Chapter Forty-Seven
Elle
The night grew blurry around the edges. We slowed down with the drinking but the fizzing in my bloodstream hardly had a chance to ease with me being sat on Stephen’s knee.
My cheeks were permanently flushed, my hair sticking to the back of my neck as the beat from the music vibrated through my chest.
Keisha and Boyd had to leave first and Caitlin went over to join the band for their wind-down set, whispering ‘go for it’ in my ear, along with a request for me to let her know how I was planning on getting home once I knew. My stomach flipped inside out at the implication.
There was literally no reason for me to still be sitting on Stephen’s lap anymore with the chairs empty around the table.
‘Have you seen the garden terrace?’
He shook his head and I led him out there. The night air was hardly any cooler than the bar but there was a slight breeze that made me shiver as it curled over my feverish skin.
Paved, with some simple wicker furniture, the thing I liked best about the terrace was the little wooden arbours positioned around, draped in fake ivy and fairy lights.
The buildings around it were high and close too, giving it a cosy sense of enclosure, but when I looked back at Stephen, he was rubbing his forehead, covering his eyes.
‘What is it? Has the alcohol hit you hard in the fresh air?’
‘No. Looking up at tall buildings sometimes makes me dizzy too, and we’re surrounded.’ He laughed ruefully but dropped his hand. ‘I’m fine though…as long as I look at you.’
‘So, what you’re saying is I am a good distraction from your fear of heights?’
‘The best I’ve ever come across.’ He smiled at me, teeth flashing, part seduction, part warning. My blood was syrup in my veins. I couldn’t do this anymore. I caught hold of a handful of his shirt and tugged him towards one of the arbours.
‘You won’t have to avoid looking up in here,’ I murmured.
He didn’t say anything, just followed me, moving further in and in, until I was in the corner, opposite the double bench seat and he was looming over me in the best possible way. My heart beat trembled in the base of my throat, in the pit of my stomach.
Mouth dry, I reached up and cupped his jaw. My ears were ringing after coming away from all the loud music and the shouting necessary to be heard over it. I could barely hear myself as I said, ‘Why does your beard look different?’
His dark brows furrowed slightly. ‘Does it? I didn’t trim it this morning, that’s the only difference to usual. I was trying not to wake you up.’
‘And yet you put the washer on?’ I teased, even though I was sliding the heel of my hand along his jaw line, obsessed with how the bristle of his hair felt against my skin. A pleasant tickle, faintly abrasive and definitely softer than it looked.
‘That model of washing machine is award-winningly quiet, so I weighed up the white noise against leaving my smelly running kit around.’ He smiled and my thumb lightly traced the crease it made in his cheek, the tiny dimple that couldn’t be seen beneath his beard, the perfect point where the line diverted back towards his chin. Beautiful.
‘You went running this morning?’ I had no clue how I was stringing words into sentences at this point. His aftershave had mellowed and was threaded with the salt of his skin, cool linen fabric softener and sweet alcohol.
‘If I don’t run in the morning, I probably won’t get a chance.’ He lowered his head and his voice, as he imparted it like a secret: ‘Stamina training is a priority for me.’
A bolt of heat flamed through my belly. Definitely time to stop talking.
I screwed my courage up, reminding myself that I’d already kissed him once.
Admittedly, I’d crept up on him unawares that time.
I went up on my tiptoes, my ballet flats popping loose at the heels, the hand gripping his shirt, tightening.
The tip of my nose nudged his and we were suspended there in a bubble of each other’s heat and audible breaths.
I tilted my chin up further, my bottom lip grazing his.
‘Wait.’
I gasped, that word from him a cold droplet of rain hitting my scalp. Was he kidding? I’d had more foreplay with him this one evening, was more turned on, than I’d been in the entirety of my relationship with Damon.
‘Wait?’ My voice was strained and I sank onto my heels, crushing the back of my shoes. But he followed me down, placing his hands against the wooden slats either side of my shoulders, caging me in. His forehead pressed to mine and he closed his eyes.
‘We are both pretty drunk.’ His voice was somehow deep and strangled at the same time.
‘All the better to give in to something we’ve been wanting to do for ages,’ I breathed.
He half-laughed. ‘Sure…but also…this isn’t the only thing you want, is it?’
‘Do you want me to draw you a diagram? Write a list of acts —‘
‘That’s not what I mean and you know it, Elle. You want things that I can’t offer you…and even if I could, I’m leaving at the end of the summer.’
Shit. OK. Now that wasn’t a droplet of cold water, that was a whole bucket.
Only I was still burning so hot, it just evaporated straight off of me.
Because I’d dated Damon, invited that dick to live in my home, and he wasn’t even fit to lick Stephen’s shoe.
I’d been so desperate, so confused, about how I kept failing in relationships that I’d tried to make it work with Damon and made an utter fool of myself.
And that didn’t mean I wasn’t desperate when it came to Stephen too.
But it was desperation of a different kind.
This slow ensnarement that at best would only offer me a summer fling.
I wanted more than that, but I also wanted Stephen, with a ferocity that scared me, and I knew the limits of what was on offer. It was a bad idea but, but…
‘I don’t care…’ And I didn’t. Not at that moment.
A million arguments were swirling in my head: my sister telling me how I should enjoy being young, free and single.
Keisha telling me not to over think it. And, even more so, how I was learning that he was capable of so much that neither him nor I had given him credit for.
And…oh God, I didn’t care. I just wanted him.
I was so utterly exhausted of trying to fight this.
‘You say that now—’
‘Why don’t we just see what happens?’ I smoothed my hands up his chest, the pure cotton of his shirt moulding to every tight muscle as my palms pulled it taut, up and up to the broad curves of his shoulders that I could barely shape my hands to.
He was so solid, so close. I couldn’t stand the thought he was going to stop this.
Not now. ‘I want you to kiss me, Stephen.’
My whole body ached as time stretched out and then—
‘Fuck.’ He framed my face with his hands, tipped it up towards him and his mouth landed on mine.
Hot, soft lips, pressing without a hint of hesitation.
We stayed locked in that first contact like we’d both stuck our finger in electrical sockets and were being held by the shocking connection.
And then his thumb stroked the vulnerable skin of my throat and we both opened to each other simultaneously, the synchronicity almost as seductive as the taste and feel of him flooding me.
Almost. I groaned embarrassingly loud with relief and sheer lust, but it just seemed to make him kiss me harder.
Finally. Finally.
I’d been so na?ve. So ignorant, to think I was craving him before.
My need for him detonated in nuclear style as he adjusted his hold on me, fingers tightening at the back of my neck and in my hair, and his tongue stroked mine.
I throbbed between my legs in time to the gloriously decadent pace he set.
I wanted it to never end and I wanted so much more.
Why did I instigate this here? I should have waited until we were at his place or mine.
I wrapped my arms around his shoulders, clinging tight, ready to climb him frankly. He immediately moved a hand to steady me, splaying long fingers across my back, the heat of his palm burning through my clothes, the strength of it making me weak.
He guided my head to the other side with purpose and confidence, thoroughly exploring me from another angle with the same single-minded hunger.
His beard brushed against my skin and my nerve-endings went up another gear of sensitivity, begging to feel the drag of it over my whole body like it could exfoliate the sheer longing from my pores.
I grabbed his bottom lip between my teeth, the same way he’d done to me on the Ferris wheel, only he’d been tentative and gentle — what with that kiss being a complete shock to his system, in the middle of a panic attack — and I was messy and over-eager with my greed for him.
He didn’t give me a chance to lick the bite better before his lips began an expedition around mine, sampling top and bottom, over and over, tender brushes, teasing licks into my mouth and the occasional slow, deep stroke of his tongue, timed just right to make me lose my ever-loving-mind.
Then my neck twinged and I tensed against the intrusion to this luxurious moment.
Stephen noticed, squeezing my nape in that way that he already knew helped.
But then his hand continued to move, down my back, following the curve of my spine, until he reached the point where his other already rested and he bent his knees, banded his forearms beneath my butt and lifted me up, so I was no longer straining my neck to kiss him.
Heat prickled at the back of my eyes as I dangled, weightless in his arms, shaken with the emotion rushing through me.
Did he realise how dangerous it was every time he showed he was paying attention?
That he cared about my comfort and pleasure and well-being?
I’d wanted this so much and now I had it, and it was overwhelming and somehow still not enough.
I wrapped my legs around his waist and my back met the side of the arbour, rocking it slightly.
His chest pressed to mine and his quiet moan had me tightening the vice of my legs because I wanted him to crush me.
One of his hands moved to my thigh, pushing up like he was savouring every millimetre of my skin, fingertips digging in, just the right side of hard.
He stopped, barely beneath the hem of my skirt, nowhere near as high as I wanted him to go, and in my impatience my hips inclined towards him, dragging me against the flexed plane of his abdomen and making me moan when a wave of pleasure radiated out.
He swore again, into my mouth, because he was still kissing me.
‘Come home with me,’ I managed around snatched breaths.
He continued to capture my lips, my tongue, my breath with such focus, I wasn’t sure he’d heard me.
I leaned my forearms on his shoulder, threaded the fingers of one hand into his hair, pushing the other into the open neck of his shirt, feeling his hot, satiny skin stretching over muscle and collar bone, and lost all sense of time and my surroundings.
I was alight, heat burning between my legs in reaction to what he was doing to me and all the things I wanted him to be doing to me.
‘Home,’ I tried again. A single-worded plea.
This time his mouth moved down my throat in reverent kisses, until he reached my shoulder and stopped, panting. ‘Not tonight.’
I should have been embarrassed at the whimper that crept out of my mouth, at the way I arched against him, but I was fully lost to this now. He gave my body more of his weight, the way I’d wanted earlier, the full sensation of his chest flush to mine, his heart thumping hard against my breasts.
‘We need to be sober.’ He took a few deep breaths and half laughed, half groaned. ‘Christ. I need to calm down. We’re at the bar.’
It might have seemed like he was stating the obvious but, desperation to get to my apartment with him aside, I’d forgotten that we were in a public place.
I swallowed, my lips still tingling with the feel of his, and managed to nod.
‘OK. OK.’
He eased me down to my feet, straightened my skirt, and bracketed my waist with his hands, supporting me as I wriggled my shoes back on. And then I looked up into his glittering dark eyes, the fairy lights sparkling in them like stars in the night sky. His lips so invitingly reddened.
I closed my eyes against the tempting view and laughed. ‘Tell me again why we shouldn’t go home together?’
‘We are drunk,’ he said it firmly, like he was convincing himself too. And then he sighed. ‘And I need to be up and out first thing.’
I dared to look at him again. ‘To go running?’
‘No.’ He moved back some but didn’t let go of my waist. ‘To visit that address.’
‘Did you look up where it is? I think you’re underestimating how long it takes to get there.’
He shook his head slightly. ‘How long?’
‘A couple hours. It’s in the suburbs, not the city.’
‘Shit. I can’t be late into work, if anything I need to be early…but if I don’t go soon…’ he trailed off, stopping himself from admitting that he might not go at all. My heart squeezed at the most obvious indication that, despite the obligation he felt to his mom, he was dreading it.
‘I could come with you? Whenever that is.’
He bit his lip and looked at me, solemn and almost surprised when he answered. ‘I…yes, OK. I’d appreciate that.’
‘You’ll call me to tell me when you’re planning on going?’
The warmth returned to his gaze. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow.’ He tugged a strand of my hair gently. The playfulness and the promise gave me goosebumps.
‘Of course, you wouldn’t need to call if I stayed over tonight.’ I smiled up at him and batted my eyelashes exaggeratedly.
‘You don’t give up, do you?’ He pressed a soft kiss to my mouth again, taking it no further, but I still melted under it…
and wondered if that was going to be the biggest problem when it came to this thing between us?
The way every time a man hurt or disappointed me, I swore it would be the last, and yet I kept finding myself believing that this time, it would be different.