Chapter 23
[Neve]
“Tate Love, why aren’t you married?” I blurt two nights later, looking at the array of ingredients on his kitchen counter.
We’re back at his house.
Yesterday, he came over late in the afternoon and assembled the crib. We finally had that apple pie. For dinner.
Tonight, I’m at his place, and he’s proposed making chili. I don’t have the heart to tell him I probably shouldn’t eat something with spicy ingredients, like green peppers and onions. I’ll have heartburn for a week.
Chowders and chilis are served all seasons around here, but nothing says fall comfort food like soups of any sort. So, I’m powering through cutting up green peppers, and he’s browning ground beef when I ask my question.
“What?” He chuckles, and I wave at the spread in front of us. Shredded cheese and not the packaged kind. Sour cream that looks homemade.
His cheeks turn rosy and he glances back toward the stove.
“You’re kind of good at caring for others. And cooking. Is food your love language?”
We both freeze before he turns back to me.
“Not that we’re really talking about love . . .”
“But you asked me about marriage?”
I shrug and lower my head, deciding I dug this grave.
“To answer your question, I already told you I’m not really a one-night stand kind of guy.”
Now, my cheeks heat.
“And I was almost engaged. Once.”
I lower my knife and stare at him.
“It was over a year ago.” He steps toward the large island that separates his kitchen from the living space. The island might be as big as my entire kitchen, but that doesn’t faze me as much as what he just said.
He’s been in love.
“She fell in love with someone else,” he says, his eyes avoiding mine. “And they got engaged last Christmas.”
Shit.
“So New Year’s Eve . . .”
“Was not related to their engagement. I’m over her. Long over her.” He chuckles, still sounding bitter. “It’d been a year since we broke up when I met you. And over a year since . . .”
He points between us.
I don’t know if it makes me feel better or worse that he’d been so hurt. That he’d gone so long without sex. And I was the one to break his dry spell.
“I’m honored,” I state, trying to make light of a situation that doesn’t feel light.
“I was honored.” He lifts his brows. “You restored my confidence.”
“To get girls?” I ask when I don’t really want the answer.
“There haven’t been any girls since you.”
I believe him. He already told me this. Still, I’m puzzled why he’s alone. How could someone fall in love with someone other than him? He is practically perfect.
“Tell me a fault of yours.”
He laughs. “What?”
“What’s something wrong with you? Besides the hair swiping. What’s something that could possibly make a person fall out of love with you?” I don’t get it. I really don’t.
“That something was a someone else,” he repeats.
“Still, tell me something. Give me something that makes you less perfect.”
His cheeks turn sweet pink again, and he lowers his gaze. “I’m not perfect, Neve. I’m just a man wanting a woman to love me despite all my imperfections.”
That sounds like a movie line, and I’d laugh if he weren’t completely serious. I don’t have the heart to mock him. I understand him.
On some level, that I can’t even explain to myself, I want the same thing. A man to love me for who I am, faults and all.
“She was a fool.”
His lip curls. “Thank you for saying that. But I’m better off without her.” He glances at my belly. “In fact, I think I’m right where I’m supposed to be.”
Sweet succulent pumpkins, do not make me love you, Tate Love. I won’t be able to handle the heartbreak he’ll bring me.
“What about you? Ever been engaged? Ever want to get married?”
Suddenly, it feels like all the oxygen has left the room.
“Can’t really happen when all you have are one-night stands.
” I offer him honesty because it’s all I have.
“But, yeah. I guess I just didn’t see it ever happening for me.
” I pause a second, taking a deep breath and digging even deeper for the truth.
“Guess I’m just a woman wanting a man to love me, yet knowing no one ever would, because of my imperfections. ”
“Neve.” My name is the saddest whisper, and I hate the pity in it.
I shake my head, dismissing this topic.
He watches me for a long minute before asking, “How are you feeling?”
“Why?”
He turns off the now browned beef and circles the kitchen island, coming up behind me.
“We need more orgasm practice.”
“This isn’t like learning to ride a bike,” I tease, as his hands come to my elbows and he rubs up my arms.
He sets his mouth at my ear. “But I want you to ride my face.”
“I’d smother you.” I’m suddenly even larger than I was days before, even more uncomfortable with the weight.
He buries his nose in my neck and inhales. “You smell like apples and cinnamon.”
“I smell like onions and green peppers.”
“Both things I love to eat.”
I chuckle until he sucks at the side of my neck, licking down it to the collar of my shirt. He tugs it aside and nips the juncture of my neck and shoulder. My knees give out, and I slap at the island surface.
He spins me to face him, then leans over me, cups my jaw with one hand, and kisses me. His tongue is a promise of what he intends to do lower on my body. The sweep and the lick and a little flick.
I melt beneath his mouth, clutching at his shoulders to hold me steady.
When he pulls back, I’m dazed, flustered by the rush up my middle.
He spins me around again, my hands landing on the island once more. He slips his hand underneath my belly and straight between my legs, where I’m hot and damp already.
He presses kisses against my neck again, using his teeth for a little sting. Then he clamps his teeth gently on the edge of my ear.
“Anyone who doesn’t fall in love with you in one night is a fool, Neve.”
He releases my ear, and I try to look at him, but he’s already tugging off the flannel shirt I’m wearing over an overstretched male tank top.
He returns to my neck, cups one heavy breast with his hand, and gives it a sharp tug at the same time he nips me.
A strange sensation spreads across my chest. An electric current that shoots lower.
When he slips his hand into my loose pants, he slides right between my legs, shoving aside the wet scrap of fabric covering where I’m most needy.
“Soaked again,” he whispers proudly, like he knows the effect he has on me.
He taps my ankles with his bare foot, and I spread my legs wider. He settles in behind me, bending his knees and wedging himself against the crack of my ass. I arch into him.
His fingers are swift to fill me, and I surge backward one more time, until we suddenly have a rhythm.
Him working against me from behind, just like he would if he were entering me.
I rub against the hard length pressed against my cheeks while he drags his fingers in and out of me, filling me with those two digits.
“Holy goddess,” I whimper. “This feels so good.”
He smiles against my neck. “Just imagine if it were something else. Another part of me filling you up.”
“Yes,” I whisper, although I’m not ready to trade the position I’m in. His fingers are a wonder, and when he adds the heel of his hand, pressing right where I need him most, I rock harder against him.
“That’s it, baby. Ride my hand, like you might ride my face.”
I want that. I want to straddle his head and rock over his tongue. And . . .
“Tate?” My voice hitches. My hips roll back. He presses forward. We grind harder against one another.
“I’ve got you,” he says. “I’m right here.”
He is here, and he’s so good at this.
I clutch the island harder. I can’t press any lower, my belly in the way, but it doesn’t matter. Tate has found a way to get at me and rock into me from behind. Back and forth, we dance, until I rise up on my toes.
“Tate.” I cry out his name like it encompasses all my feelings, all the sensations. I ride those fingers and smack the island again before I scream his name one more time.
The rush between my thighs is heavy and fast, like the ocean rolled up the hill and between my legs. Tate keeps his fingers in me and moves behind me, rubbing against me, until he stills. His other arm wraps around my chest, and he lies against my back as he breathes heavily against me.
“Holy shit.” He leans his forehead against my shoulder.
“Did you . . .”
“How could I not?” He chuckles, rolling his head back and forth. “It was like having sex with my clothes on.”
Imagine if we took them off.
Although I don’t imagine he wants to see me naked.
However, he doesn’t immediately let me go. He peppers my shoulder with kisses, then the side of my neck, until he’s turning my head to kiss me again.
A kiss that reminds me of when we stood by the well.
Where I tasted how lonely he’d been.
Only we don’t taste like loneliness right now.
And that frightens me.