Chapter 8 Riley #2
He smiled. Not the boyish grin from earlier, but a slower curve, satisfied and certain. “Good. I wanted you to notice.”
“Hard not to.”
“Then it’s working.”
I rolled my eyes, but I was smiling too. I didn’t know what to think about all of this, but right now he was very gentle, and I felt good around him. “You’re very confident.”
“I’m very motivated.” He leaned forward, elbows on my tiny table, close enough that I could see the gold flecks in his gray eyes. “There’s a difference.”
“What motivates you, then?”
“Right now?” His gaze dropped to my mouth for just a second before returning to my eyes. “You.”
I felt my cheeks heat. “That’s... direct.”
“I told you. Deliberate. No point dancing around it.”
Good gods, please help me.
By the time he left, the pastry box was empty and my face hurt from smiling. My cheeks were sore, my stomach was full, and my heart was backflips I wasn’t ready to examine.
At the door, Caelan turned back. “Thank you,” he said. “For this morning.”
“You brought the food.”
“You let me in.” His voice was soft. “That means more.”
He turned around and left, and I felt as if he’d taken something of mine with him. I closed the door, leaned against it, and sighed like a lovesick teenager in a romcom.
“What the hell is happening to me?” I asked at the empty apartment.
Gerald the ceiling stain offered no answers.
***
I spent the rest of the day in a haze.
I tried to write. I opened my laptop, stared at the blinking cursor, typed three words and deleted them.
My brain wouldn’t cooperate. Every time I tried to focus on my fictional hero, I saw Caelan’s face instead.
His smile when I said I loved the book, the warmth in his voice when he said “you let me in.”
I tried to write a paragraph about my hero’s mysterious past and realized I’d described Caelan’s eyes. I wrote a scene where the hero brought the heroine breakfast and it was basically just transcribing my morning. I wrote dialogue and it sounded exactly like him.
I deleted everything and closed the laptop.
I gave up on writing around six and made dinner. If “dinner” could be applied to cereal eaten over the sink while staring out the window at nothing.
What was I doing? I barely knew this man.
But Caelan didn’t feel dangerous. He felt safe, which was terrifying, because Damien had felt safe too, at first. I should be more careful, keep my walls up.
But when Caelan looked at me, I forgot all of that.
Forgot to be guarded, forgot to be afraid. I just wanted to be closer.
I showered, the hot water running over my skin until it turned lukewarm, then changed into my old cotton pajamas that hung loose on my frame.
I crawled into bed at nine, feeling like a grandma ready to call it a night.
Exhaustion hit me from all the overthinking and the emotions churning inside, but sleep wouldn’t come.
No matter how hard I tried to force my eyes shut, I stayed wide awake, staring at the shadows on the ceiling.
And I was definitely, absolutely, one hundred percent not thinking about the way a certain man’s hands felt on my back.
The way his fingers pressed into my skin, sliding down along my spine, feeling every bump and curve like he was mapping it out.
Heat started building in my body, skin getting tight and sensitive, thighs pressing together without me meaning to.
Nope. Not going there.
I rolled over onto my side, punched the pillow to fluff it up, squeezed my eyes closed.
His face appeared immediately behind my eyelids. Those gray eyes narrowing, turning darker with hunger, water droplets on his chest, the tattoos that snaked across his pecs and arms, lines thick and black against his skin.
“Fuck,” I whispered to the empty room. The warmth in my gut grew heavier, spreading down to settle between my legs, making everything throb a little.
This was a real issue. I was supposed to be his friend, nothing more. I’d said yes to just hanging out, keeping it platonic. So why did I crave everything else?
Friends didn’t stay up late running through every brush of skin, every look that lingered too long, every time our legs touched under the water, sending sparks up my calf.
Friends sure as hell didn’t do what I was starting to do.
My hand moved down over my stomach before I could stop it, slipping under the elastic of my pajama pants and into my underwear. Fingers brushed against the soft hair there, then lower.
This was wrong. He was my odd, intense friend who happened to look too damn good, staring at me like I was the sun and moon and stars combined. No matter how he’d admitted he was flirting with me, I wasn’t supposed to fall for his charms.
But my body didn’t care about any of that.
I pictured his hands again. Those big, capable hands that cradled a wine glass like it was precious, that spread sunscreen from my shoulders down to the dip of my waist, thumbs pressing in just enough to make me shift.
My fingers reached my pussy then, parting the folds, and I swore under my breath at how slick everything already was. Wetness coated my fingertips as I slid them along the slit, the heat coming off my skin making my hand feel sticky.
In my head, those hands of his moved up my thighs, rough calluses scraping lightly against the inside, then gripping hard at the tops before pulling my legs apart.
Wide open, knees bent and feet flat on the bed, exposing my pussy to him.
I saw him there, a dark shape kneeling between my spread thighs, his breath warm against the sensitive skin.
Gods. I thought about his mouth, how he’d kiss me, deep and unhurried, tongue pushing in to taste every bit.
Then trailing lower, lips brushing over my collarbone, down to my breasts, sucking on the nipples until they hardened and ached.
How he’d kiss across my stomach, nipping at the skin, before he reached my mound.
He’d press his mouth there first, nose nudging against the hair, inhaling the scent of my arousal.
Then his tongue would flatten against my outer lips, licking up the wetness that leaked out, salty and sharp on his taste buds. Fuck.
My own fingers mimicked it, middle one dipping into my entrance, feeling my walls clench around it.
It’s been so fucking long since I’d masturbated, my pussy had imaginary cobwebs by now.
I pushed in deeper, knuckle by knuckle, the stretch making me gasp as I curled it upward to rub that spot inside.
The other hand stayed outside, thumb circling my clit, swollen and slick, sending jolts through my hips with each pass.
I imagined him pulling back just enough to look at me, gray eyes locked on where his mouth worked, before diving in again, lips wrapping around my clit, sucking hard enough to pull a whine from my throat, teeth grazing the edge lightly.
His tongue flicked fast, then slow laps that covered every inch, lapping up more of the juices that dripped down toward my ass.
My fingers sped up, two inside now, thrusting in and out with wet sounds that filled the room, the squelch loud in the silence.
My back lifted off the mattress, sheets twisting under me as my heels dug into the bed.
I bit down on my lower lip, tasting the faint metallic tang of blood where my teeth sank in too deep, but a low moan slipped out anyway, rough and needy.
Shit. The orgasm crashed over me in pulses, starting deep in my core and radiating out, muscles tightening around my fingers as wetness gushed, soaking my hand and the fabric beneath my ass.
My toes curled hard into the sheets, pulling them taut, while my other hand gripped the blanket.
My hips bucked up, grinding against my palm, chasing every last twitch.
“Caelan,” I gasped, the name tearing from my lips as the waves kept coming. “Oh god, Caelan...”
Then I lay there, breathing hard, staring at the ceiling and feeling guilty as hell.
This was not friend behavior. This was the kind of thing that would make everything weird if he ever found out.
But then again... he didn’t always act like just a friend, did he?
Shit. I was going insane. I didn’t know what to think, didn’t know what I wanted. No. That was a lie. I knew exactly what I wanted.
I wanted him in my bed and my life. I wanted to stop being afraid, comparing him to Damien. I wanted to trust that not every man who made me feel seen would eventually make me feel small.
I wanted to take a chance, even if it was stupid. And that was the most terrifying thought of all.