Chapter 5
Chapter five
Luca
Is this a bad idea? Undoubtedly, yes.
Am I going for it right now anyway? Also, undoubtedly, yes.
I claim Callie’s mouth, meaning to be tentative, but the way she meets me halfway destroys my reservations and my resolve.
Is it playing on repeat in the back of my mind that the only reason she’s doing this is because she wants something from me?
Yes. Because I’m rich, and she’s already confessed that her family is desperate? Also yes.
I had issues with that before the accident, but it’s twice as bad now.
Now, with a face that definitely isn’t pretty and being one step away from a hermit—a rich hermit who can cook, but basically a hermit nonetheless—it’s hard for me to gather up enough self-esteem to believe that this crazy amazing woman wants me as badly as I want her.
I tell my brain to fuck off, but it doesn’t listen. It’s hard to be yourself when yourself means being scarred and alone.
I know she signed the paperwork, but still. How much does that really protect a person when it comes right down to it?
Her fingers thread into my still-damp hair, clenching the strands as she opens her mouth and deepens the kiss. She was going to say something, and I surprised her, but she’s not surprised anymore.
There are a thousand reasons why this is a bad idea, the foremost being that I don’t do casual sex. I’ve never done casual sex in my life. Is it better or worse that this doesn’t feel so casual, and this woman doesn’t feel like a stranger?
She feels like one of the only people on this earth who gets me.
Even when I was in contact with many different people, when I had friends galore and met a surge of humanity on an almost nightly basis, when I was invited to industry events and private parties, when I was constantly surrounded by noise and glamour, I don’t think anyone got me the way Callie did within just a few minutes of meeting me.
If she’s fake kissing me because she has a plan, then she’s very good at it.
She’s good at how she whimpers as my tongue strokes hers.
She’s good at the way she tastes like cherries, as though she couldn’t resist sneaking a few from the ingredients she bought on the way over here.
She also smells like strawberries in the summer.
She’s kindness itself, and it pours out of her, wrapping around me like fragrant smoke.
She drags her teeth along my lower lip as she draws back, unleashing the feral side of me that I can barely keep in check.
“You’re a good kisser.” She doesn’t say that like she was expecting the opposite and is happy to be proven wrong.
She says it with a heady dose of wonder, blown pupils, and the softest smile with her kiss-swollen lips.
The last brain cells I was using to think and reason with shrivel up as rapidly as water-starved plants under an unrelenting sun.
“Thanks.” I know the side of my mouth is hard with scar tissue. That it’s not normal, and she just felt it. She doesn’t have a weirded-out, sickened expression though.
“Luca, I—”
I kiss her again before I lose my nerve, starved for the feel of her, the taste of her, and the sounds she makes.
It’s not just human companionship that I need after all this time.
That’s not why I’m so desperate to kiss her and touch her.
It’s because I lay awake all last night thinking about the woman who broke into my life like a storm, shattering all the preconceived notions I had about the world.
She kisses me back just as eagerly, scrambling for my hands and setting them at her waist. I help hoist her up onto the counter when she tries to climb me.
After I give her a boost, she gets up with ease.
She straddles me, parting her lovely legs in the ripped-up black skinny jeans.
Do I love that she’s wearing a velvet shirt to make pies?
Yes. Do I love that it has a tiny bow and black lace right at the neckline?
Also yes. And red chains hanging from the belt loops of her jeans with little hearts on them? Yes, yes, and yes.
She’s not just charming because she sees the world so differently from anyone else. She has great style, and she’s an artist, in a way, even if she says she works at a soul-sucking job.
“Did you have to cancel work to be here?” I ask, only now thinking just how ridiculously presumptuous it was to invite someone to my house in the middle of the day, disregarding their schedule completely.
“I work remotely from home. I can get it done at any time.”
“Ahh. The advantage of the internet.”
She nods. “That’s right.”
I lose whatever it was I was going to say next when she grasps my shirt by the lapels and tugs me to her.
She practically bruises my mouth with her eager kisses.
She’s an artist in that way too. She makes me feel beautiful and desired, sexy and wanted.
When she’s kissing me, my glaring imperfections don’t feel so imperfect.
She wriggles on my lap and grinds her hips against my erection.
I let out a hiss of half pain, half pleasure.
It’s been a good long while since the accident, and no one has touched me in anything other than a medical way since then.
Even my parents—before they leave here—hug me goodbye like they’re afraid I might shatter.
Honestly, for a good long while after the accident, I couldn’t bring myself to even touch myself. I purposely killed any and all sexual feelings I might have had. It seemed utterly pointless to give myself pleasure when I knew what I looked like.
That thinking might not have been correct, and it might even have been harsh and harmful, but it’s just me being honest, and if I can’t be that, then what am I?
I thought about Callie all night. Her eyes. Her soft smile. Her laughter and the way it made her dark eyes dance. Her charm. And the way she seemed to so effortlessly give the world a big middle finger. I’ve pretty much been hard since dinner.
With Callie grinding herself along my length while punishing my mouth in the sweetest way, and her hands starting to unbutton my shirt, it’s enough to make shivers rake up and down my spine, to cause my balls to draw up, and to make me want to come, here and now.
I didn’t see myself ever having this with anyone again.
Logically, but also, I never let myself even go there in my head as a hypothetical scenario, because it’s just torture.
It’s like offering a thirsty man a drink and then taking it away and dumping it all over the ground in front of him with a cruel smirk. Life was that smirk.
To say I’m not absolutely terrified right now would be a lie.
I’m petrified that I’ll embarrass myself and come before she even takes me out of my pants. I’m also terrified that I won’t, and we’ll do this, and it will be incredible.
And then she’ll leave, and I’ll never see her again.
Or maybe she won’t leave, and she’ll see who I really am, all the good and the bad and the less than glamorous. Vulnerability might be even worse than loneliness.
She jerks the rest of the buttons on my shirt open and yanks it out of my pants.
I try to help her, but she knocks my hands away, slips my suspenders off my shoulders, frees one arm and then the other, and tugs the shirt out and away before righting those straps and giving them a good snap against my bare skin.
I hiss, but so does she. Her tongue peeks out to wet her lips.
“Oh my god, I had fantasies about this. About what you’d look like with no shirt on but with the suspenders still in place. And the answer is hot. Incredibly hot.”
“Are you sure?” I reach for my shirt, but she pushes it onto the floor.
“Am I sure that you look fucking gorgeous? Yes. All that working out has done wonders,” she says appreciatively.
“Are you sure about this?” I ask.
She grasps the button on my pants and pops it open, nodding in concentration before sliding my zipper down.
“I can think of a thousand reasons and probably a thousand more as to why this isn’t a good idea.”
“Me too,” she admits. “We don’t even know who we are.
But then… maybe we do. Even if we don’t.
” She presses her palm against my heart, which happens to be beating faster than the insanely inadvisable highest setting on an industrial mixer.
“Maybe we know here.” Her eyes suddenly cloud over, and she winces.
“Even if there are plenty of other things we don’t know. That’s my truth.”
“I haven’t done this in a long time. I might not be any good at it.”
“Yeah, well, me too.”
“I’m older than you,” I point out.
“Age is just part of the story. There’s so much more. So much more I want to give you. Will you forgive me for not telling you right now?”
I have no idea what she’s talking about, but the way her eyes well up is a kick straight to the chest. My heart squeezes viciously. “Only if you’re not telling me that you’ve been sent on a mission to have pity sex with me. I’d never live that down.”
“Never. I’ve never lost my mind like this over anyone.
I don’t do this. It’s ironic that I usually have to know everything about someone before I can even find them attractive, but I wanted you before you even turned around, and then a thousand times more after you did.
I’ve purposely never had casual sex before because I thought it was a good way to get hurt, but the only times I’ve been hurt haven’t been from doing that.
It was from people who should have known better, who should have been kind, who should have guarded my heart, but didn’t. ”
“Are you sure this is what you want?” I ask.
“I’m sure. Unless… is this what you want?”
“It is, but…” My hand hovers over hers.
“But it’s kind of crazy and complicated, and maybe we should know each other better first instead of banging like animals in the springtime right here in the middle of your kitchen where anyone could just walk right in?”
“I… maybe.” Maybe as in duh. What the fuck was I thinking?