Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
DREW
“Trunk-or-treat?” Caitlin asks with a laugh. “I need more information.”
Holding onto the wheel with my left hand, I slide my right one onto her thigh, smiling when she lays her hand over mine like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“It’s a Halloween thing a bunch of high schools in the area do.
Students dress up and decorate their cars and park them in a big parking lot with the trunks open to hand out candy.
The kids come from different organizations and programs around the city that work with at-risk kids, foster kids, and kids from underserved communities.
” I pause, trying to figure out how to say this next part, wondering if I should have led with it.
If this is going to freak her out and make her wish she never said yes to this little excursion.
“It’s…kind of Avery’s program. I mean, she helped organize it at her school.”
Caitlin turns to me, her free hand coming up to rest on my neck, sifting her fingers through my hair like she knows I need the extra comfort. “Avery, your sister?”
I nod and swallow down the emotion that tries to rise at the word sister.
The way Caitlin doesn’t hedge or equivocate or try to come up with some other way to explain my relationship to the girl I haven’t really known since she was a toddler, but who still feels like the closest thing I have to family.
“Yeah. Is it weird for you to meet her? Like, too soon or whatever? I’m sorry, I should have told you before instead of springing it on you like this.
Avery told me what she was doing, and I thought it sounded cool.
Then I mentioned it to some of the guys on the team and they wanted in too, so it turned into a whole thing.
If meeting her before we’ve even really defined whatever this is between us is too much, I totally get it.
I can text her that something came up and we can just… ”
“Breathe, Drew.”
Caitlin’s words cut me off and I inhale sharply, holding my breath for a couple seconds before letting it out slowly. “Sorry,” I mumble. “I don’t know how to do this.”
Caitlin laughs lightly, her fingernails grazing the back of my neck in a way that both heats and soothes.
“How to introduce me to a member of your family? You’ve met a zillion members of the tangled web I call a family.
My mom’s best friend caught us kissing in my office twenty minutes ago and then my mom showed up too. Why is this different?”
I shrug, unable to come up with a real answer.
“It’s not, I guess. I’ve just…never had family to introduce someone to,” I admit.
“And I haven’t had anyone who mattered enough for me to consider what it meant that I didn’t have any family for them to meet.
” Stopping at a red light, I glance over at her, the way her brown hair tumbles down her back in waves and the way the soft blue sweater she’s wearing makes her eyes shine, more sky than storm today.
Cheeks a little pink from the cool October air and the full pink lips I want to feel against my own all over again.
Fuck, she’s so pretty. Lifting her hand, I press a kiss to her knuckles.
“I’m glad you’re with me,” I say finally. “Really glad.”
Caitlin smiles, her hand squeezing mine. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”
I accelerate as the light turns green and consider the other part of my unhinged ramble. “So how should I introduce you to Avery?”
Caitlin looks over at me, an unholy mischief in her eyes like she knows exactly what I’m trying to do right now and isn’t going to make it even a little bit easy for me.
“You could try something like, This is Caitlin. I’m also a grown woman who has been introducing myself to people for decades and can totally handle telling your teenage sister my name. ”
“Brat,” I mutter, feeling warm all over when she laughs even as I shift uncomfortably in my seat. “I was thinking more, like, what do I tell her you are to me?”
My eyes are on the road, but I feel Caitlin’s eyes on me, pinning me with an assessing gaze. “What do you want to tell her I am to you?”
I squeeze her hand and feel a sort of calm settle over me the way it only does when I’m with her. My safest place. “I think I’d like to tell her you’re my girlfriend.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see a smile spread across Caitlin’s face, and everything about this moment feels right. “Girlfriend, huh?”
The next light turns red, so I slow to a stop again, turning to face her, bringing my free hand to her cheek and sweeping my thumb over her soft skin.
“I’ve never had one. I’m pretty sure I’ve never even said that word before, but it feels like it should belong to you.
I think I was waiting for you.” I shake my head, feeling the inadequacy of those words.
That truth. “I know I was waiting for you. I’ve never known how to get close to someone without being terrified that one day they would leave.
But when I’m here with you, nothing about it feels scary.
It just feels right. So fucking right because I don’t want to be anywhere but wherever you are.
Be my girlfriend, Catie. Be mine, because I really, really don’t want to do life without you. ”
Caitlin brings her hand to my cheek, eyes swimming with feeling and a kind of certainty that makes my heart pound in my chest. “Sweet boy,” she murmurs, resting her forehead against mine.
“I’ve never been anyone’s girlfriend. I’ve never known how to let go enough to let someone in like that, show him all of me.
I’ve never met anyone I could power down around.
Who felt safe enough for me to be me, except for you. I was waiting for you too, Drew.”
I close my eyes, wild gratitude pulsing through me as I press my lips to hers.
At first the kiss is light and sweet and full of hope and the promise of everything that lies ahead.
But in two seconds flat it becomes…not that.
With the world girlfriend ringing in my head and need suddenly pounding in my blood, I suck Caitlin’s lower lip into my mouth.
Gliding my tongue over it, I feel a surge of victory and possession when she moans, opening for me, and I take advantage of it immediately, sweeping my tongue into her mouth.
My cock hardens behind my zipper, and even though I would really like our first time together after her recovery to be in a bed where I can spread her out and take my time with her, I’m seriously contemplating hauling her into my lap and taking her right here, right now, without one shred of self-control.
A loud honk shatters moment, and we jump apart for the second time today, both of us breathing hard, eyes glued together, the mood in the car less playful Halloween fun and more I’ll die if I don’t get my hands back on you right the fuck now.
“Shit,” Caitlin mutters as the person behind us honks again. I accelerate through the now green light, unsteady hands gripping the wheel. “I fucking want you. A month is too long.”
Letting out a slow breath, I take her hand, tangling our fingers together. “You just agreed to be my girlfriend which means this is the best day ever, and it also means I would wait forever for you.”
Caitlin rolls her eyes at me, and that sexy little show of attitude has another wave of need overtaking me. “That’s a really nice sentiment, but I’m not feeling quite so magnanimous.”
I run my finger over her palm, grinning when she shivers. “You feeling needy for me, Princess?”
She blows out a breath, leaning back against the seat and rolling her head to face me. “I’ll fucking say. I mean, look at you.” She does, raking her eyes over me, and my skin heats under her gaze.
“Soon,” I murmur, glancing over at her and back to the road, memorizing the feel of her eyes on me.
Thinking nothing could ever be wrong as long as Caitlin Parker is looking at me like that.
I hope she never looks away. I know I won’t.
“When you’re ready, I promise it’s going to be so good, Catie. So fucking good.”
Returning her hand to the back of my neck, Caitlin squeezes, running a thumb lightly under my shirt collar, and now it’s my turn to shiver. “I’m ready right now.”
The words are low but spoken with a kind of conviction that has arousal pulsing through me, and I barely resist the urge to whip the car into a U-turn and head straight back to my house to throw Caitlin on my bed and keep her there as long as she’ll let me.
I think obsessed with her looks good on me.
The next light turns red, and the second I stop the car, I turn to Caitlin, grabbing her chin in one hand and bringing my mouth close to hers, dropping my voice low.
“If you’re really ready, the second we get back to my house tonight you’re mine, Princess.
I’m going to have my tongue on your cunt and my cock inside you and my hands on every single fucking inch of your body.
You’re going to be under me, over me, every damn where until my name is on your lips and all we can see is each other.
We are going to belong to each other in every way imaginable, tonight and every night because I do, Caitlin.
” My eyes bounce back and forth between hers as I lay more of myself bare than I ever have before. “I do belong to you.”
My voice is a plea even though I’m not sure what I’m asking for, but Caitlin seems to know because she leans in, laying her lips on mine, kissing me like she’s breathing the oxygen I need to live directly into my lungs.
“I belong to you, too,” she says against my mouth, tugging my bottom lip between her teeth.
When I let out a sound perilously close to a whimper, the flash of victory in her eyes is a shot straight to my dick.
“Now drive, Drew. Take me to meet your sister and then take me home and have me in any way you want.”
“Fuck,” I mutter, cursing the light as it turns green, forcing me away from her. “You’re mean.”
Caitlin giggles and the sound is sunshine. “I think you like it.”
Reaching over, I grab her hand and lavish kisses on it until she’s laughing all over again. “Baby, you can be mean to me anytime. I fucking love it.”
Caitlin looks like she’s going to say something else, but before she can, her eyes stray to the backseat and then back to me. “Why are there four suitcases and like eight different bags in your backseat? Are you moving or something?”
Smiling, I feel my need for her mix with a little fission of excitement over what I’m about to do, and the combination is as intoxicating as it is soothing. “That’s all part of the fun.”