Chapter 33 #2
“About how you look,” I trail my free hand down his side.
Why does he have to have his shirt tucked in?
Doesn’t he know how badly I want to slip my hand up under the fabric and feel his skin right now?
“How I couldn’t get enough of staring at you.
And how you felt when I finally hugged you again.
Those damn shirts you wear when you’re not at work—the short ones that show just a little skin when you move? Fuck, Charlie.”
His cheeks blaze bright, but from the way his pupils dilate, swallowing up the bright green of his eyes, I know he’s not embarrassed by what I’ve just said.
“I still wasn’t connecting the dots though.
It was like my mind was screaming for me to understand that I wanted you, but there was this…
” I huff out a frustrated breath, trying to find the right words.
“This pane of glass holding me back. I could see what was on the other side, but it was so new to me, I couldn’t understand it because I couldn’t get to it. Does that make any kind of sense?”
He pauses a moment, considering. Not just blowing me off and agreeing because it’s easy.
“Yeah,” he nods slowly. “I think I see what you’re saying.”
“I’ve only felt physically attracted to two other people before you,” I tell him, hating that I have to talk about other people right now.
He has to know to understand though. “And I’ve never felt any romantic attraction at all for anyone but you.
Since I didn’t realize what I felt for you, I thought I was just straight up aromantic.
“The two people I was physically attracted to before you were both women, and so I’d just sort of assumed I was demi-straight.
It wasn’t that you being a man made me resist realizing I wanted you or any bullshit like that, but I think it made it harder for me to see it because I’d made these assumptions about myself.
Kind of like I’d made the assumption that I couldn’t be feeling anything more than friendship for you because, before, I hadn’t felt physically attracted to you.
“It was the day we took that hike that it all hit me.”
A knowing smirk springs to his face.
“You knew?”
“I didn’t know,” he’s still smirking. “But you were kind of obvious. If you hadn’t spent a decade and a half throwing me totally opposite signals—”
I put on a wounded face, and he ducks closer, planting another kiss on my cheek. This time, his lips linger a little longer.
“As I was saying,” he grins at me as he pulls back. “If it hadn’t been for all those other signals you’d been giving me, I’d totally have known. You are not a subtle man.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“Nope.” His grin widens as he shakes his head. “You spent enough time confused and confusing me that there’s no time for subtle.”
An assessment I wholeheartedly agree with.
“So what changed that day?”
Heat rises to my face. I’m not necessarily embarrassed. It’s just that I’ve never admitted anything like this to anyone before. Hell, I’ve never had to because there’s never been anything like this with anyone else. “I’d had this dream. The night before.”
The way Charlie’s eyebrows lift tells me he knows exactly what sort of a dream it was.
Not that it can be difficult for him to guess, given that my dick’s pressed up against his thigh.
There’s no way he didn’t feel how it just leapt and throbbed, going from mostly erect to hard as a steel rod at just the memory of that dream.
“It was about you,” I whisper, and he lets out this punched out breath that’s almost a moan. “It was the fucking hottest dream, Charlie.”
His hand that’s still in my hair tenses up at the same moment as he shifts in my lap. When I look down, I can see the needy twitch of the visible hard-on tenting his pants.
I grin as I raise my eyes back to meet his. “I thought we were supposed to be talking?”
“Hypocrite.” He has the nerve to give his ass a little wiggle.
Brushes it right up against my dick. “And we are talking,” he rolls his eyes at me with an exasperated sigh, going still again, goddammit.
“We need to. But you really think you can tell me things like that and not expect this,” he lets go of my hair and gestures at his dick with a flourish, “to happen? Besides,” he shifts in my lap again, this time giving his ass a very purposeful and very unfair roll against my cock as he narrows his eyes in an adorable attempt at a glare as his voice goes serious, “you totally don’t get to claim any innocence here, Myles Marlow. ”
“I love it when you say my name like that.” I’ve leaned in to whisper the words right against his ear, and when my lips brush over his skin, he shivers.
Next moment though, he’s smacking my shoulder, just like he did in my truck that day on our way to the hike that changed everything. “You’re not even trying to behave, are you?”
“Says the man that just pressed his ridiculously amazing ass against my dick,” I counter, and he lets out a quiet moan.
“Do you know how hard it’s going to be to get used to you saying things like that to me?”
“Don’t,” I give in to the inevitable and drop another kiss to his neck, just below his ear this time. “Don’t ever get used to it.”
“And now you’re saying I shouldn’t get used to you complimenting me? Mean.” He shoots me such a fake scandalized look that I can’t help laughing out loud.
“I’m telling you,” I give his waist a tug to bring his body more snugly against mine as I lift and shift my hips beneath him. “That I never want you to stop making that sound when I do.”
Around the black of his blown pupils, there’s a sparkling ring of the brightest green. His cheeks are flushed under his freckles, and the waves of his golden-brown hair are all out of place, falling down around his face. So damn pretty—
We need to talk. There’s so much more we need to sort out, like what the hell we’re doing when we both know whatever happens between us has an expiration date since neither of us is staying in Riverside past the summer.
It’s like my brain’s just been switched off though and all I can focus on is how, for the first time in my life, my emotions and my body want the same thing, and now I just can’t tune out my need for more of him.
“So you know how you told me you spent the whole drive worrying?”
He blinks at me, obviously confused by my sudden change of subject, which, once he figures out what I’m saying, he’ll see isn’t a change of subject at all.
“I wish you hadn’t. For so many reasons, Charlie. But want to know one of them? If you hadn’t been worrying, you could have spent the whole drive thinking about the same things I was thinking about.”
“What were those?” His hand that’s not holding mine drifts up over my chest, exploring my pecs through my shirt. God, I never want him to stop touching me… How did I not always know I wanted this?