Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Brynn shut the door to the apartment and let out a deep breath. “That could have gone worse, don’t you think?”
She was trying to gauge how Hallie felt about their relationship becoming public knowledge, especially to the two people they were closest to. But, they couldn’t be too upset. She and Hallie were the ones who hadn’t been able to keep their hands off of one another.
She was never going to be convinced to turn down the chance to touch Hallie. To be close to her.
This past week had already been torture, trying to take things slowly.
As far as Brynn was concerned, tonight had shown significant progress. If people knew about them, she could grab Hallie’s hand unthinkingly, like she’d become prone to doing. She wouldn’t have to worry about the little glances she was always stealing, wondering if someone was going to notice.
“Hallie?” she nudged, still leaning against the front door. Brynn needed to take off her coat and her boots, but it was hard to find the willpower, knowing that she’d be going to her bedroom alone.
Suddenly, Hallie spun around from where she’d been standing a few feet away, a look of fire in her eyes. Brynn was overwhelmed by the stare’s intensity; she felt it all the way to her core, in fact.
Hallie crossed the distance between them, and Brynn wondered if she was about to kiss her. God, she hoped that Hallie was about to kiss her. She’d spent all day today thinking about last night, wishing desperately that they hadn’t pressed pause on their makeout session.
Brynn was really regretting trying to lead a life of integrity right now.
She licked her lips in anticipation, which drew Hallie’s attention. She watched Hallie as Hallie looked at her lips. But when her eyes lifted to meet Brynn’s, she didn’t surge forward and close the small gap of space between their mouths.
“Will you go on a date with me?” she asked instead.
Brynn’s heart skipped a beat as the butterflies she’d been trying to tamp down for the last week exploded in her stomach. “Hallie Thatcher, I would absolutely love to go on a date with you,” she said, finally closing the space between them and placing a soft kiss on Hallie’s lips.
God, she’d been wanting to do that for hours. She wanted every kind of kiss with Hallie that two people could share.
And sure, a lot of Brynn’s thoughts were not very PG. Case in point, she’d even considered mounting Hallie in the back seat once they were alone in the car earlier, just to get a little bit of desire out of her system.
But right now, she’d take slow. She’d take soft. She’d take the way Hallie was lengthening her body against Brynn’s and make it last as long as she needed before the next time.
Thankfully, for Brynn, there always seemed to be a next time right on the horizon.
Hallie, who’d sighed into the kiss but hadn’t pushed things further, suddenly pulled back. “What did Jake want, by the way? Do I have competition?”
The sound that Brynn let out was a mix between a groan and a laugh.
As if anyone else could capture her attention the way Hallie had.
It was scientifically impossible. The closest that Jake would get was a comparison of all the ways that he was not Hallie and therefore fell short of the mark.
“He wanted to apologize for unmatching me. Apparently, he’d recently come out of a relationship, and after our date, he got cold feet about moving forward. ”
It was then that Brynn realized— “Were you jealous?” As she asked the question, a pleased warmth soaked through her body.
She knew that Hallie cared about her, and she knew that Hallie wanted her.
But there was something intoxicating about the idea that seeing Brynn with someone else had put Hallie on high alert.
Had pushed her out of her comfort zone, into the moment they were sharing now.
“I wasn’t jealous,” Hallie emphasized as her hands slipped into Brynn’s coat. Slowly, she ran her fingers up Brynn’s sides. It wasn’t nearly enough pressure through her sweater, but she would take whatever she could get.
Hallie’s hands trailed upward, painfully slowly, before they reached her shoulders. When she lifted those perfect hands, she took Brynn’s coat with them, letting it flutter to the floor.
And then Hallie was on her again, their bodies pressed together, Hallie’s thigh positioned between Brynn’s legs, which had already fallen open to nestle Hallie between them.
“I think it would be good for you to admit you’re jealous. He did ask me out, by the way,” Brynn teased as she wrapped her own arms around Hallie’s torso.
A look flashed across Hallie’s face, one that Brynn had never seen before. She could only catch it for a moment because then Hallie’s lips were on her. Everywhere. Bruising, incredible kisses. Against her neck. Her jaw. Her lips.
It was like Hallie wanted to consume her, and Brynn was loving every second of it. With Hallie, she wanted it all. “Admit it,” she panted out.
She wanted them both entrenched in the frenzied, needy wanting that seemed to overtake her whenever Hallie was close.
Hallie’s answer came in the form of her thigh pressing hard against Brynn’s center. They both moaned, and as Brynn’s lips parted, Hallie moved deftly from where she’d been peppering attention on Brynn’s neck to her mouth, sliding her tongue inside.
Sensation exploded in Brynn’s clit as Hallie continued kissing her like the world was about to end, all the while grinding her thigh against Brynn, who was growing more desperate by the second for her touch.
A real touch. One where Hallie’s fingers pushed inside and filled her.
Hallie’s tongue may be even better. The idea sent heat rolling through Brynn’s body.
“Hallie,” she panted, so turned on, with nowhere to put her energy.
She’d forgotten about wanting to goad Hallie.
All she could think about was chasing the feeling that was building low in her stomach.
And then suddenly, all she felt was… nothing. She blinked open her eyes. Hallie had taken a small step back so that they were no longer touching. A mischievous smile bloomed wild on Hallie’s face before she brought the moment full circle and planted her own soft kiss on Brynn’s lips.
Brynn obviously tried to chase it, to no avail.
“Uh-uh,” Hallie said breathily. “I think that our first date is in order before we go any further. Don’t you agree?”
Brynn let out a whine to express her unhappiness with Hallie pulling away. “You’re toying with me,” she said as realization dawned.
Not that Hallie would ever admit it. “I’m going to hop in the shower.
Let me know when you want to go on that date,” she reminded her, that sultry smile still doing all kinds of things to Brynn’s sanity.
As an added bonus, it made it abundantly clear that Hallie was loving the exchange that was playing out right now.
And if that was how Hallie wanted it, Brynn decided, then two could play that game. Because she was, without a doubt, committed to giving Hallie everything that she could. Whether it killed them both or not.
“Seems like we have some things to catch up on,” Reese said as she breezed into the coffee shop. She dropped her coat on the back of the chair and gave Brynn a knowing stare. “I’ll be back in five minutes. And then I want details.”
Reese’s text had come early this morning, asking if Brynn was free to grab a coffee. It wasn’t unexpected, given what she’d seen last night.
And, truly, Brynn loved that Reese wanted to know all about what was happening. She’d never had a girlfriend to gossip with and share stories. She’d thought briefly that Hallie was going to be one of those people for her.
She chuckled quietly. God, she’d been naive.
Coincidentally, she was sitting at the same table that she’d shared with Jake on their one and only date. It felt like a lifetime ago, even though it’d only been a little over a month since that day.
Even after seeing Jake last night, thinking about a time when she’d been wrapped up in anyone but Hallie felt weird. It was like all the energy in her body had oriented around Hallie in a way that was making it a little hard to think about anything or anyone who wasn’t her.
Maybe, if she really thought about it, she’d been wrapped up in Hallie a lot longer than a month.
Because it wasn’t normal friend behavior to want to spend all of her time with someone.
Or to want to know what they thought about every single thing in the world.
Or to get little zaps of awareness when they were close, wishing desperately as she did that she could bottle that feeling and save it for later.
Brynn had never truly experienced any of those things before. Then, Hallie had quietly come along and obliterated every preconceived notion Brynn had about life and love and connection.
And definitely about sex.
She couldn’t let herself think about last night again, or she’d probably start saying some very inappropriate things to Reese that she was pretty sure Reese didn’t want to know about her fiancée’s best friend.
Like the fact that, when Hallie touched her, Brynn could barely think.
And when Hallie looked at her, it was a little hard for Brynn to remember to breathe.
And when she’d made Brynn come, it had felt like Brynn’s entire body had been turning inside out, like some part of her was now fundamentally changed at the molecular level.
Which, obviously, she knew wasn’t a real possibility, but she also understood now why people said that love could make you do—and think—stupid things.
“You have a hickey,” Reese said as she sat down in her chair, pulling Brynn back to the present.
Brynn’s hand flew up to her neck, to exactly the spot she knew Reese had to be talking about. Even if she blushed, she was still going to own it. “Well, no sense in pretending we don’t know where I got it.”