Chapter 11 #2
She looked down at her drink and smiled into it, and for a second, the candlelight moved over her mouth in a way that made the rest of the restaurant blur behind it.
When she glanced back up, she was softer around the eyes.
“That’s what I liked about you too,” she said, bringing the conversation back around. “No switch-up.”
We talked a little longer after that. Real things.
Little things. The way our families are.
What tired us out. What made us feel looked after in ways that had nothing to do with money.
By the time we left the restaurant, I knew how much she hated being disappointed after finally allowing someone in.
Up at Grandview, the city opened beneath us in layers.
Downtown glittered across the river, bridges lit in long gold lines, headlights moving through the streets like sparks that had somewhere to be.
The Monongahela caught pieces of light and broke them apart.
The stadiums sat off in the distance, the Incline tracks cut dark against the hill, and from up there, Pittsburgh looked softer than it had any right to.
All that steel, water, brick, traffic, history, and stubborn beauty laid out beneath the night like the city had decided to let us see its good side.
We stood at the railing for a minute without rushing to fill the quiet.
Talia knew how to let a moment breathe. I liked that more every time I found out another way she could do it.
“You know what I think?” she said finally.
“What?”
She turned toward me, one hip against the railing, hair catching a little in the breeze. “I think you know exactly how to make a woman feel like she’s got room to exhale, and that probably gets you in more trouble than whatever slick shit you say after.”
I laughed under my breath. “That what you think?”
“I do.”
“You saying I’m safe?”
Her eyes lifted to mine. Thinking and feeling at the same time.
“I’m saying that’s where women get fooled,” she said. “By men who feel steady.”
I stepped closer, not crowding her, just close enough to make the distance honest.
“And you?” I asked. “You trying to act like you don’t know what that does to a man?”
Her gaze stayed on mine.
“No,” she said. “I think I know exactly what it does.”
I touched the side of her neck, my thumb just under her ear, and her breath changed immediately.
Mine did too.
For a second, I just stood there with my hand on her, feeling the soft warmth of her skin and the quick little pulse beneath my thumb. She looked at me like she knew I was caught between sense and want, like she could see the fight in me and wasn’t sure yet which side she wanted to win.
That look went straight through me.
When I kissed her, I kept it slow because I knew exactly what would happen if I didn’t. The edge was too close already. Her mouth opened under mine, soft and sweet and sure, and my hand tightened at her neck before I made myself ease up.
We were outside.
People were around.
And this woman was making me forget the whole world had access to us.
She kissed me back like she knew it too. Like she felt the same pull and respected it enough not to rush straight into it. Her hand came to my chest, fingers spreading there for one breath, then curling just enough in my shirt to make my body remember every place I wanted that hand later.
I pulled back before I gave myself a reason not to.
Her eyes opened slowly.
Damn.
That scared me more than it should have. Not because I thought she would hurt me. Because wanting her was starting to feel less like appetite and more like invitation. Like if I kept stepping closer, I was going to find myself somewhere I couldn’t play off as chemistry anymore.
And still, all I wanted was more.
By the time we got back in the truck, the quiet between us had teeth. It wasn’t awkward. It wasn’t unsure.
It was full.
Full of the city behind us. Full of what we had not said. Full of her sitting beside me in bronze and gold, smelling like temptation, while I gripped the wheel and tried to act like the night had not just shifted under my feet.
I put Joe on low through the speakers, something from All That I Am warm and aching enough to sit in the dark with us without trying to own the moment.
The city moved outside in glints and shadows while I pulled us back through downtown, streetlights sliding over the windshield, bridges lit ahead of us, the river catching pieces of the night and breaking them apart.
Talia’s hand found my thigh again.
At first, it seemed absentminded. A light glide of her fingers over my denim while she looked out the window, her face turned toward the city like she didn’t know she was destroying my concentration one soft pass at a time.
I caught a breath and kept driving.
Her fingertips moved again. Slow. Barely there. Just enough pressure to make my dick swell hard behind my zipper.
The song kept rolling.
Joe in the speakers.
Her hand on my thigh.
My jaw doing everything it could not to tighten.
At the next light, she looked over at me and really saw my face. Then her gaze dropped.
I watched her realize it.
The set of her mouth changed. Her lips parted. Her hand stayed where it was, but the touch stopped being accidental. She let her fingers drift inward, quiet as sin, until the back of her knuckles brushed the hard length of me through my jeans.
“Fuck,” I said, low and immediate.
Her eyes lifted to mine.
There was surprise in them. Want too. A little reckless streak of it that matched what had already started happening in my body.
For a second, we just stared at each other while the light turned green and the car behind me gave one impatient tap of the horn.
I drove.
Turned at the next corner.
Half a block later, I pulled behind a darkened building where the streetlights fell off and the rest of the city seemed to mind its own business. The lot was quiet. Empty enough. Tucked away just enough to make what we were about to do feel possible, which was dangerous in itself.
The truck had barely stopped before I was reaching for her.
She came without hesitation.
One second, she was in her seat. The next, she was in my lap, knees bracketing my hips, mouth on mine like she had been holding that back since dinner.
I kissed her hard enough to feel her gasp against my mouth, one hand at the back of her neck, the other dragging her closer by the waist until the heat of her settled right where I was aching for it.
“Talia,” I breathed against her lips.
She answered by kissing me harder.
That did something to me. The certainty of it. The way she moved like she knew what she wanted and had finally quit asking her better sense for permission.
I had wanted women before. Desired them. Missed them in the shallow, physical way a man could miss a body once he knew what it did for him.
This was different.
Too fast, maybe. Too much, probably. But there was a rightness in the way her mouth fit mine, in the way her hips settled over me, in the way her fingers dug into my shirt like she had been looking for somewhere to put all that control and had chosen me.
It scared me a little, and yet, I still wanted more anyway.
My hand slid up her back, found the opening in that bronze dress, and met bare, smooth skin. She shivered against me, and that little tremor went straight through my chest, down my stomach, and settled mean behind my zipper.
I pulled the top of her dress down.
The sight of her breasts spilling free in the dark nearly took my head off.
Her nipples were already tight, pretty and deep brown, and I got one in my mouth before I had enough sense to do anything noble. She moaned and rolled against me, slow at first, then again, her hips finding the hard line of my dick through my jeans and using it.
“Shit,” I muttered.
Her hand went to the back of my head. Fingers in my hair. Holding me there while I sucked her deeper, while her body rocked over mine and the whole truck filled with heat, music, and the sound of her trying not to come apart too loudly.
My free hand slipped between us, beneath her dress and over the soft inside of her thigh. She opened for me before I asked, trusting me with that small, silent invitation, and it almost ended what little sense I had left. I found the edge of her panties, pushed them aside, and touched her.
Wet.
So wet my fingers slid through her with no resistance, and my whole body went still for half a second because feeling it was worse than imagining it.
“Talia.”
Her breath caught. “Micah.”
I looked down between us, at my hand disappearing under bronze fabric, then back up at her face. Her eyes were heavy now, dark and bright at the same time, her mouth still swollen from kissing me.
“You been like this?” I asked.
Her hips moved against my hand. “Don’t ask me that.”
I pressed the pad of my finger over her clit, slow enough to watch the answer move through her body.
She gasped.
“Yeah,” I said, voice rough. “You have.”
Her forehead dropped against mine for one second, and I felt her breath break against my mouth. “You are so damn…”
“What?”
She kissed me instead of answering, and I smiled into it because that told me enough.
Then I slipped two fingers inside her, and the smile almost went right out of me.
She was wet and hot, gripping me so tight her whole body jerked before I had even started moving.
“Fuck.”
That was all she had at first, and I shouldn’t have liked it as much as I did. Talia always had a thought ready. A line. A look. A way of making the room feel like she had measured it and found it amusing.
But this?
This was her body telling the truth before her mouth could dress it up.
I held her close with one arm around her back and my fingers buried deep in that slick heat while my mouth moved from one nipple to the other.
She started rocking over my hand, slow at first, then with less patience, her hips finding their rhythm in my lap like she had forgotten the city existed outside those tinted windows.