Chapter 13 #2
“As long as there is no one else in your heart.,” he said. “And honesty you’re smarter than me so being selective is very you.”
“Selective,” I repeated.
“Yes.”
The word hit me somewhere I had not expected.
I laughed despite myself.
And then, because the room had become too full of truth not to finish the whole thing, I looked up and said, “I wanted you.”
His entire body paused.
“In the cave,” I said, voice lower now. “I wanted you and you had all this self-control.”
His eyes were on my mouth.
“I do not want you deciding for me what I can handle because you found out something about me that makes you think you should.”
“What do you want,” he asked quietly.
The room seemed to shrink around the question.
I took a breath and made myself answer without flinching.
“I still want you.” My throat tightened. “And I don’t want you to treat me like I’m delicate or anything.”
The air in the library shifted.
His jaw moved once. His breath changed.
Then he took one more step.
My heart was pounding with hope.
“Kelly,” he said, and his voice had gone so low my name felt less like language and more. “Thank you.”
“For telling you I’m still a virgin?”
His jaw moved into an almost smile. “For trusting me with the truth.”
My eyes stung unexpectedly and I felt tears on my cheeks. I laughed once to cover it and said, “If you make me cry in your family library, I’m quitting and going home now.”
“Good to know.”
He was close enough now that the heat of him now.
“You want me now.”
My skin pulsated with heat. “Yes.”
His eyes locked on mine. “I want you too.”
I was lightheaded.
Then he said, very carefully, “And I’m not going to turn this into a lesson or a conquest or some performance of being careful with you.”
Oh, that got me.
I searched him and whispered, “Good.”
He agreed, very slightly, like a man accepting terms in a language he respected.
“I’m not going to stop wanting you,” he said. My pulse pounded more. “I’m also not going to use the fact that you want me against you later.”
I laughed a little though it was honestly the hottest thing anyone had ever said to me in my life.
I brushed against his arms and we both had goosebumps. “You are making this incredibly difficult.”
“How.”
“By handling it well.”
One side of his mouth finally tipped. Real this time. Brief. Destabilizing. “I can try worse.”
“No. Don’t you dare.”
He gave me exactly one second to recover and then said, “Come here.”
That hit low and immediate.
His expression tightened. “Kelly.”
I tugged on his shirt to bring him closer.
His hands came to my waist immediately and he was familiar.
I tipped my face up.
For a minute he didn’t move and I said, “Yes?”
He bent and kissed me, slowly.
He was hotter now and clearly his kiss knew things.
His hands held my waist and nothing else.
I kissed him harder for that.
He made a low sound into my mouth that went straight through to a pulse in my core.
I was in trouble.
His lips pressed together against mine with a kind of hunger that made me want to both sink into it and tear through all of it at once. This time when he tasted me, there was no question in it about whether I wanted him back.
He was learning me.
His thumb brushed once over the side of my waist, under the edge of my dress, and that tiny movement nearly made me whimper.
He stopped immediately and he hulled back half an inch.
I put it back. There was no point hiding what my body was doing, I laughed breathlessly and said, “Keep going.”
His mouth moved against mine again, almost a smile. “Good.”
Then he kissed me once more, deeper this time, and his hand slid back under the fabric enough to feel skin and then no farther.
My head tipped back slightly with the effort of not dragging him where I wanted him.
When he finally broke the kiss, both of us breathing harder than either one of us should have been from standing still in a library, he kept his forehead against mine and said, “You tell me when.”
I closed my eyes. I was done for.
I opened my eyes and gazed at him.
He was wrecked too and that made me feel a little better about my own state.
“Good.” I whispered and pressed my forehead briefly into the side of his jaw.
His hands stayed where they were.
After a moment, I stepped back first and we looked at each other.
“I should go before I do something irresponsible,” I said.
His gaze dropped briefly to my mouth and back up. “That seems wise.”
“I hate when you agree with my bad ideas.”
He tilted his head. “You think leaving is a bad idea.”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
I almost laughed again.
Then I looked at the door, looked back at him, and asked, “You’re not disappointed?”
His expression moved, just enough.
I nodded once because anything more would have required me to discuss feelings, and I needed sleep to have the strength to follow though.
I needed to be awake for him. At the door, I turned back once.
He was still where I’d left him. Hands in his pockets now. Watching me with that same unreadable, too-focused expression that had become the single most destabilizing visual in my life.
“You know what’s annoying,” I said.
“What.”
“The fact that I trust you more now.”
Something in his face softened.
“Good,” he said.
I rolled my eyes because if I didn’t, I was going to do something deeply undignified, like admit that I liked when he said it.
Then I opened the door and left before I could change my mind.
The hallway felt cooler.
Somewhere farther away, someone laughed, Charlie, probably. I made it halfway to the stairs before I realized I was smiling.
I went upstairs with my body still humming from the kiss and the conversation and the way he’d said you tell me.
We both wanted more.