Chapter Nineteen #2
Minutes went by, and slowly the foreign awkwardness Eve was feeling fell away. She wiggled her toes under the covers and stared at the ceiling.
The same old popcorn treatment with light from the nightstand lamp discoloring it to an off-white.
She tried to remember the last time she had been in the same room.
The night before the move, she had stayed in Darius’s.
Him on the floor, her lying on the side of his bed, hand draped over to hold his blanket.
Pure friendship. Pure loyalty. Pure love.
That was enough for her.
She could grow old with it. With him.
Like this.
In the silence.
In the same room.
In love, but knowing it wasn’t her place to expect him to want anything more.
Eve let out a small breath and rolled onto her side. She reached out and turned her lamp off.
A few minutes later Darius turned his off too.
Eve could still make out the window a few feet away.
Muscle memory nearly made her move.
There was no point climbing out tonight when the boy next door was already there.
Eve closed her eyes.
And then an arm wrapped around her.
Beneath the sheets, Darius’s bare arm slid across her hip and hooked up between her breasts.
His hand balled into a fist, twisting her shirt in his grasp.
It was a gentle hold that kept her steady as the rest of him moved into place.
Every curve of her was met by every curve of him.
His chest to her back, his hip to her hip, his knees to the backs of hers, his forehead to her hair.
No space was left between them.
Even as he spoke, the only place his words had to go were into the back of her neck.
“I never blamed you for leaving, Eve.”
His words rumbled through his chest and into her back.
“But you never looked for me either,” she pointed out.
“When you didn’t reach out, I thought you were happy. I didn’t want to mess that up.”
Eve smiled.
“And I thought you were happy and didn’t want to mess it up either,” she countered. “Now look at me. I came back with nothing but baggage. Messy, complicated baggage.”
Her eyes felt hot.
Guilt, anger, frustration, longing.
Years of stress and listlessness.
A broken ship on the sea, hoping to see a storm but instead lost in an endless boring calm.
A life that had been lived on autopilot.
And then suddenly seeing a familiar island on the horizon.
But it had been too long.
The landscape had changed.
It was no longer an island deserted.
There were other people and boats and stories that she had never been a part of.
Time hadn’t stopped for a moment since Eve had left Seven Roads, and while she had grown up, Darius had too.
And it killed Eve so badly that she finally admitted it out loud.
“I missed everything,” she managed, voice breaking. “Life passed me by and…and everyone else went with it.”
Eve knew she wasn’t making sense. Or maybe she was being too dramatic. But she couldn’t help it.
Even as Darius slowly turned her over, careful of their injuries, and lay on his side while staring down at her, Eve couldn’t help but cry.
His smile was barely visible in the light from the small opening from the curtains.
He took the side of her face into his hand and ran his thumb across her cheek, wiping away the few tears that were still there.
“Evie, I bought an entire house for one window. What part of that makes you think I was ever planning on moving on without you?”
It wasn’t her first kiss.
It wasn’t her second or third. Heck, it wasn’t even her tenth.
But when Darius lowered his lips to hers, Eve felt like the world around them simply stopped.
He was warm; he was gentle. His tongue parted her lips and mingled with hers as Eve accepted the advance. The hand on the side of her face slid behind her neck as the tips of his fingers tangled into her hair.
Eve went with the movement and angled her chin higher.
The new position made it easier for their kiss to deepen.
The rest of the world around them might have felt like it stopped, but Eve sure didn’t hesitate for a moment.
Darius might have been focusing on the kiss, but Eve had already skipped ahead.
She pulled him down onto her with hungry hands and used her legs to get the rest of him. It gave him two options: change his hold on her to accommodate a more intimate hold, or keep the kiss without giving in.
Bless him, Darius chose the former.
He let her neck go and broke their kiss long enough to rock backward.
Eve went with him.
And apparently it humored him.
“What?” she asked, barely able to catch her breath. She was now the one looking down at him. Still, she heard the smile in his voice before she saw it.
His hand flattened against her thigh at his side.
“You went from crying to straddling really quick is all,” he said. “It’s almost like you’ve really been wanting this.”
Eve huffed.
“You’re one to talk about really wanting this.
” She adjusted herself slightly on his lap.
There was a notable hardness right beneath her.
Her rubbing against it nearly made her lose her composure.
She guessed it was a mutual struggle. Eve heard his breath catch just enough to know that he was absolutely affected by her.
“If you have a problem with me doing this, I can always just leave,” she offered when he didn’t immediately respond.
That threat surely did a number on the man beneath her.
The hand on her thigh joined the other as they both slid up her legs, beneath her PJ shorts and underneath her panties. He grabbed her bare hips and pulled down, applying pressure exactly on the part of him that couldn’t lie about the pleasure he felt with her being on him.
This time, Eve was the one to make a little gasp.
“Where you go, I go,” he said. “If you want to leave, I won’t stop you. But…”
He bucked up against her, not enough to move her off, but enough to let her feel just how hard he wanted her.
“But…?” she asked, this time absolutely breathless.
Darius’s voice also changed.
Now he was gravel and grit.
“But let’s save us both some trouble and just spend the night in this room.”
It wasn’t a question, and even if it had been, Eve wouldn’t have needed to give an answer.
They both knew neither one of them were leaving.
Not each other.
Not the room.
And certainly not the bed.