Chapter 7 #4
Dallas went still, that thing he hated, but his pulse jumped beneath her fingertips. “You must be bored out of your mind here,” she whispered, because if she said anything else, she would embarrass them both.
His thumb shifted enough to brush the side of hers.
“In Promise?” he asked, his mouth curving, but the smile didn’t quite protect him this time.
She saw straight through the charm. “With you breaking apart in my arms, like you didn’t know I was ten seconds away from it myself, something that hasn’t happened since I was thirteen.
” His gaze dropped to her mouth and whatever was left of their safe little space evaporated.
“With you licking wine off your finger, then looking at me like you’re one bad decision away from climbing into my lap? ”
Heat climbed her throat so fast she nearly choked on it.
His hoarse confession was making her thighs clench, her core melt.
Making her remember the hard line of his body against hers, the guttural sound in his throat when she came.
She stared at him, stunned and burning and furious that he’d admitted his need before she’d found the courage to admit hers.
“No, Gabi,” he said, the words scraped clean of humor.
“I’m not bored. I love the cotton fields almost as much as Campbell does.
I love sweet tea, and how the cicadas get so loud at dusk they make your ears ache, then soften after dark like they’ve decided to forgive everybody.
I love that people in town wave at you when they pass, whether they know you or not.
I love my family, even if I don’t know how to let them get close.
I love that Justin keeps sketching around me like I can’t see him doing it, and I know one of these days I’m going to end up in that gallery of his looking miserable but understood.
A painting entitled Misjudged Soul or something. ”
His thumb moved against hers again, his breath breaking free on a groaning sigh.
“And this—” He looked down at their hands, then back at her.
“Whatever the hell this is, whatever we’re doing, I’m so damn far from bored.
But don’t idealize me, Gabi. Don’t make me the good man in this now because I wasn’t the one making you feel small then.
If I’d been crueler in high school, louder, I don’t know, you might’ve looked my way.
But I’m no saint now. I have a flash temper.
I’m impulsive. According to my family, I hold grudges long enough for them to establish residency.
” His mouth shifted, his smile fading. “I understand what it’s like to be made to feel small, and I get no pleasure out of doing that to anyone else. ”
“I’m sorry,” she said, and meant more than the way she’d treated him in school.
More than the ways people learned to survive and called it growing up.
She wanted to tell him the kiss they’d shared on those bleachers had been the second best of her life, the first being the night in the music room.
She wanted to tell him that she got no pleasure from making anyone feel small, and she never had.
“Gabi,” he whispered and reached for her without taking his eyes off her, knocking the spoon sideways and sending a streak of hot fudge across the front of his shirt and along the side of his neck. He pushed back from the island, a laugh breaking loose. “That was a dignified attempt at seduction.”
“It was.” Gabi pressed her lips together because laughing along with him felt ruthless in at least three different ways.
“Jesus, it’s sticky,” he said, swiping at the stain with a napkin, which only made things worse. It stuck to the cotton like it had found religion. “That’s what I get for making the real-deal chocolate instead of buying a bottle of the cheap stuff. That can’t be this thick.”
Unthinkingly, he caught the back of his collar and tugged his shirt over his head with the distracted impatience of a man solving a minor problem, not ruining her entire ability to think. It landed somewhere near the sink.
Leaving Dallas standing there in low-hung jeans and nothing else, dark hair mussed, glasses slightly crooked, one fist braced on the island, his laugh fading when he caught her hungrily staring at him like she’d been tragically deprived of a bare chest for two years.
Of course, Gabi had imagined what his body looked like—at least three times this week after dropping Sam at school. (Her vibrator had been involved.)
But imagination had been a poor, underfunded thing.
Dallas’s body was lean and hard, with scars she didn’t know the stories for and ink she wanted to trace with her tongue.
The compass rose curved around his forearm.
Another tattoo, a fragment of script, sat just above the waistband of his jeans, the last few letters disappearing right where his hip bone jutted sharp above the worn denim.
He had a dusting of hair between his pecs, just the right amount, not too much, not too little, racing in a straight line to his groin.
He was beautiful in a way that made her wish she had his brother’s skill, because she suddenly understood the urge to put a man on canvas.
“Don’t make me apologize,” she whispered, stunned she’d said it out loud.
His fist uncurled, fingers flexing. “Who made you apologize?”
Theo. Not in words she could point to. But he’d taught her to suppress what she wanted, to make herself less in bed. Quieter. Easier. Sex had become his game, his pleasure, his rules, and she’d learned them too well.
Dallas cornered her openly this time, backing her into the island, his heated gaze roaming her face. “Don’t bring him here, because the starved look in your eyes, Sparkle, is burning me up. And I want it all.”
“Tell me,” she whispered, her heartbeat everywhere.
“I’m a writer.” His mouth came close enough to feel the words, his breath a sizzling streak past her cheek. “I’ll do it that way. For now, I’ll show you.”
His hand slid into her hair. The other caught her waist, pulling her against him, and Gabi went because there was nowhere else she wanted to be. Then he seized her lips like he’d been holding himself back all night and had finally run out of places to put his need.
She found his bare chest and the wild, impossible thud of his heart under her palm. He made a rough sound into her mouth when she tugged his bottom lip between her teeth, and whatever remained of apology, caution, shame, those careful rules of a previous life, cracked right down the middle.
Gabi opened for him, and Dallas kissed her as if he’d been waiting years to do it right.