Chapter 3 #3
"Because you're so fuckin' adorable!" he says, the words seeming to explode from him, sudden and intense.
"Adorable?" I echo. "Please elucidate."
He snorts again, this one openly derisive. "Yeah, no clue what that word means. I'm an uneducated bumblefuck, sweetheart. Gotta use small words with me."
"A bumble…what?"
He laughs, shakes his head. "Just a dumb word I made up to be funny."
"Oh. I see. Well, elucidate means to explain. To make clear."
"Got it." His thumb seems curious, drifting across my upper lip; I dart a glance at his eyes, and they follow the path of his thumb, as if there is something fascinating about my lips. "Not sure what there is to elucidate, Cadence. You're adorable. Cute. Fascinating. Funny."
"I did not tell a joke."
He shakes his head. "No, you didn't. But there's lots’a ways to be funny."
"Nor was I attempting to be funny."
"I know, sweetheart."
"So if I did not tell a joke and was not attempting to be funny, how was your laughter not directed at me?"
“It was directed at you, but not with a mean spirit.
It was…fuck, I don't know how else to put it.
The way you said that—'very well, I shall wait,'" and here he chuckles again, grinning and shaking his head.
"So fuckin' cute. Just makes me laugh. "I just think you're so goddamned cute I have to laugh. "
"Ah," I say. "I begin to comprehend. You find me entertaining in the way one finds babies funny when they do something that is inadvertently comical."
"Yeah," he murmurs, tracing his thumb over the seam where my lips meet. "Except you sure as hell ain't a baby."
"No, I am not. I am a fully grown woman of twenty-four years."
"And a really, really beautiful one," he says. Before I can process this, he steps back and turns away. "Lemme get changed real fast. Just hang tight and I'll get you fed."
"Riley," I call, and he stops, turns, and glances at me. "You need not make haste on my account. I shall not perish of hunger if you wish to shower as well as change."
"You sayin' I stink?" His expression communicates merriment, I believe—he is teasing me.
"No!" I protest. "You do possess a…erm…musk following your exercising, but I…I confess I do not find it altogether unpleasant. I merely wished you to know that I am content to wait, should you desire to take longer to prepare for departure than a swift changing of your clothes."
He grins, turning back and stepping closer to me than before—so close all I can see is him, all I can smell is him. And his scent is…problematic. Before I can ruminate further on this, he sidles even closer, and now he is no longer grinning. He is searching me intently, his expression serious.
“‘A certain not altogether unpleasant musk," he murmurs to me, repeating my words. "Meanin', you like how I smell."
"I…um." Warning, warning, warning! Pheromone levels are peaking. "My subconscious is reacting to the androstadienone in your sweat, creating a pheromonal response over which I have no control."
"No clue what an andro-what-the-fuck even is, Gorgeous, but I know what a pheromone is." He's close—so close. So big. So…muscles. And…skin. And heat. Everything is upside down in my brain and body. "But what I hear you saying is…you like how I smell."
"No, I…yes. Sort of." In refusing to look at his eyes—because I cannot—I find myself staring at his chest.
Beads of sweat drip and trickle, and a shaft of sunlight streams through the window to turn the beads of sweat into glittering diamond drops. I want to touch one. I want to touch him.
"Go for it," he murmurs. "I don't bite."
"Eeeep!" I squeak. "I said that out loud?"
"Eeep?" He echoes. "Did you just say…eeep?"
"No. I did not say anything. It was an involuntary ejaculation."
His head drops and his shoulders shake. "Ah shit. Don't say it, Rye. Do not fucking say it."
"Are you speaking to me?" I ask, absolutely baffled.
"No, to myself, " he whispers. "I'm tryin' so fuckin' hard to be a good boy, Cadence. I really fuckin' am."
"I do not understand."
His eyes, twinkling with mirth, search my face, a soft, kind, amused smile on his face. "Yeah, I'm startin' to get that. You're all kinds'a innocent, aren'tcha?"
He closes his eyes and lets out a slow sigh, a mannerism which I take to mean he is exercising extreme self-control; over what, I cannot say. He circles my wrist with his fingers, holding gently, carefully, as if I am made of the most delicate porcelain, and lifts my hand to his chest.
I gasp at the contact—his skin is sweat-damp, soft to the touch yet hard as iron, and so warm.
I press my palm into the firm, springy muscle, and then dimple my fingers into it, and then slide my fingertips over the slick, soft surface, marveling internally at the way it feels… the way he feels under my hand.
Watching his expression carefully for signs that he wishes me to stop touching him, I allow myself to explore the hard expanse of his chest until my hand covers his heart.
I feel his pulse thudding rhythmically under my palm.
It is a hypnotic tattoo under my hand, and I find myself wishing desperately that I could put my ear to his chest and listen to it.
It is a dangerous thought, however. For one thing, I would never want to stop listening to it. And for another, I am acutely aware that a man like Riley Crowe is simply never going to want such intimacy with me. It is a fate to which I have long since resigned myself.
That final thought is sobering enough that I drop my hand and my eyes, stepping back. "I thank you for that, Riley."
Another of those soft snorts which I am beginning to realize can mean a wide variety of things. When I bring my eyes up to his face, his expression is too complicated for me to fathom.
"What does that laugh mean, please?" I ask.
"You. You are just too fuckin' much, girl. I can't with you."
It feels as if a rush of acid has filled my stomach. "I am aware that I am too much for most people. You needn't point it out."
Strong, rough, gentle hands frame my face. "Cadence, again, that is not what I was saying."
I am frozen in place, unable to move, to breathe, to do anything with the feel of his hands on my face—they have the texture of a cinderblock against my cheeks, and despite the gentility of his touch, I sense the incredible strength in them.
It is terrifying, overwhelming, mystifying, and deeply troubling how my body responds to his touch.
My lungs are blocks of ice. My stomach is a lepidopterarium.
My hands clench into fists at my sides, and my eyes are wide and fixed on his too-handsome face, as if I could read there the answer to my question: Why is this impossibly handsome and utterly confusing man touching me this way?
Why do my mammary glands feel so tight, so hard, so wickedly sensitive inside the dratted, awful, constrictive prison of my brassiere?
Why, above all, does my female sexual organ feel so…uncomfortably hot and damp?
Before my brain can supply the medical answer, which I am quite certain I do not wish to know, as it will do me no good, I retreat from him, taking two decisive steps backward, out of his reach. "You should have your shower, Riley."
He glances at his hands, for some reason, and then nods. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm going. Be out in a minute."
I am obviously mistaken, but it almost seems as if he is disappointed that I took those steps out of his reach. But that is patently ridiculous. I am not now and have never been and likely never will be the object of anyone’s physical desire, least of all a man like Riley.
No, it simply would not do to allow myself to germinate the seed of hope his innocently-meant touch inadvertently planted.
Instead of allowing my imagination to wander to the illicit, inappropriate, and sinful place of Riley in the shower, I turn my mental faculties to the much more important—and solvable—problem of my trip to Sudan.
Yet instead of considering solutions, my attention continually and frustratingly wanders back to his chest under my hand, and the searing bolt of electricity I felt shock my entire system when I touched him.
I simply must leave this place—this town, this home, and this man. I must. Before I become attached to someone who will not, cannot return that attachment.
Again.
Before I am heartbroken.
Again.