Chapter 21
Tess
Going to bed with someone you tried (and failed) to kiss the night before is about as awkward as you might think.
I watch with growing nerves as Hunter makes two—yes, two, and my brain can’t decide how to feel about that—makeshift beds on the bearskin rug (a bearskin rug, for goodness’ sake).
My thoughts race like it’s Christmas Eve, except Santa is hot, and I really want to kiss him but can’t figure out if he wants to kiss me back.
Also, in this horny waking nightmare, Santa is practically six and a half feet tall, with shoulders that stretch his black T-shirt to mind-boggling proportions, and he wears flannel pajama pants (has flannel just become a sexual trigger for me?) and no socks, so my brain has to deal with the oddity of trying to figure out why a man’s bare feet are suddenly attractive.
“Do you need help getting down here?”
I blink back at him from the couch, still thinking about the way his arms flex when he pops a quilt to straighten it out. “What?”
“The floor,” he clarifies. “Do you need me to help you get into bed?”
Logically, I know that what my brain is doing to that sentence is not at all what he intended when he asked the question.
My ankle actually feels much better than it did, and if I’m being honest, I can probably get into the little pallet he’s made me on my own with very little trouble if I want to.
In fact, part of me is appalled by how much he’s had to coddle me already, but that part of me is effectively silenced by the part that wants him to touch me again.
“If you don’t mind,” I answer sheepishly.
He’s right in front of me, his body looming over mine as he takes my hand to help pull me from the couch, and sure, maybe I lean into him a little more than I need to—but who can blame me, really?
Hunter is careful with me, letting me cling to his arm as I gingerly cross the floor to the bed of quilts he’s laid out for us side by side, never letting go as I lower myself to the floor.
“Easy,” he murmurs. “Don’t hurt yourself again.”
I roll my eyes, my grip moving from his forearm to his hand, which curls around mine as I adjust myself to sit with my (sort of) injured ankle slightly suspended. “I think you’re enjoying that joke.”
“Me?” His lips curl a little at the corners as he tries for an innocent look. “Just concerned for your well-being. You only have so many ankles.”
He keeps hold of my hand as I lower my leg to the blankets, settling in as he steps to the side a bit to make room for me. “Yeah, sure,” I scoff. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you—”
Okay, I’ll be honest. I’ve always thought serendipity was bullshit.
I mean, divine luck coming together to create happy accidents that seem to right all the wrongs in the world?
It always sounded like a hokum informercial to me.
But what happens at this exact moment, what causes me to stop short midsentence and lose my train of thought in a matter of seconds…
Well. I might be tempted to rethink my stance.
It happens so fast I don’t even realize it is happening at first. It’s not like any of my recent mishaps; things don’t move in slow motion or feel like they drag on forever.
No, when Hunter’s foot slips on the edge of one of the quilts, when he loses his balance and tumbles forward, that seems to happen so quickly.
He’s upright and standing and perfectly stable one second and simply…
there the next. And by there, I mean right over me.
I mean his hands are braced on either side of my head to keep himself from completely smothering me.
I mean his frame is so close to mine that I can feel every inch of his body heat radiating over me.
I had a lot of thoughts in my head a second ago, but right now I sort of can’t remember how to even form them.
“Now who’s clumsy?” I breathe, feeling dazed.
He’s so close that I can see every little movement of his Adam’s apple when he swallows.
“Maybe…you’re rubbing off on me,” he answers, his voice much rougher than it was a second ago.
He’s looking at me like that again. It’s the same look from the bar, the same one he gave me after I told him the good news about Nate—the one that looks like he’s holding himself back when I don’t want him to. A look like that is enough to make a girl brave.
“I still believe you want to kiss me,” I whisper.
He laughs, I think, but it’s more of a rasp, really. Like it’s choked.
“Only a very, very stupid man wouldn’t want to kiss you, Tess.”
My throat feels like sandpaper, but somehow my tongue is very wet. Heavy, even. Maybe it’s swollen. Maybe that’s why Hunter’s eyes look so transfixed on it when it slips past my teeth to wet my bottom lip. I try swallowing, but it feels useless. Maybe it’s because I’m breathing so hard.
“But you won’t.”
“For a few reasons,” he murmurs.
I wonder if it’s difficult for him to keep himself suspended like he is. He’s so close, and yet somehow there’s still that tiny fraction of space between us, just enough so that he isn’t touching me. I mean, surely his arms must be hurting, right?
If I only slightly move my hand, my fingers can graze the cotton of his T-shirt. “A few?”
“I told you about Chloe.” He makes a strained sound in his throat when the tip of my finger finds the space between the cotton and his bare skin. “That’s a big part of it.”
“But not all of it,” I press, curling my finger around a bit of his T-shirt.
“You also barely know me,” he breathes. “I don’t want you to do anything you might regret. You’ve already had a ton of things out of your control lately.”
“I wouldn’t,” I assure him, an urgency building as I notice he isn’t even looking me in the eye now but at my mouth. Only my mouth. “Regret it.”
“I can smell you, Tess,” he rasps. “Your scent…You smell like…”
His knee is between my legs. I can feel the heat of it against both my thighs. I think his thumb just touched my hair.
I nod dazedly, feeling my head start to swim but not so much that I don’t know that I want whatever he’s willing to give me right now, regardless of what’s happening to my body. Realizing that I want it for me, not simply for the demands of my newfound designation.
“Also,” he says distractedly, as if he’s having a hard time figuring out his thoughts too. “You’d been drinking.”
That one throws me off a little. “So?”
And maybe he’s figured out how to make thoughts before I have—in fact, I highly suspect he has—because he isn’t looking at my mouth anymore.
Maybe it’s because it’s too hard to look, since his face is so close to mine now.
The deep brown of his eyes seems dark and bright all at once, so much so that I can’t look away as they bore into mine.
“If I ever kissed you…I’d want you to damn well remember it tomorrow.”
All the air just…leaves my lungs. That can’t be normal, right? Regardless, I might not be breathing. Speaking still seems to be possible, but only barely.
“I haven’t…had anything to drink today.”
“Tess,” he growls. “Is it happening again?”
“Maybe,” I admit, feeling that familiar surge of heat pooling in my belly that is somehow worse than before. “It feels different.”
“You smell different,” he tells me. “You smell like…like…”
“What do I smell like?”
“Like you need me,” he says, echoing the same shiver-inducing sentiment from weeks ago. “Do you?”
“No,” I say, mustering my courage even as the heat builds and builds inside me. “I want you, Hunter.”
He looks hesitant for a moment, his gaze moving to my mouth as he studies it for a long span of seconds like he’s considering, and I watch with bated breath.
I watch his jaw tic as his tongue darts out to wet his lips, and then his eyes collide with mine, an intense heat in them that looks exactly how I feel.
“Fuck it,” he practically growls.
And just like that, the tiny bit of space between us is nonexistent.
I’ve been wondering all day if Hunter Barrett wanted to kiss me. I’ve been playing a torturous game of Does He or Doesn’t He in my head often enough since last night to drive myself crazy. But there isn’t any doubt now. Now it’s very obvious that he does.
I mean, it’s sort of hard to doubt when he’s whispering against my mouth, urging me to open it.
I gasp as his tongue slips inside, licks mine with a desperation that is only outmatched by the way his hand wraps around my hip. His scruff tickles the place above my mouth, enough so that I giggle a little when he turns his face to deepen the kiss.
“Is something”—the words are sort of muffled when he speaks them to the corner of my mouth, and he licks gently, pressing his lips there after—“funny?”
“Your beard,” I laugh. “It tickles.”
“Does it?” My breath catches when he rubs his cheek against mine, his mouth ducking below my chin to lick there, to chase after his tongue with a kiss. “Does this tickle too?”
“Hunter,” I sigh.
His hand is touching my skin now, tucked under my sweater as he traces idle circles with one of his fingers. His mouth, however, is still wandering, still tasting.
“I like your freckles,” he murmurs along my jaw. “I keep thinking about everywhere else you have them.”
I smile as he kisses my cheek. “All over.”
“I know.” I can feel his hand moving to glide over my bare stomach, his thumb brushing my belly button as my skin trembles. “I like it.”
His mouth trails down my throat until he stops to suck at a spot near my collarbone—which I didn’t even know could make my stomach flip until this very second—while both hands pushing at the fabric of my sweater as it moves up and over my belly until the warmth of the fireplace glowing nearby licks at my exposed skin.
I make an embarrassing sound when I feel his thumbs sliding back and forth across the sensitive swell of my breasts (my God, his thumbs are so large they barely even have to move to span the underside), his breath releasing raggedly at the base of my throat as he lingers there for a moment.