Chapter Twelve
LITERARY STALKER
Four hours. I spent four hours watching foreign television just so I could stare at Cage and feel his heart beating against the palm of my hand.
Eventually, I had to pee. Stupid bladder.
My hunky guy—yes, because I’d already claimed him—was dead to the world as I maneuvered myself out from underneath him.
After a trip to the bathroom, I decided it was my time to pass out as well.
I’d hit my magical wall and the world went black.
The piercing sound of bending metal jolted me from my sleep, panting and sweating. It was the same nightmare. Same sounds. Same feelings.
“Just a dream,” I whispered to myself between labored breaths as I sat up.
A sliver of light escaped the bottom of the bathroom door and the shower was running. Yesterday happened, it wasn’t a dream. That thought alone eased the anxiety from my nightmare. I reached for my phone on the nightstand.
“No. Way.”
Propped up at the base of the lamp was a notecard.
CHAPTER THREE
It made no sense. What? How? Why? I slipped on my leg and went straight to the bathroom, barging in without warning.
“Chapter Three?”
“Fuck! Lake!” In the shower, Cage turned his back toward me.
The condensation-covered glass doors obscured my view of his naked backside, but only a little.
My brain made a mental note, as brains do best, to freak-out in the form of a very private happy dance over seeing his amazing body.
However, my mouth had its own agenda that seemed to be a few steps ahead of actual brain-powered thoughts.
“You’re responsible for these notes? The one in my carry-on and the one … oh my gosh, you hired Flint to get me out of jail? You sent that kid to return my car? And you gave me that note?”
Cage cleared his throat. His hands were pressed to the shower wall, head bowed. “I’m in the shower. By any chance is this something we can discuss in maybe five minutes and not in the bathroom with me naked?”
Then it happened. My brain caught up with my impulsiveness. Damn! NFL man of my dreams was so hot. I had to just take a moment and stare. There was physically no other choice. Ass muscles, glutes … Whatever. I loved a man with defined ass muscles, and his legs, back, and shoulders … magnificent.
“Lake Jones, are you getting in the shower with me?”
I wiped my brow. Man, it was hot in there. “Wh-what? Um … no.”
“Then get out.”
“Oh … OK.”
I left. As soon as I plopped onto the bed, I screamed into the pillow, my body jerked in every direction. It was too much for a girl to take, so I grabbed my phone and texted Lindsay.
Lake: I’m in Beijing with the man of my dreams and he’s in the shower. I saw him naked and we haven’t had sex. I’m dying. What do I do?
I tapped the screen of my phone like my impatience would expedite her response.
Lindsay: Please tell me it’s not that Jerry guy.
Lake: No. Football guy from Omaha.
Sadly, that was Cage’s code name between me and Lindsay. She knew the whole “one day, one everything” experience I had three years earlier. However, she didn’t know anything about our chance encounter in Minneapolis.
Lindsay: THE football guy? NFW!!!!
Lake: Gotta go. The shower just shut off.
Lindsay: Hurry, ride him before he gets dressed. Just do it, babe!
Lake: I’ll see what I can do.
Yeah … no, that wasn’t happening. Words were my thing. I pretty much talked nonstop, but “Before you slip on your clothes could you let me ride your cock?” was not in my wheelhouse of phrases I felt confident saying to a guy.
The door opened. The sexiest man alive stepped around the corner in jeans and a faded green T-shirt, hair still dripping.
“Were you serious about me getting in the shower with you?” Another classic example of my mouth going rogue. That was not on the teleprompter. I was supposed to address the notecards.
Cage rubbed the white towel over his head then tossed it on the back of the desk chair. “Typically if a woman comes into the bathroom while I’m in the shower, it means she wants to join me.”
I frowned. “Oh. Is it typical for women to walk in on you while you’re showering?” Still, I was way off subject, but a more pressing matter took precedence.
He chuckled, shaking his head. “No.”
I tried not to act too relieved, but I most certainly was.
“Why the notecards?” I pulled the sheet up over my chest; it hit me I wasn’t wearing a bra. Was it fair that I guarded my T-shirt-covered nipples after gawking at him completely naked? Probably not.
“You don’t remember?”
I remembered everything, even things I pretended not to remember because I didn’t want to look like a loser with no life. Chapter titles and notecards? That, I didn’t remember.
I wrinkled my nose. “I don’t. Tell me.”
“Nope. You’ll eventually remember.” He laughed a little. “I’m actually glad you don’t remember. It will make a bigger impact when you finally do.”
“You cannot be serious. You’re not going to tell me.”
“Nope.” He sat on the edge of the bed, bringing his clean, soapy scent with him. I crossed my legs under the sheet, hoping to ease the miserable ache that developed from his close proximity. “Can I see your leg?”
“Um …” I rubbed my lips together. I didn’t see that request coming. “Sure.” I flipped the sheet off and uncrossed my legs. I wasn’t embarrassed or ashamed. I’d learned very early on to not hide it. That was me, all of me, one hundred percent complete.
“May I?” His hand hovered over the end of my leg.
I nodded.
Cage brushed the pads of his fingers along my leg, making the occasional glance up to my eyes.
“Does it freak you out?”
He smiled and shook his head. “Nothing about you freaks me out … well, barging in on me in the shower freaked me out a little.” His hand moved up my leg.
I tracked its path, part of me begged him to keep moving north and the other one percent thought he should stop. I considered that one percent a glitch that would work its way to the other ninety-nine percent if he just kept going.
“I didn’t see anything. It was too steamy.”
Lie. Lie. Lie. Why had it become so addictive?
Cage smirked, meeting my eyes. “You saw nothing?”
CAGE
What are you doing? I chanted over and over in my head.
I lied. She freaked the living hell out of me and it had nothing to do with her leg.
It was the feelings—the goddamn girly-type feelings that I had around her.
I couldn’t control the things I said or the way I felt any more than I could control my growing erection.
Sure, I wanted to touch her leg as a gesture that it didn’t bother me, but I really just wanted to touch her. My hand moved up her leg on its own accord. Lake sucked in a quick breath. I paused, but her expressive, blue eyes told me to keep going.
That was my defense. Her eyes said yes. And her nipples?
They gave me a standing ovation. My God, could her light blue T-shirt have been any tighter?
Any thinner? The shorts though, they were tiny and with her leg bent I could see her white panties, and I swear they looked wet.
I was painfully hard. The room felt over one hundred degrees, and every three seconds I had to gulp down copious amounts of saliva because I craved her so fucking bad.
She wet her lips again and again and again.
Each time I wanted to lean in and do it for her.
I moved my hand up a little more. Lake sucked in another quick breath, but those eyes still pleaded for me to keep going.
I wanted, I needed to know if her panties were in fact wet, and I needed to know just how wet I made her.
I’d gone rogue, leaving my responsibilities behind and likely my starting position as well—all for a girl.
The only sounds in the room were the echoes of the city outside, my constant swallowing, and her puffy breaths that escaped every time her pink tongue darted out to wet those lips I wanted to taste again.
Another inch or two, my hand worked its way up her leg until my thumb rested on her inner thigh a half inch from those white, wet panties.
She didn’t say anything. Why didn’t she tell me to stop or grab my hand?
Why didn’t I stop on my own? I wanted to kiss her, but my desire to watch her react to my touch won.
“Lake, tell me to stop.”
She just stared at me, lips parted.
“Lake, tell me this is too fast. Tell me what’s going on between us is crazy because …” My eyes flitted between hers and my hand high on her leg.
“Because…” she whispered “…it feels like we’ve known each other forever. Like that one day three years ago held the significance of every day before it. Because on the one day you needed to feel a connection to life again, I showed up at your door. I was your connection.”
She did. She knocked on my door when the pain, anger, and loss were just too much. I was so mad at my dad for leaving me, for giving up, for dying. Nothing in my world made sense until I opened the door that day, then magically, everything made sense.
“Yes,” I whispered.
Lake nodded. “I know because you were mine too. You confirmed what I’d been trying to convince myself of for the previous year—not one single yesterday mattered.”
LAKE
I wanted him to touch me, but more than that, I wanted him to know I felt everything he felt the day we met. Those feelings never went away for me; they became the standard to which I compared all other feelings. Sure, I wanted sex—hell, I was desperate for it—but I wanted more than sex with Cage.
I wanted the man.
I wanted him.
I wanted to always remember that all my yesterdays didn’t matter.
When he looked at me, when he touched me … that became my reality, my truth.
“I haven’t had sex in a long time and even then it was—” I slapped my hand over my mouth.
Cage started to remove his hand from my leg, and I stopped him with my other hand.
“Don’t stop,” I mumbled then removed my hand from my mouth, biting my lips together, hard.
His expression went from confident and sexy to slightly mortified and utterly confused.