled my eyes.
He surged up, caught me, twisted both of us, and I landed on my back with his delicious weight on top.
Nice move, Dreamer drawled.
I feel my control slipping every second, Logic groused.
As it always does, Dreamer returned. You never stay long. We’re too strong for that, Pessimism. You have your times when we need you, but when it’s time for you to go, we always win.
I went completely still.
“Willow?” Gabe called.
Hold up.
That wasn’t my Logic.
It was my Pessimism.
Holy shit.
Gabe cupped my cheek and ran a calloused thumb over my lips.
“Baby,” he said uneasily.
I focused on him. “It’s Pessimism.”
“Say again?”
“Not Logic,” I went on.
“Sorry, cupcake, you aren’t making any sense.”
“I…I need to think on this.”
“On what?”
God, was I going to give this to him?
Guess I was.
“I just realized I’ve mistaken pessimism for logic. I thought I was being smart. Protective. But I was being cynical.”
“And protective,” he added.
“Sorry?”
“Maybe you veered into the cynicism arena, but mostly it wasn’t pessimism. It was an overabundance of caution.”
Well then.
That sounded better.
I decided to go with that.
I smiled at him.
His eyes dropped to my smile, and he murmured, “There it is. Growth.”
Seriously?
How was that the nicest thing a guy ever said to me?
I was about to share that I was cognitively, decisively inching closer to very ready to share some very private things with him, and we might want to try out some of the preliminaries to see how they fit, when my phone buzzed with a call.
We both twisted our heads to my nightstand.
My cell had a picture of Tex behind the barista counter in the coffee cubby. He was smiling like the scary, lovable lunatic he was.
And over the picture it said, Tex Calling.
“Shit, Tex never calls me,” I muttered.
Gabe reached for my phone and gave it to me.
I took the call.
“Hey, Tex. Is everything all right?”
“Have you and Stark…” There was an alarming gurgle like he was literally vomiting, and then he finished, “Sealed the deal yet?”
“Oh my God, Tex!” I snapped. “No! And stay out of my sex life.”
“Fuck, I’m out. Lucia’s out. And Luke’s out,” he mumbled. “And I don’t feel warm fuzzies about telling Luke Stark he lost that kinda bread.”
With that he hung up on me.
Yeesh.
How much was a buy-in on that bet, anyway?
“The pool?” Gabe asked.
“The pool,” I grumbled.
Gabe chuckled.
Feeling it as well as seeing it and hearing it, I wondered if it, along with his smiles and grins, were so hard to come by because of whatever was behind what happened yesterday morning.
I’d barely come to terms with the fact my Pessimism/Cynicism/Caution was seriously messing with my Will the Real Willow Knightley Please Stand Up Mojo, I was in no place to tell Gabe I was there with him yet so I could find out if it was true.
I had to think on this.
I had to see if I’d booted one of my personalities.
I might have to talk to Shanti or the whole girl gang about this.
And this delay in learning what big bad Gabe might be harboring so I might be in the position to help him deal with it (or at least stop those nightmares) made me cranky.
Though, I couldn’t deny it felt good he gave it up so easily about that other chick.
And it felt better knowing she was history.
“Now what’s in your head?” Gabe murmured.
“A lot, too much,” I confessed. “But at this very moment it’s the fact I just noticed Mr. Happy is gone, and I miss him.”
For a second, he looked stunned, even startled, so much, his entire body twitched with it.
And then he busted out laughing.
Full on. Full throated. Deep. Rich. Uninhibited.
Spectacular.
I’d known him now for some time, and I’d never seen him laugh like that.
I watched, and it was now me who was shocked, even startled, and feeling a whole lot more.
And we could just say that whole lot was a whole lot, and it was all good.
I’d rounded him with both arms but was only stroking his spine with the fingers on one hand (though, I was considering engaging the other one) by the time he was done.
“Keep doin’ that, cupcake, he’ll come back,” he teased.
Teased!
You know, no one ever thinks the dreamers know what they’re talking about, Dreamer mused astutely in my head. But then they dare to dream, and they find out we were right all along.
Nobody likes a know-it-all, I retorted.
Whatever, was Dreamer’s lame comeback.
“You wanna cook something here?” I said out loud to Gabe. “Go out and get brunch? Or hit a donut place and come back?”
His expression shifted to something so beautiful, it was difficult to witness.
But no way in hell did I turn away.
Nope, I memorized that look in a way I knew I’d never forget it.
You so totally belong to him, sister, Dreamer said.
Don’t make me bring Pessimism back, I warned.
Dreamer shut her trap.
Through my conversation with one of my personalities, Gabe said, “Brunch,” just as there was a harried knock on my front door.
No, not a knock, exactly. More like someone was slapping it quickly and constantly.
And whoever was doing it was going to get the sharp edge of my tongue, because Gabe’s head swiveled in that direction and that beloved look on his face disappeared.
He then angled out of bed, ordering, “Stay here.”
He went to his jeans.
I pushed up in bed.
He put on his jeans, and still buttoning them, shirtless, he stalked down the hall.
I got out of bed and walked to the doorway to watch him move (and, obviously, find out who was at the door).
For your information, it was an awesome show.
He looked out the peephole, opened the door, and Shanti nearly fell through it.
I instantly knew something was up, and it was huge, so I raced down the hall and caught her with both hands.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod,” she chanted, practically skipping in place.
That was so not Shanti, I didn’t know whether to preemptively get excited with her or check her temperature.
“What?”
“Luna didn’t want to disturb you guys because she has this morning in the pool and she didn’t want you interrupted,” she said without saying what she should be saying.
So I screeched, “What?”
“I guess Cap got inspired after the OSRA meeting yesterday, because he proposed to Raye last night, and she said yes.”
I stood perfectly still but I felt pleasure waves coming off Gabe and colliding with us.
God, feeling his reaction to his friends’ happiness, seriously, I had to let go of the final clutch I had on my misguided self-preservation and admit it.
He really was a super good guy.
“They surfaced from the love fest just long enough for Raye to call Luna this morning and tell her,” Shanti explained.
“And she said Luna could tell us, but no one is allowed to tell Shirleen yet. She knew it was going to happen, because she helped Cap pick the ring, but she doesn’t know it happened. ”
“This is…ohmigod,”—I started jumping, and since Shanti was still attached to me, she jumped with me—“this is so awesome!”
“I know!”
“I’m gonna make them the best cake.”
“I know!”
“I love this!”
“I do too!”
I tipped my head back, both of us still jumping, and screamed, “It rawks!”
Shanti did the same and screamed, “Cap and Raye forever!”
We bounced some more, grinning like fools at each other.
Then Shanti’s attention wandered, and she stopped dead.
She detached from me, reeled back, her hand fluttering to her throat, and gasped, “Lawd.”
I looked to what she was looking at and saw Gabe standing there, half of his mouth hitched up, his entire torso on show, his jeans slung low with the top two buttons still undone and those hip muscle indents on proud display, and I understood her reaction.
He came to me, slung an arm around my shoulders, curled me into his side and said, “Good news.”
I looked up at him. “The best.”
He took in my face, his eyes roaming over it leisurely, and he didn’t hide his happy, or the fact he wasn’t just happy about Cap and Raye (super good guy), before he turned to Shanti. “We’re goin’ to brunch. Wanna come?”
“Abso-fuckin’-lutely,” she replied.
Having reclaimed the true Shanti, she strutted to the open door, stopped, turned and aimed her eyes at me.
“Glad to have you back, sis,” she said.
Shot to the heart, and it felt amazing.
“Glad to be back, honey,” I replied.
Her attention shifted to Gabe. “Forty-five?”
Gabe looked down at me.
Yeesh.
There it was again.
This was a man who knew the woman was the one who needed the time to get ready, so it was her who should dictate the amount of time that would take.
I didn’t climb him like a tree because I loved learning he got this (more’s the pity).
I turned to Shanti and answered, “Sounds good.”
“We’ll meet at the man-mobile,” Shanti said as she walked out the door.
“You mean the Wrangler?” I asked.
“What else would I mean?” she answered. And to Gabe she said, “Obviously, you’re driving, because we’re gonna get our mimosas without juice on. It’s a celebration. For several reasons.”
With that, she winked at me.
Then she closed the door, and she was gone.