Chapter 18 #2
“Same here,” Levi added. “I mean…minus the shimmying. Feel free to go on ahead of us if you want to get started on those finger sandwiches. We’re right behind you!
” Levi had no idea what finger sandwiches were, but he hoped they were something that excited Emma and Matteo enough to stop waiting so he could buy himself a few more minutes to… relax.
“Okay!” Emma called. “We’ll see you at the inn!”
A few seconds later, he heard a heavy door snick shut. A few seconds after that, he heard Haddie swear.
“Everything okay over there?” he asked, elbowing the wall he shared with Haddie.
“You have to help me,” Haddie replied, her voice straining with exasperation.
Something about the need in her tone brought Levi’s relaxing to a halt. He swallowed hard. “Um…what do you need?” he managed to say, his voice tight.
“My zipper is stuck. I got it only part of the way down, and then it just stopped, and I’m afraid I might actually pass out if I don’t get to take a full breath in the next thirty seconds.”
Levi had just let his shirt fall to the floor, and he was standing there in nothing but his unbuttoned tuxedo pants. “I’ll be right there,” he told her. “I just need to—”
“Levi!” she called with a whimper. “Please? It’s so tight, and I’m starting to panic, and…” She gasped. “I can’t…breathe!”
He threw open his fitting room and rounded the corner toward Haddie’s, bursting through the propped-open door and accidentally sandwiching her between himself and the mirror when her door hit him on the ass and clicked shut.
“Sorry!” he exclaimed and then backed up against the door.
Haddie’s shoulders heaved as she tried desperately to suck in a breath.
Without another thought, he pressed a palm to her hip for purchase and yanked on the zipper, but the damned thing wouldn’t budge.
“Try pulling it back up!” she pleaded, and the strain in her voice sent his pulse into overdrive.
He tugged the zipper up, and it moved, but the second he tried to pull it back down, it stopped right in the same spot.
She pressed her arms against the three-way mirror and let her forehead fall against her arm.
“Levi…” she pleaded.
He growled. “I’m going to have to rip it.”
“Then rip the freaking thing! Layla has to take it off and put it back on anyway.” Her knees buckled, and Levi caught her around the waist.
“I got you, Birthday Girl,” he assured her, and with his free hand, he grabbed one side of the partially opened dress and tore.
Haddie gulped in a mouth of air, and then another, and one more after that. Finally, her breathing steadied, and she straightened. But Levi still hadn’t let go.
She pressed a palm over his hand, which lay splayed across her abdomen.
“Can you open the door?” she asked with a shaky breath, tilting her head up to look at him through the mirror. “It’s getting a little claustrophobic in here.”
That was when he finally noticed the dress was now hanging forward, her bare breasts exposed. Yet her hand hadn’t left his, and her green eyes seemed to flicker with an unexpected heat.
Levi reached behind him and twisted the handle to the fitting room door, but it didn’t move.
“Um…Haddie?”
She suddenly spun to face him. “The pen!” she cried.
“What pen?”
“The one holding open the broken door,” she added.
Levi pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut. “Tell me we are not stuck in here like this.” Since the walls did not go all the way to the ceiling, Levi gripped the tops of the ones on either side of him and hung his head, eyes still closed.
“You’re not wearing a shirt,” Haddie said softly.
He let out an incredulous laugh. “Neither are you.”
Levi heard the unmistakable sound of Haddie licking her lips.
A warm palm pressed against his chest, and Levi swore. “Haddie,” he growled. “What are you doing?” He let out a shaky breath.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “You’re…trembling.”
He squeezed the tops of the walls harder, feeling his knuckles go white. “Because I’ve been trying to hold it together since the second you opened that curtain and told me and Matteo we could come back inside.”
“Levi…” Her hand traveled up to his cheek, and she pressed it against his fiery skin. “You saved me from fainting.”
“I know,” he ground out. His heart thrashed against his rib cage, trying to keep the feelings he’d been struggling to ignore at bay.
“And you called me ‘Birthday Girl,’” she added.
“I am also aware of this,” he told her, doing everything in his power not to lean into her touch.
She brushed a thumb across the stubble on his jaw, and Levi was sure if he let go of the walls at his sides, he’d dissolve into a puddle, right there on the spot.
“Do you want to know the two reasons I didn’t want to tell you my name that night?”
“No,” he said, but he could feel his head nodding.
Haddie laughed, but it was a strangled sound. “You charmed me more than any man had a right to charm me in so little time. I was afraid that if I heard you say my name, I might never leave that hotel room.”
“Jesus, Haddie…” he hissed, but he made no move to stop her. He wanted to know everything about her and, at the same time, nothing at all. Because the more he knew, the more he wanted. But what if… Did she want too? He couldn’t stop the words even if he tried. “What’s the other reason?”
She sighed, and her warm, sweet breath brushed against his neck, sending a shock of electricity down his spine, the surge so strong that he shuddered.
“Because I’d never let any man close enough to come up with a nickname for me, and you gave me one right on the spot. I felt—special.”
He opened his eyes, knowing that once he did, he would be a goner. But Levi didn’t care.
“You are special,” he told her. “You know that, don’t you?”
She pressed her lips together and shrugged, giving him a sad smile.
Levi let go of the walls he swore were holding him up and dared to cup her cheeks in his palms.
“Tell me not to kiss you, Haddie. I’m fucking begging you. Please tell me not to.”
“Don’t kiss me,” she whispered, tilting her head up toward his.
“Tell me and mean it,” he whispered back.
But Haddie shook her head. “I can’t.”
Fuuuck. “You said you don’t date men you work with.”
She nodded. “I love my job, but I’m not going to complicate it with some selfish jerk who will eventually outgrow me, promising me a boozy brunch and surprising me with his parents instead.”
Levi’s brows furrowed. “I feel like I’m missing a huge chunk of the story here. I’ll own the selfish jerk part. That’s why I’m here. Not in this fitting room, but Summertown. You know what I mean. But the boozy-brunch thing and the ridiculous idea of outgrowing you? Nope. Not ringing a bell.”
She waved him off. “Not you, silly. Just someone from before I knew you.”
Levi didn’t even know the guy’s name, and he already hated him.
“And you’re not selfish or a jerk, Levi,” she continued.
“You’re still grieving. It’s different. You’re different.
” She cupped his cheek with her hand, and it took everything—every fucking ounce of his will—not to just lean into her touch, to kiss her palm, and to let their pent-up need take over from there.
Levi didn’t realize until now how much he’d continued to want her from that very first night.
Now he knew that his need had been growing beneath the surface, like a virus without any known cure.
He’d simply been pretending, lying to himself, and for a few short weeks he’d tricked himself into believing he’d found a remedy.
Still, he hesitated. “Haddie, I don’t think I can go back if we do this,” he admitted.
“Neither can I.”
Whether she only wanted him right now or for every other day to come, Levi didn’t care.
“And Coach Crawford?” he asked. “Our jobs. What if he…?” But Levi’s job—the one he was trying to get back—felt a million miles away while Haddie Martin was right here in his fucking arms.
“Our entanglement,” she whispered. “Our business.”
Then you can’t know…until you know.
Matteo’s words echoed in the back of his head as Levi brought his lips to hers.
She hummed sweetly against him, and for a few seconds, that was all the kiss was—sweet.
She tasted like coffee and cinnamon, like rainy nights and broken windows and wounds mended with care.
But then her arms snaked around his neck, and her dress fell to the floor so that they were skin to skin, heat against heat, two wild hearts bursting from captivity.
He pulled back, gasping. Where before he was afraid to look, now he drank her in. “My god, you’re beautiful,” he told her, his voice rough as gravel.
“Awww… I bet you say that to all the half-naked girls,” she teased.
He shook his head, and she narrowed her eyes at him.
“Okay…” he answered with a laugh. “Maybe I’ve said it once or twice, but I’ve never meant it like this. I’ve never…known someone like I know you. When I say it to you, it means something entirely different.”
Her gaze softened, and Levi let out a relieved breath.
“Do you think we should be calling someone for help?” he asked, remembering that people were actually expecting them to show up at the inn in the not-too-distant future.
Haddie answered him by taking a step back and having the nerve to slide her bikini briefs down her thighs and over her knees until she kicked them out from under her.
“Oh…my…goddess…” he ground out.
She glanced down to where his erection protruded from his unbuttoned pants. “I have been waiting to see what’s on the other side of those boxer briefs for weeks. Something tells me the little guy is not going to disappoint.”
Levi winced. “I’m a fairly confident man,” he told her. “But my guy might be sensitive to—uh—inaccurate nicknames.”
Haddie hooked her finger behind his elastic waistband and lowered the briefs to take in the view. Her eyes grew wide. “My apologies, Big Guy.” She gripped him in her palm, and something feral tore from his chest as his back slammed against the locked door.
“No…condom…” he managed as she stroked him from root to tip. His blood felt like fire, and Haddie’s touch only stoked the flame.
She bent down and grabbed her dress with her free hand and tossed it over his shoulder so it hung over the top of the door. Then she let go of him and took a step back.
“Do the same with your pants,” she ordered.
Levi’s mouth fell open. “Did you catch what I just said?” he asked.
She nodded and gave him a wicked smile, and Levi physically ached not to be touching her. Holy hell, what had he gotten himself into?
“Yep,” Haddie replied. “You don’t have a condom. But I do.”