Chapter 28
SAM
Sam could be brave. She could be bold. Or, at least, that’s what she told herself when Charlie walked in the door. Now, seeing the almost shocked expression on his face, she wasn’t so sure.
“You mean that,” he said. A statement, not a question. Something about his tone, the softness and vulnerability reflected back at her through his eyes, stopped Sam from sputtering some lame excuse about her nerves. This was real. This was raw.
And she wanted nothing more than to drown in those gorgeous pools of blue.
She nodded slowly. “I mean that.”
Sam remembered when she was a little girl, dreaming of her happily ever after. She’d talked about her wedding, the dress, the flowers, how cute the groom would be. How they would run off together over the horizon and into the sunset.
Her aunt and uncle had been the worst role models for that.
There had been days, living under their roof, that she wasn’t sure why they were ever married in the first place.
Her aunt would roll her eyes at him in disgust. Call him names.
Tell him he was worthless. Her uncle would stick his tongue out at her when her back was turned, threw obscene gestures her way.
But she remembered how much love and affection her father had in his eyes any time he looked at her mother. That adoration and joy plastered to her mother’s face when she looked back at him.
It had been the model she’d referred to her whole life, even long after they were gone.
Standing there now, Charlie looked at her exactly the same way—like she was the answer to all his prayers.
“You… You said that the other night,” he whispered, his fingers touching her arm so gently that she barely felt it.
A resurgence of embarrassment flooded her. “I did?”
He nodded, a slow smile lazily pulling his dimples into place. “You did.”
“I did,” she repeated slowly, scouring her memory.
Why the hell didn’t she remember something like that?
She remembered the club. The lights, the music pulsating around them like a heartbeat.
The guy that had bumped into her. Charlie’s eyes when he intercepted them at the bar.
Then… nothing. Everything after that had been a blur.
Charlie chuckled, as if he could read her thoughts. “I take it you really don’t remember that part?”
She was absolutely horrified that no, she really didn’t remember that part. What did she do? How the hell had she had that much to drink that she couldn’t remember telling him something like that?
“Want me to fill in the blanks?” he asked, his fingers now tracing lazily circles on her arm.
She nodded, his words words like honeyed silk that wisped around her in a warm embrace. Embarrassment still flared low in her belly, but it was now intertwined with desire.
God, she loved his smile. She watched it widen and wanted nothing more than to drink from those dimples of his until this insatiable thirst of hers was quenched.
“The other couples started dirty dancing, and you wanted to try it.”
Her eyes bulged. “I did?”
“You did.”
“Oh God. You can kill me now.” She groaned, reaching up to cover her face with her hands, but Charlie stopped her.
“We started dancing, and you said that to me,” he continued.
“What did… What did we do after I said that?” she asked. Her brain was having a hard time keeping up.
He quirked a thick eyebrow at her. “What do you think?”
It was her turn for her eyebrows to shoot up her forehead. “Oh my God! Oh my God, Charlie, did we have fucking sex in a nightclub? Oh my God, I can’t believe I —”
While she was about to panic, Charlie, on the other hand, threw his head back and laughed.
That hearty kind of laugh that always tickled a part of Sam’s soul, that she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
Part of it held the little flame she’d always held for him there, fanning into a inferno now.
But it was his. Whatever it was in Sam’s soul, it was his. It would always be his.
He chuckled once more, low in his throat. “No, baby, we didn’t. Heavy petting and making out? Yes, absolutely fucking yes. Sex? No. What kind of monster would I be taking advantage of you like that?”
There was that name again. Baby. It was alarming how just hearing him call her that, in that low, sultry tone of his, made her to want to shed every article of clothing she had on.
And his.
She blinked a few times. “Remind me… not that I’m not thrilled to not have thrown myself at you in a drunken stupor, but… why didn’t—why didn’t we… You know?”
“I did not want the first time I fucked you to be against the wall of some dirty club,” he gritted out as Sam’s back met the kitchen wall.
It took her a moment to realize that they’d been moving, that Charlie had slowly been leading her to the nearest kitchen wall and now had her pinned there in front of him.
She had nowhere to go, and from the fire dancing in Charlie’s eyes, that’s exactly where he wanted her.
It was also, conveniently, exactly where she wanted to be.
How had she never seen this side of him before? This feral, carnal creature that talked smooth as silk and touched her like it was in his job description. Where the hell had this Charlie been hiding?
“That’s—That’s good,” she said before licking her parched lips. “I just… I didn’t think you… You know. I didn’t think you thought of me that way.”
“You didn’t?”
She shook her head. “No. I thought you offered to do this fake dating thing with me because you just didn’t want me to get taken advantage of by some random stranger. I thought you were just trying to be protective.”
He chuckled darkly.
“Do you really think I could stand the thought of someone else touching you like I have recently? I just… I just didn’t want to ruin everything between us.”
She shook her head, almost not believing what she was hearing. Charlie actually wanted her? All the touches, the looks, the kissing, it had been… real?
“I didn’t want to ruin our friendship either,” she offered. “I was afraid you wouldn’t want to be around me anymore if you knew how I felt and…”
His bright smile filled her vision. “Not possible. You are my favorite person, Sam.”
“I didn’t think any of it was real,” she continued. “I thought you were just trying to do what you thought a romantic lead would do.”
“How’d I do, then?” he asked, that cocky grin of his shining through once more. He was enjoying this.
How the hell was he able to do that? It was as if he could simply flip a switch, and she was absolute putty in his hands.
The Charlie she knew, the goofy one that always knew just what to say to make her laugh, instantly replaced with this effortlessly smooth-talking one that made her thighs clench together before she instinctively opened them for him.
“Very convincing,” she admitted after swallowing the moan at that being this close to him elicited. “I thought you just felt bad for me because I don’t have a lot of —”
“Felt bad for you?” Charlie interrupted indignantly, reaching up to rest his forearm above her head. “Sam, keeping my hands off of you has been the fucking bane of my existence.”
She diverted her gaze away from his just so he wouldn’t see how affected she was. Her heart fluttered in her chest with how close he was, the heat of his body radiating through to her core. That and… other places a bit further south.
Her brain was short circuiting to the point that she began to fear this was all a dream. A beautiful, lovely dream that she would wake from at any moment.
“Did you mean what you said the other morning?”
He furrowed his brows at her, appearing confused. “The other morning?”
“After I asked you to sleep in the bed with me. The next morning I thought you… I thought you wrote something on my back when I was asleep.”
Charlie’s eyes lit up. “You were awake for that?”
She nodded. “Did you mean what you wrote? Do you love me?”
She dug her nails into the palm of her hand in a desperate, final attempt to make sure she was grounded in reality.
This was really happening. Charlie wanted her, and she wanted him.
Emotions whirled like a cyclone within the depths of his piercing gaze, anchoring her in place.
She would happily swim laps in his eyes if she could get away with it, and if she played her cards right, perhaps she could.
The smile on Charlie’s face somehow grew. “Sam, baby, I’ve been in love with you since the day I met you.”
The words she didn’t know she needed to hear, so beautifully laid out before her. It was real. All of this had been real.
What had started as a silly little fake dating experiment to help her get research for romance had turned into something real. She hadn’t been imagining when he’d touched her, kissed her, held her like she was everything he’d ever wanted.
“I feel like, if this was in my book,” Sam said nervously, the words leaving her lips before she could stop them, “which I am totally not going to add, just to be clear, this would be the start of a spicy scene?”
She clenched her eyes shut, feeling stupid for saying something like that right now. However, she was met with the sound of his hearty laughter instead.
“Tell me what you want, Sam,” he demanded a little breathlessly.
His forearm strained above her as he lifted his other hand to cup her hip, as if it was always meant to be there. Her skin practically sizzled under his touch, and she could no longer remember why she hadn’t peeled his clothes off with her teeth before now—because she certainly wanted to now.
When she felt something hard poking her hip, demanding attention, her clit throbbed tortuously between her legs.
What planet was she on again?
“I think you know what I want. Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?” she asked while simultaneously willing herself to shut the hell up, but her voice failed altogether when he leaned forward and pressed his lips against her neck.
Goosebumps prickled to the surface beneath his lips, his mouth teasing her as he drew a long, delicious line from the bottom of her ear to the nape of her neck.
When he pulled back, she was trying desperately not to pant.
“Not just about that—I need to hear the words, Sam. I’m in this if you are.”
She blinked at him. In what? What was he asking again? The effect of his lips on her neck like that made her forget what her name was temporarily. “In what? What are we in? If it’s my vagina, then yes, please, I’m in. Or… You’re in? I don’t know which, but yes please.”
He chuckled warmly again. God, she loved his laugh. “Focus, baby. Us. Together. In a relationship. A very, very sexual one.”
How the hell she was still functioning, she had no clue.
“You’re-you’re serious?” she asked, and she could see the amusement splayed across his face.
Laughing without sound at the complete and utter way he had her in shambles.
If her brain could stop doing somersaults over the feeling of his body pressed up against hers like this, the lingering sensation of his lips on her neck, it might’ve functioned enough for her to realize he’d already covered all of this.
He’d told her he was in love with her.
He wanted to be with her.
So, why the hell was she malfunctioning right now?
“Yes, I am,” he said slowly. “I want this. Do you?”
His face was so close to hers, so close that she could feel the heat of his nose as it almost pressed into hers.
She tried to force it away, but a sudden sense of panic quickly gripped her.
She wanted this more than anything, but…
she couldn’t deny that it frightened her.
Things would change between them. For the better, obviously, but there was the distinct possibility that things might not work out. Then what?
She couldn’t live without Charlie by her side.
As she stood there, mulling things over, she realized she was standing there completely silent, staring up at him like a statue.
But Charlie didn’t push her. He didn’t pester or guilt her into responding before she was ready.
Instead, he stood there patiently. Watching her with this adoring softness as he waited for her to come to her own conclusion.
So, she said the one thing she did know. “I’m—I’m scared.”
Charlie released her hip and brought it up to cup the side of her face, the warmth of his hand like a comforting embrace all on its own. “I know.”
“Everything will change, and… and as much as I want things to change between us, it still scares me a little,” she admitted.
“I’d be lying if I didn’t say I wasn’t, too, which is why it’s taken me so long to say it.”
She licked her lips nervously. “But… But what if you change your mind and decide that you don’t actually want this? That you don’t want me? I can’t lose you.”
Charlie swiped a thumb across her cheek, his gaze filled with such warmth that it felt as if Sam stood directly in the sun’s light. “I want this, Sam. I want you. You will never lose me, ever.”
“You promise?” she asked, wanting more than anything to believe him.
He nodded. “I promise. You will never lose me.”
“I want this, too,” she whispered, melting a little at the gentleness in his touch.
“Then we give this a real shot. Deal?” He pulled his hand away and put it out for her to shake. She laughed but give it a firm squeeze, sealing the deal.
“Yes,” she confirmed. “So, what do we do now?”
The predator circling its prey emerged once more as Charlie pressed her body more firmly against the wall. “Well, for starters, I’m going to do exactly what I’ve been wanting to do to you for years, and then we can worry about semantics later.”
Consider her a rapt audience. What exactly had he wanted to do to her for years? She knew a few of the things she’d imagined him doing to her, and if it was anything close to that, she absolutely was on board. The possibilities made her quiver in his hands.
She gulped. “What exactly would that be?”
Charlie’s lips came down to her ear, the tickle of his voice as he whispered in her ear the final nail in the coffin. “I’m going to make you come as many times as I can until you pass out on my cock.”