Chapter 11 #2
“I keep going back and forth with myself,” he admitted.
“I know that the smart thing would be to ignore my feelings and not do anything that would put our work at risk. But honestly… I think it’s safe to say that whatever hope we had of keeping this platonic has pretty much flown out the window.
So if you’re up for seeing where this takes us, then so am I.
I don’t think we were meant to be a slow burn, Mariel. ”
I squirmed a little, wishing that his biceps would give in so that he would fall on top of me. “What if where I’m hoping this takes us is my bed?”
He ducked his head, but I could still see his grin. “Then I’m glad we’re already on it.”
“Did you just hair-flip me?”
“Did I just what?” He lifted his head again, looking half startled and half sheepish.
I couldn’t resist it—I reached up and caressed the curls above his temple. “Don’t you try to deny it, buddy. You know exactly what you’re doing when you flip your hair like that. How many people have you made fall to their knees just by doing that?”
“A couple,” he admitted, laughing. “I thought you’d be tougher than that, though.”
“Not when it comes to you,” I told him, tracing the curve of his ear with a fingertip.
And then we were kissing again, his mouth hot and needy on mine.
This time, we parted only long enough for me to tug at his T-shirt.
Dash straightened to pull it over his head—from my spot on my pillows, I had a great view of the defined contours of his abs, sheened lightly with sweat and gleaming in the pinkish light cast by my palm tree?shaped lamp.
When he shifted, his knee nudged me between my spread legs, and I couldn’t resist grinding down on his muscled thigh.
“Your thigh is so hard.”
“That’s not the only thing that’s hard,” he said, quirking up his eyebrow, and we let out breathless laughs.
He bent down over me again, and I skimmed the front of his chest until I reached the waistband of his shorts. “Do you want me to—”
“No,” he said, hunger darkening the honey in his eyes. “Keep going. I want to watch you get off rubbing yourself on me.”
I freed the skirt of my dress from where it had gotten trapped beneath his knee and spread my legs a little wider, grateful to the gusset of my panties for providing a muffling layer between his skin and my, uh, throbbing loins.
As good as it felt, though, my gaze kept straying down to the sizable bulge in his shorts. I had a good idea of what was contained within the light gray fabric, and I wanted it.
Dash caught my glance. Raising an eyebrow, he said, “Not yet,” and proceeded to scoot away from me, sliding down to his knees in front of the bed.
I would have protested, had I not felt his breath on the inside of my thighs a moment later.
Each brush of his lips against my overheated skin left trembles in its wake.
I tugged up my dress a little to give him access, then let my hand fall on his hair, which was so tousled from the flipping that I didn’t feel bad running my fingers through it.
“Don’t tell me you already forgot how impatient I can be.”
Dash glanced up briefly. “I know what you want, and I fully intend to give it to you. But first… I want to make you blush. And sigh. And pant.”
“Did you just quote the Duke of Harding?”
He winked at me, and it was a good thing I was lying down because I almost swooned. “I mean, if it worked on his wallflower…”
“If wallflowers are your kink, I’m gonna have to get myself a pair of glasses,” I said, feeling the hitch in my breath as his tongue delved into the crease of my thigh.
He made an enthusiastic sound at the idea of glasses, but all he said was “Can I take off your panties?”
“You have my permission to do whatever you want with my panties, Dashwood.” I let my head fall back, and as he peeled off my underwear and got to work with what I could only call artistry, I took a moment to check in with myself.
So far, I didn’t seem to be in danger of bolting.
The difference between this moment and the one immediately preceding my flail was almost tangible.
It wasn’t that I liked him any less or that I was less terrified about losing him, or destroying what we were beginning to build.
I just knew better than to think I could outrun the fear.
Dash was licking me like he was trying to savor me.
Had I really thought earlier that I could lose myself in Dash?
I couldn’t have been more wrong. This felt like finding myself.
Slow, sticky warmth spread over my limbs like syrup on a stack of pancakes, so that I was hyperaware of every square inch of my body.
All the places where pleasure pooled, where my skin tingled with awareness.
All the nerve endings in my palm as I touched the top of Dash’s head and the heated back of his neck.
He took his time, though he must have been uncomfortable with his knees mashed against the hardwood. It wasn’t until an orgasm was shuddering through me that he got to his feet.
His hands firmly on my ass, he lifted me clear off the bed and sat down on the spot I had just occupied, keeping me on his lap.
“Nice move,” I said approvingly, untwining my arms from around his neck so that I could explore the ridges of his shoulders and biceps.
“A purely selfish one. I get a better view this way,” he murmured, giving his hips just enough of a buck so that I could understand what he meant.
I moved off his thighs until I was positioned directly above the heaviness between his legs, my own thighs bracketing his hips like parentheses filled with an exclamation point.
Then I lowered myself, slowly, until my bare skin came into contact with the seam in his shorts and we both let out breaths that quickly turned into moans as I began to move against him.
He rewarded me with a cheeky “Attagirl,” which almost made me lose my shit right then and there.
And to think I almost hadn’t replaced the condom stash in my nightstand.
Gently, he eased the straps of my dress over my shoulders, wriggling down the fabric until my bra was exposed.
He removed it as skillfully as he had my panties, and when the faint breeze coming in through the half-open window swept over my nipples, I couldn’t help but arch my back—directly toward his mouth.
His lips closed around a nipple, dragging another moan out of me, followed by a breathless, half-strangled “Dashwood.”
“I love the way you say my name,” he said against my skin. “And the way you taste. Your skin is so sweet.”
There was so much I wanted to say to him. I felt like I was crammed with words that were trying to burst out. I held them back, even as my mouth parted to allow entrance to Dash’s questing tongue.
Maybe, if I didn’t fuck this up like I always did, there would come a day when the words would pour out without the fear that I’d say something to drive him away. Until then, I let the air thicken between us and I kissed him back, and I gave in to the pleasure of his skin.
“What are you doing?” Dash asked a few hours later, rolling over in bed.
“Checking our stats,” I said, completely unrepentant as I swiped through the Duke of Harding’s profiles. “Dash. Dude. Dash.” I scrambled into a sitting position, tossing off the cotton blanket clinging to my shoulders. “How is my phone not bursting into flames right now?”
He lifted himself up on one elbow, seemingly more interested in drawing a finger up and down my naked spine than in his views. “We got a few likes, huh?”
“A few? We’re going viral. Eight hundred thousand likes on TikTok and that’s just the teaser video.
There’s all these followers, and the comments, oh my god, the comments.
” I gasped out a laugh as I read the first few.
“I might have to print some of these out and stick them on my wall. I could wallpaper this apartment with the comments.”
I could have basked in the sweet, sweet glory of all those views, likes, comments, and shares, but I would’ve missed out on the best sight of all.
I tore my gaze away from the screen to grin at Dash and found him lying on his back, one arm folded behind his head and that bashful little smile tugging at the corner of his lips.
“I feel like Eliza Doolittle at the Embassy Ball,” he said. “Or Barbra after Kris Kristofferson got ahold of her.”
I gave him my best side-eye, modeled after Yaz’s superior one. “That would make me either misogynist Henry Higgins or reckless John Norman Howard—I’m deeply offended.”
Flinging my phone on the nest of clean laundry we had pushed to the floor, I rolled over to prop my chin on his chest.
Dash immediately put his arms around me, trapping me against the smooth skin of his chest. “Did you know that the first time you told me about your idea for the Duke of Harding, I thought it might be a ploy to hook up with me?”
“And you still messaged me?”
“I was intrigued. By the idea, but also by your passion. The way you throw yourself so wholeheartedly into everything… I mean, you can’t even look for something in your bag without running into inanimate objects. I have no doubt that’s a huge part of why the videos are doing so well.”
“I can think of another huge part,” I said, making him squirm as I reached into the sheets.
He grabbed my hand and twined our fingers together.
“Don’t you try to weasel out of this one.
If this is going to work out, you’ll have to accept that there are going to be a lot of compliments and a lot of mushy moments.
I’m going to gaze deeply into your eyes.
I’m going to kiss your hand”—he illustrated his words by brushing his lips over my knuckles—“and most important of all, I’m going to tell you, every single day that we spend together, just how amazing you are. ”
“You’re such a cinnamon roll,” I said, grinning.
Dash folded one of his arms behind his head, keeping the other one around my waist. “I fail to see how that’s a bad thing, considering your sweet tooth.”
“It’s not a bad thing. It’s a very, very good thing.” Purely for the sake of illustrating my point, I traced a delicate line over his collarbone with my tongue. His skin was salty with perspiration, but there was an underlying sweetness that was all him.
“Mmm,” I murmured, giving his neck a soft bite. “Just as good as a glazed donut.”
Dash’s laugh was full and ripe as summer fruit. “What flavor?”
“Lemon blueberry,” I said, without having to think about it. “With some sort of unexpected herb, like rosemary or something. Light, sugary, with just a hint of tartness.”
He looked at me through his eyelashes. “I’ll be a tart for you, if that’s what you’re into.”
My heart may not have stopped, but it definitely skipped a beat or two. “I didn’t know I was until this very moment, but yes. Please. But wait—put this on first.”
Swinging my legs over the side of the bed, I scrabbled through a heap of shimmery blue fabric until I found the necklace in my dress pocket, all the while praising myself for my foresight.
When I turned back around, Dash was looking at me with light in his eyes, like they were reflecting a starry night. At the sight of it, entire constellations bloomed into life inside me, bursting apart like fireworks.
“Don’t get used to this,” I warned him as I climbed back in beside him with the necklace clutched in my fist. “I’m too broke and I mess up too often for this to be financially responsible. But I, uh, I got you an apology gift.”
I poured the chain into his palm, trying not to look like I was scrutinizing his reaction as he turned it over in his hands.
“H for Harding?” he asked.
“And for handsome.” I shrugged. “I saw that you were wearing a necklace in one of your old videos and it looked so amazing on you.”
I’m blaming gravity and other irresistible forces for the way I melted into the crook of his arm, in the perfect position for him to trail the cool silver links over the swells of my breasts and my quickly tightening nipples.
“Put it on me?” he asked. “I need to be tarted up, like rock and roll.”
I gasped. “Did you just make a Velvet Goldmine reference? It’s a good thing I’m not wearing any panties, or that would have made me ruin them.”
“Are you kidding me? Velvet Goldmine was my sexual awakening.”
“Hard same,” I said.
The clasp was easy enough for even my lightly trembling fingers. When it caught, I ran my fingertip over the beads, right where they kissed Dash’s skin. The H nestled between his collarbones, highlighting the paleness of his skin and the round, defined muscles of his shoulders and neck.
I didn’t need to verbalize how beautiful I found him, but maybe I didn’t have to, because it was more than likely that it was written all over my face. Softly, I touched my thumb to the curled-up corner where his smiles tried to lurk.
“Thank you for the gift,” he said, pressing a sideways kiss to my thumb.
“It’s an apology,” I said. “For running away. And a promise to try my best to not do it again. Unless I’m being chased by like a bear or something, in which case I’d be justified.”
It wasn’t a deflection, not really, and Dash must have understood because he flipped me over with a growl. “I’ll chase you.”
My laugh got lost in moans as he devoured the side of my neck, his hands tracing a blazing path up the insides of my thighs.
“I’d chase you to the other end of the world if you wanted me to,” he whispered against my skin.
I moaned again, and arched my neck. Words, and the ability to do anything with them, were vanishing from my mind, but I managed a half-panted “I don’t think you’ll have to go that far.”
Later, when I felt myself getting sucked down into sleep, I groped over the bedcovers for his hand. It was warm, and it curled around me as if out of instinct.
I must have been drunk with sleep, because if I had been in my right mind, there’s no way I would have whispered into the dark, “Will you still be here when I wake up?”
He turned and pressed his face into the side of my neck. “I’m not going anywhere.”