Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Tate
Fuck me. Sophia’s body is a twelve out of ten. And the way she’s responding to my touch has me nearly coming in my underwear like some horny teenager.
Her eyelids flutter at my words and she closes them again, sucking in a big breath before blowing it out again.
“Tate…we can’t,” she whispers. “It’s…wrong.”
“No, it’s right, Soph. This is the first thing that feels right in my life in, well, forever,” I reply, my fingers still buried inside her wet heat.
“But what about Lacey?” she hisses. “This whole trip, everything, has been about getting you back with Lacey. She’s…your destiny.”
I shake my head. “We were wrong. I was wrong. She’s not the one. She’s not even close to being the one. She was right when she said we wanted too many different things. We aren’t compatible. And we’d just end up right back where we are if we try again, I know it,” I ramble as I attempt to find the right words.
“No, you’re wrong. She’s definitely the one . You two…you look perfect together,” Sophia says, her voice nearly drowned out by the continuing downpour of rain.
“No. We aren’t. We don’t even like the same music.” I pause as I think of all the songs I’ve carpool-karaoked with Sophia. “The only thing she and I ever agreed on is that we both like your book.”
Sophia raises an eyebrow that even in the dim light of the tent makes me feel like she can see through me in a way no one has ever done before.
“OK, we both like sushi and beaches, but that doesn’t make us compatible. It doesn’t make us…anything,” I argue.
“I’ve seen the videos. The red-carpet events. You were always watching her, and she’d look back at you…I know you two were in love once,” Sophia protests.
“It was an act on the red carpet…always. And yes, once I did think we were in love. But now, looking back, I’m not so sure. I think we were in love with the idea that we were in love,” I try to explain as I gently pull my fingers free of Sophia.
I can’t help myself as I bring them to my mouth and suck her creamy wetness off them. I groan at the taste of her, and she shudders beneath me.
“You have got to stop doing shit like that,” she grumbles as she squirms beneath me. I know she’s trying to get away, but her movement is doing the opposite because now I’ve gone from hard as wood to hard as a diamond.
“Fuck, Sophia. You taste so good. Please let me spend more time feasting on you. I need more, gorgeous, so much more,” I manage as I grip myself through my wet boxer briefs.
“Tate…” She closes her eyes, and when she opens them, the dim light reflects against unshed tears, stopping me from moving at all.
“What’s wrong?” I ask as I bring a hand up to caress her cheek.
“I can’t do that again,” she whimpers, her bottom lip trembling.
“Do what, baby?” I question as I search her glistening eyes.
“I know it seems all great between Mark and me now, but that took years. If I let myself completely fall for you…I don’t know if I can be OK again when you leave me. I don’t know if the kids would be OK,” she says as a single tear finally makes its way over the brim of her lower right eyelid.
I wipe it away with my thumb and kiss her cheek and then her other cheek. “I won’t leave you or them, Sophia. This would be for the long haul.”
“How?” she says softly as the rain slows outside. “We live in two different worlds.”
I give her a small smile. “I like your world better.”
The sad smile I get back nearly breaks my heart in two. “But it’s not yours. I can’t up and leave the kids and go to red-carpet events across the country. How would that even work? You’d be away for months at a time filming. The kids need routine.”
“We can figure all that out. We could make it work,” I say as we both sit up and I take her face in my hands, searching her eyes.
She laughs a bitter laugh and I feel it in my gut like a sucker punch. “Tate, come on. Let’s be realistic here. I mean…we have this…thing between us…but I think we both are just in a place where we need…physical comfort,” she manages as she looks at me.
I shake my head. “No, that’s not it. There’s something more between us. I feel it and I know you do too. I’ve felt it since that first night; since you opened the door,” I say, my voice sounding more desperate than I’d like it to sound.
“Everyone OK?” Jordan’s voice calls out from near the tent.
“L-let’s just sleep on it,” Sophia stammers as she searches for her wet clothes and pulls them back on before opening the tent and going outside.
I pull on my clothes and kneel inside the tent for a moment, trying to compose myself before going out there. I hear everyone assessing the camp and figuring out what we should do next. But it’s like background noise to my thoughts.
So much for Tate Anders being able to get any woman. I understand Sophia’s trepidation, I do. But I know she feels the same. I can feel it in the way her body responds to me, the way she looks at me when she thinks I don’t notice, and the way she smiles when we have our late-night chats. There’s more between us than she wants to admit, I just don’t know how to make her admit it.
“Wow! That was a crazy storm,” Penn says as I make my way out of the tent.
“Yeah, great night for camping,” Jordan mutters under his breath.
“Hey, it looked fine on the radar. I don’t know where that came from. You guys want to stay?” Penn asks. Jordan and Rex groan. Penn loves this outdoors shit, but it’s definitely not our thing. We all turn to Sophia as if her opinion is the most important.
She surveys the campsite. Two tents have been blown over despite Penn’s expert skills at setting them up and three tents remain.
It’s then that the night sky clears and the campsite is illuminated by the crescent moon. We all look up and Rex whistles as Jordan and Sophia both gasp at the beauty of the stars above us.
“Let’s stay,” Sophia says, not bothering to move her gaze from the Milky Way up in the sky.
“Yeah, maybe we just sleep under all these stars,” Jordan agrees, stepping toward her and wrapping his arm over her shoulder. She nods as she continues to look up at them.
“Fuck yeah! I knew you guys were cool like that. Nature’s own television,” Penn says.
Rex snorts. “As long as I don’t wake up to a raccoon accosting me, we’re all good.”
“I’d be more worried about the bugs,” I state as I slap at a mosquito on my arm.
That breaks Sophia’s gaze. “The what?”
“Mosquitos,” I reiterate.
“I’ll take a tent.” She pauses and then smirks. “That one,” she says as she looks over at the big tent we just came out of which has this skylight thing at the top of it with netting.
“Dibs on the car,” Rex says as he heads back over to Sophia’s SUV.
“I’ll take that tent,” Jordan states, pointing at the smaller version of the one Sophia claimed.
“You want to shack up, bro?” Penn asks as he motions to the last standing tent.
Sophia looks over at the one-person tent and winces. “I can sleep in the car with Rex. That’s a really small tent.”
“No, take it. I want to sleep under the stars,” I say as I grab a sleeping bag from the big tent that wasn’t rolled out yet.
“Are you sure?” she asks.
“Yep. When else can I do this?” I ask, motioning to the sky.
She shrugs and walks over to the car, grabbing her bag and bringing it to the tent. She tosses it inside and then looks around.
“Where was the campsite bathroom again?” she asks.
“Number one,” Penn points left. “Number two,” Penn points right and holds up a little shovel he got at the store.
Sophia blushes and goes left. A minute later she’s back. I want nothing more than to crawl back into that tent with her and show her exactly how serious I am about pursuing something between us, but she made it crystal clear she wants the night to think about things.
So, I roll out the sleeping bag on the wet ground as everyone gets into their tents. Rex already is settled in the car.
I hear Sophia sigh from behind me. “Just come in here. It’s all wet out there,” she says with a huff as she pulls open the flap of the tent.
“Are you…sure?” I ask.
She nods and I don’t waste a second crawling inside with her and laying the sleeping bag next to the one we were just inside not even thirty minutes ago. I glance over at her as she pulls out dry clothes. She eyes me and I watch her cheeks heat under the light from the single camping lantern we have.
Our gazes lock. I take off my shirt and drop it to the side. Her top teeth sink into her bottom lip, making me wish I could bite that lip. My chest rises and falls, waiting for her to make a move. She slowly takes off her top and shimmies out of her bottoms again. I take off my shorts and we’re left in our underwear.
She blushes and starts to turn away from me.
“Don’t,” I whisper. Her head slowly turns back, her eyes not leaving mine. I slowly look down at her body and back up at her face.
I don’t know if it’s how I’m looking at her that gives her a new sense of bravery, but she reaches behind her and unhooks her bra, letting it fall to the ground. I groan my appreciation at her breasts. She looks down at them and frowns.
“They were better…before kids,” she whispers.
“I don’t think they could get any better,” I murmur as I grab myself through my still-damp underwear.
“Your turn, Mr. Anders,” she says in a low voice.
I smirk and pull down my underwear. Her reaction is adorable. She peeks down and her eyes grow wide and then she looks away but then looks back, her mouth falling open.
“I don’t think we’re compatible…physically,” she teases.
“Oh, I think so, M,” I state as I sit back on my haunches and wait for her to remove the last article of clothing.
She bites her lip again and I palm my bare dick in my hand as she slowly peels her panties down her legs and toes them to the side. I knew I’d love her pussy, but I didn’t know I would want to throw myself across a tent to bury my face in it.
“Whoa,” she says holding up a hand as I start to launch myself at her. “I meant what I said, Anders. Sleep. We need to sleep and think.”
“You’re killing me, M. You’re so fucking perfect,” I moan.
She grins as she slides her naked body into the sleeping bag as if wanting to torture me. “Goodnight,” she whispers.
“If blue balls equal a good night, then I guess it is,” I mutter. She giggles.
“Sorry…it’s not that I don’t want that…I…we need to think,” she adds again.
“Yeah, you already mentioned something about that,” I say as I turn away from her because if I keep staring at her naked chest, I’m going to lose my battle of wills. Hell, I might just lose it from being this close to her without a single shred of clothing on either of us. I should seriously add this to any future spy film I do as the ultimate form of torture.