Chapter 10 Brick #2
Her fingers curl at the towel’s edge like she forgot what she’s holding. I’m not sure she even knew she was touching me there, but the moment she made contact, I memorized her heat. I keep a hand on the safe topography of her waist and another near the small of her back.
We take another breath together, and the second kiss is more certain, more yes. It coaxes rather than conquers, and there’s nothing in it that would make a woman later wonder who she was in that moment. She knows. I know. Her mouth opens a little, and I meet her there, not to claim, just to learn.
A low sound I don’t recognize at first as mine makes my throat hum. She answers it with a small press of her body, and the towel suddenly feels like the worst invention of mankind. It’s rough on skin that likes soft things, but my balls ache all the same.
She pulls back a fraction, enough to look at me.
The room is a different size now. I’m hard, and there’s nothing I can do to hide that.
The hum of the AC is a lullaby. The world outside remembers its business without us.
Inside, it’s two people and a line that has been sketched for days deciding whether it wants to be ink. I don’t know if she’ll cross it.
“Brick,” she says, and my name in that voice is a place I didn’t know I needed to arrive. “I should…” She swallows, eyes searching mine like they might hold a rule book I forgot to hand her. “I should not be here.”
“You came to say congratulations,” I offer, not to argue, just to let her step down if she needs the stairs. “You did. You can go.”
“I don’t want to,” she says, which is the most honest thing in the room, and I feel it like a second pulse.
“So stay.”
She closes her eyes like the words were heavier than she expected and sets her forehead against my sternum the way you do when you need the world to stop moving for three seconds.
I hold still. If I had both hands free, I’d put one on the back of her neck and the other on the part of the small of her back that makes most women breathe deeper.
I keep my hands where they are and let her hear a heartbeat that has nothing clever to say.
She leans back. The curl by her cheek has committed a full mutiny now.
I reach up and tuck it behind her ear with the back of my knuckles because I want to.
Her skin there is impossibly soft. Warm silk.
She shivers—a quick, electric little ripple that makes every good instinct in me sit up and wag like a dog that thinks it just heard the truck door.
We kiss again. Slower. Warmer. The kind of kiss that could build a house if you gave it a foundation and time.
Her palms flatten on my ribs. My mouth learns hers.
She steps forward, and we meet in the exact center of the invitation.
Her tongue slides against mine, and I’m not sure I have thoughts anymore.
When we break for breath, she keeps her hands on me like she hasn’t decided whether to keep or return this temporary possession.
Her eyes are bright and wrecked in the prettiest way.
The line between her brows has smoothed a little.
I want to tell her she looks more like herself with her guard down than I think she suspects, but I don’t say anything.
I kiss the corner of her mouth instead, and she makes that quiet sound again that means I hit something true.
Then it happens—the tilt, the blink, the reappearance of gravity with its clipboard. She inhales sharply and steps back half a step, enough that cool air slides between us, and I know this is over, but I don’t want to believe it.
“I can’t,” she says, and she’s apologizing to someone who isn’t me. “Brick, I—” She shakes her head once, a firm little shake that brings her back to whatever list she keeps. “I’m Reno’s ex.”
“I know.”
She blinks at me. “You knew? This whole time?”
“Not at first, but I put two and two together.” I shrug. “People break up, Annie. When it’s over, it’s over. And it’s over between you two, right?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“Then I don’t see what the problem is.”
“It’s…it’s wrong.” The word sounds too blunt in her mouth. She’s a finer tool than that. But it’s the one she has handy. “It’s wrong, and it’s messy, and I don’t want to be the person who screws up a family.”
“My family is fine. We all have our own lives. We’re all adults. Hell, Blaze dated Levi’s ex-girlfriend last year. No one cared.”
“I…” Her breasts heave against her shirt as her eyes dart between me and the door.
I want to help her catch her breath, so I can help her lose it again. “I don’t care about what could happen,” I say, not to erase her, but because my math is different and I want her to know. “I care about what we have right now.”
She squeezes her eyes shut at that, like she’s tasted something too sweet. “You can’t say things like that.”
“I can.” I lean in and press my mouth to hers again, quick and sure, a kiss that says the door is open whether you walk through it or not.
She pushes my chest with both palms, and it rocks me back a half step. The towel survives the nudge with dignity. She looks wrecked again, for a different reason. “I have to go,” she says, breath a little wild. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. You gotta do what you can live with.” I’m trying to sound like an adult about this, but damn if it doesn’t sting.
She backs toward the door, fumbles the latch, and gets it on the second try. She looks at me once more with a face I’ll carry under my hat for a stupid long time, then she slips out and pulls the door shut with a soft click.