Chapter 10
Yesterday’s pink manicure had barely survived twenty-four hours, Eiley realised as she scratched at her nail polish in the middle of the stockroom.
“This is the part I’m dreading.” She might not have been so honest a few hours ago, but the air between them was clearer since her sort-of-apology and Warren’s sort-of-acceptance, where she’d learned that he wasn’t actually awful to talk to when it really counted.
She might have seen that last night, too, if she hadn’t been so distraught.
She didn’t know why he was still here. Why he stood, steadfast against her judgement.
But he was being nice to her, and it counted for something.
The more mystifying question was why she’d allowed him to stay.
Why, when he’d asked her to, she hadn’t been able to say yes, go , words wedged deep in her throat where she couldn’t reach them.
They’d spent the afternoon falling into a new rhythm while they packed away the books.
Eiley planned to run a few boxes home, hoping she might be able to dry them out.
She couldn’t remember it going dark, but now, the bookstore was cast in indigo shadows, passing headlights their only source of illumination.
Warren leaned behind her, his tousled hair grazing the top of the door frame as he rested one hand against it. If it wasn’t done so nonchalantly, she might have taken it as a brag. Look at me with my big muscles and long legs, taking up the entire doorway like Harper’s fairy book boyfriends.
His warmth pressed into her like a radiator left on its highest setting for too long, sending her stomach into cartwheels.
Those pesky kicks and flutters were the real reason she hadn’t wanted him to stay.
And the real reason she hadn’t wanted him to leave.
She hadn’t felt an attraction like this since Finlay.
Before, when Warren had just been a stranger sipping coffee across the street, it had been nothing but a pleasant daydream.
Now, he was close enough to touch, every movement wafting the scent of amber and wood cologne until she was dizzy and drowning in him.
Perhaps that was what she hated about him, more than anything.
He reminded her of all the things she longed for, things she hadn’t felt in eons – if at all – and might not feel ever again: subtle touches, the electricity of discovering a newness that might never grow old, the tug of wanting to get closer, and of never being close enough.
She wasn’t supposed to want that. Desire wasn’t a game she’d ever learned the rules of, and she couldn’t afford to try now.
Even if it was there, curling tighter around her every time he said her name. She tried to convince herself it was only the tension of their clashes, not chemistry, but it didn’t release the knot in her core.
“Aye, this is definitely the worst of it,” he decided, oblivious to the train of her racing, ridiculous thoughts. “Have you ventured upstairs yet?”
Eiley shook her head, pulling away to focus again. He only stepped further into the stockroom as though tethered to her movements. “Not ready to see it. I know it’s just a building, and the things that are ruined are just things, but …”
“But they mean something all the same. I can imagine that’s especially true for a parent.
” He squeezed between her and the mess of books on the floor, the distance between them suddenly achingly small.
He could barely fit in such a small space, head ducked as he surveyed the crooked shelves.
In the light of day, amidst the clutter, it was easier to admit that he’d been right about the poor organisation in here.
Warren’s lecture about how quickly the flames might catch had stuck; it would be just her luck to have a flood and a fire.
She tried to step back and stumbled over a box of books.
Normally, she’d have felt embarrassed, but something about the absurdity of the situation – crowded into the tiny stockroom with a firefighter who looked like he’d wandered out of a Greek myth – made her unable to suppress a grin.
Warren’s eyes bored into her – intimately, like he’d seen something he wanted to memorise.
“What?”
He shrugged. “I just don’t think I’ve seen you smile before today. You don’t seem to do it very often.”
She ducked her head bashfully. “I smile. Just not in front of you.”
“Or your mates. Didn’t see you laughing with the rest of them at the pub.”
She paused. “Were you watching me?”
“It was only right, since you watched me first.”
She let out a half-hearted huff. “So we’re even?”
“Getting there.” He leaned closer, and her breath hitched. He was going to kiss her, lips inches away, hand reaching—
For a cardboard box behind her.
Embarrassed, Eiley tried to budge, but only served to stumble over the unending obstacles around them. He grabbed her elbow with perfect ease before she could fall, but her attention was no longer on him.
It was on the books she’d tripped over.
Harper’s books.
The Lost Princess had been stacked aside in preparation for next week’s event, but the flood had sent them toppling so that not one had stayed dry. Eiley knelt, tucking her bottom lip between her teeth as she opened the first cover. The pages were warping already.
“Everything okay?” asked Warren behind her.
“Harper’s books. She’s going to be devastated.”
His body shrouded hers as he bent to pick up a copy, eyeing the title and then flipping to the back cover, where gossamer wings bordered the blurb. Harper’s gorgeous author photo, taken in the woods among spring bluebells, had smudged to something unrecognisable.
He opened the book at a random page, a furrow of concentration on his face as he read, and Eiley felt her breath hitch. He lifted a brow. “Shouldn’t she be writing under a pen name or something? This is pretty raunchy.”
Eiley snatched the book back. “It’s the twenty-first century. Women aren’t ashamed of their sexuality anymore, and they certainly aren’t ashamed of writing something this …all-consuming. I’d like to see you try!”
As she stood, her foot slipped on a stack of strewn bookmarks and she yelped, reaching for something to hold onto.
She found him – or, rather, he found her first, that hand returning just south of her lower back with much more pressure.
Her fluttering chest pressed flush against his, and she felt every hard muscle tense in his shoulders as she steadied herself against him.
Too close. Too much.
He was all she could feel: leg woven around hers to keep her from tipping, wide, brown eyes all she could see.
Every rise and fall of his breath provided a rough caress against her nipples, even through the thick knit of her jumper, and she imagined him thrusting her against the wall and kissing her until all of her anxiety and frustration dissolved.
Imagined hiking her legs around him, desperate to remember what hungry, abandoned pleasure felt like.
The shock of the image left her frozen. Where had it come from? She hadn’t even wanted that with Finlay, their lovemaking quick and simple and often only ending with one of them climaxing because she’d been too shy to tell him that she wasn’t done.
“Told you it’s full of safety hazards in here,” he murmured. She realised he hadn’t let her go, either, though her stability had returned.
“Yes, and I so appreciate the constant reminders,” she somehow managed to quip shakily.
At her tailbone, his fingers curled, and her core with them. Her underwear was already dampening, embarrassing proof of just how unused to being touched she was, even like this.
“I have a theory,” he said, eyes falling to her lips.
“About … what?”
“I think you quite like giving me a hard time.” His voice grew low, serrated, each word penetrating the heat between her thighs.
“What gave it away?” She was too dizzy to wonder if her sentences were coherent.
Every fibre of her shouted to pull away, remember herself, and yet she couldn’t force herself to.
Just for a moment, she liked the way he allowed her to forget the world.
Liked the way it felt to be the centre of his attention, too.
This stockroom might have been a page in one of her books for all the ways she wanted to absorb herself in it.
His knuckle trailed from her hip to the side of her breast, teasing. “I think what you need is an outlet for all that fire inside you.”
“I … I don’t know what you mean.” She was gasping like a fool, using the shelf to keep her upright when his arms didn’t feel like enough.
His nose touched hers, leaving her trembling. She could smell coffee on his breath, feel the way his shirt moulded to his broad chest. And, as her finger slipped against the cotton, the way his nipple had pebbled, just like hers.
He tilted, turning them both so her back pressed against the shelves. His thumb found her chin, setting another cluster of sparks free. “I thought you said women aren’t ashamed of their sexuality.”
“We’re not,” she whispered indignantly.
“So prove it.”
“I … I can’t.” Because her heart wasn’t just pounding with anticipation, but fear, too. She couldn’t trust this man. He didn’t want her. He just wanted someone .
But what was so wrong with that? She wanted someone, too. Didn’t she deserve to satiate her own needs?
When his grip loosened and he nudged some space between them, understanding and perhaps a shred of disappointment tainting his features, it didn’t offer the relief she’d hoped for. Only left her cold and unsatisfied.
So she stood on her tiptoes to draw him back, pressing her lips to his before she could change her mind.
He faltered in surprise, and then his hand was in her hair, providing a cushion between her head and the bookshelf as he kissed her.
His lips were rough, desperate, pulling her further into this strange, new corner of herself.
She didn’t have time to wonder what she was doing, why she was doing it, only that it was the first time she’d felt alive, real , in a long time.
She was no longer blended into the background while everyone else lived. She was here, and here felt right.
Crumbs, no.
Sense returned like an avalanche. She pushed him away, a hand rising to her tingling lips as she worked to recognise herself. Her own body. It felt like somebody else’s in all the places he had touched. “We … We barely know each other.”
His eyes were almost black: from the shadows of the stockroom or the lust broiling between them, she didn’t know.
“I know that I tried to get my coffee and go about my day this morning, and I ended up here instead. I know that I’m so hard, and so fucking weak, for you it hurts. Does the rest really matter?”
Yes. But she didn’t want it to. For just a few minutes, she wanted to take control of her life, her emotions, her body. And she wanted him to do the same. So she uttered a, “No,” and kissed him without trepidation.
He moaned into her mouth, urging her legs to wrap around him just like she’d imagined. His erection settled between her thighs, the friction of his jeans against her leggings enough to make her back arch.
Around them, books rained down as they kissed harder, faster, his mouth roving her neck and her fingers twisting through his soft hair.
“Please tell me you’re not wearing a bra.” Hungrily, he kneaded her breasts through her jumper. “These tits are all I’ve bloody thought about since last night.”
“Last night?” He couldn’t have wanted her then, when she’d made an utter fool of herself. Could he?
His smile was sheepish. “Your PJ top was a wee bit damp and more than a wee bit see-through.”
She stiffened, embarrassment returning, but he shook his head quickly, preventing her from retreating into herself.
“Believe me, I was trying to be a gentleman, but fuck, Eiley. You’re the sexiest, most terrifying woman I’ve ever met, even when you’re wearing dinosaurs.”
For that, she circled his nipple with her thumb, eliciting a hum of enjoyment that vibrated in his throat. Into her. “You say terrifying like it’s a good thing.”
“It is. Mostly. Though if you scream at me again, I’d like it to be for a different reason this time.”
Her toes curled, cheeks flaming. Nobody had ever said things like this to her before, and it left her both vulnerable and more turned on than she’d thought possible. Did he really see her as some force of nature, something powerful and free? She’d never been those things.
“Am I making you blush, firecracker?” He buried his grin into her neck, kisses turning rough now.
She squirmed, which only left his cock seated more firmly against her.
“You’re so full of it,” she managed to pant out.
His teeth nipped her collarbone, and she strangled a cry. “And I think you like it. Are you going to let me touch you?”
She nodded wildly, no longer able to conceal her desperation.
His hand was quick to sneak under her jumper, over her stomach, to her boobs.
She was wearing a bra, but like most of her clothes, it was designed for comfort over anything else, so he skirted beneath the wireless fabric with ease.
That he found any of it sexy was beyond her, but she didn’t have time to question it when he circled her nipple with the calloused pad of his thumb.
She ground harder into his crotch, wishing she didn’t need her hands to keep upright—
The sound of her name sliced through her stupor.
It wasn’t Warren calling her.
“Eiley, get out here now!” Her brother’s voice echoed through the bookstore.
She pushed Warren away as lust dissolved to panic, reality crashing down with the remaining books around them.
What the hell had she just done?