Chapter 31
CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE
EMMETT
After all the time I’ve spent on my own, taking care of Aspen comes easy. Nothing feels forced about the way I squat in front of her, patting water from her bare legs while she sits on the counter.
She’s wrapped in a fluffy towel, grinning down at me, her eyes heavy enough that I’m not sure she could do it for herself if I let her. And although she insists it’s from the orgasms and not a long day on her feet, I don’t buy it.
“Stop looking at me like that.” Her tone is anything but affronted, even as she rolls her eyes at me.
“Like you’re the most breathtaking thing I’ve ever seen?”
Her lashes flutter against her cheeks, as if she didn’t expect that. “Like you think you know what’s best for me.”
“Considering I found you asleep in your car not that long ago . . .”
Her mouth drops open in mock outrage. “Never gonna let me live that down, are you?”
“Probably not,” I admit.
“Rude,” she fires back playfully.
Then she leans against the mirror, and when she thinks I’m not looking, buries a yawn in her shoulder.
“Funny. You seemed pretty happy with me five minutes ago ”
A lazy smile tips her swollen lips. “God. I thought you would be less smug with how reserved you were when we first met.”
“Sorry to disappoint.”
Aspen pouts dramatically. She’s so damn cute when she’s feisty.
“I think you like it,” I tell her.
She rolls her eyes, then lifts her shoulders, making her towel dip lower, and my eyes track it. “Maybe.”
When I tear my focus from the V of her cleavage, she’s still pouting.
“You’re going to leave and make me go to bed, aren’t you?”
Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. I pause, tossing the towel over my shoulder and bracing my hands on either side of her hips. She’s seen every inch of me, but the laziness of her gaze on my skin lights up every nerve ending in my body.
When she tilts her chin up to meet my eyes, there’s an uncertainty that I need to put to rest. Whatever this is between us, I’ve never done it before. I’m not sure what the hell I’m supposed to do with it, I just know I want to spend more time with her, and maybe she needs to hear that.
“No,” I say carefully.
“Really?” She sits up straighter.
“I’m not going to leave . . .”
Her head tilts as she scans my face.
“But?”
“I definitely plan on getting you into bed.”
She pouts, her perfectly kissable lips taunting me. “I’m not ready to go to sleep.”
Clever girl. She sees right through me, like only she seems to be able to do.
I didn’t so much as let her in as she snuck past all of my defenses before I even realized.
I never stood a chance. Still don’t. For all my faults, I’m not actually a dick where she’s concerned, and I want to believe that’s the reason for what I’m about to do.
“We don’t have to,” I hedge. “We could watch a movie or just catch up on your day.”
Aspen looks at me like I just told her we will be spending our night cleaning bedpans. The lines in her forehead deepen.
“You don’t like my plan?”
Her lips purse. “Caught off guard is more like it. I thought you’d want to continue what we started.”
“Three not enough for you?”
Heat fills her cheeks, and my ego swells. I did that to her.
“Logically, I know I can’t die from too many orgasms, but science has been wrong before.”
Smooth skin still warm from the shower slides under my palms and I hook my hands behind her knees.
“All I want is what’s best for you,” I explain, pulling her to the edge of the counter and shrinking the space between us.
“There’s no expectations here, and no rush.
I won’t be another thing pulling from you. ”
“You did wear me out,” she admits.
I wet my lips, ready to tell her exactly what I’m thinking.
“And you were perfect, letting me drain the day out of you. How could I not want more, though. You’re the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.” Every word is steady and earnest, but it lacks the heat of the dirty talk from earlier. “But right now, I just want to be near you.”
Her throat bobs and she nods. “A quiet night could be nice.”
“What would you be doing tonight if I weren’t here?”
“It’s riveting really; I’m not sure you can handle it.” She does her best to tease but I can hear the hoarse grit in her voice. My girl is spent.
“Try me.”
“Well, usually after my shower, I lie down with my book and warm up dinner then fall asleep before finishing either.”
If that doesn’t tell me what she needs tonight, nothing will.
The truth is, I like taking care of her a little too much. Like maybe making her life easier somehow balances out all the ways I’ve made other people’s harder.
“That’s what we’ll do.” I seal the promise with the brush of my lips against hers.
It starts as slow and innocent as I intend, until her hand finds the back of my neck, locking us together.
Her fingers twist in my hair and she pours everything she has into the kiss until it becomes something deeper.
Each stroke of her tongue and press of her lips stitches our souls together in a new way.
When we pull apart, it’s with pounding hearts and heat. Her forehead touches mine and our eyes lock. The look in her eyes has me stepping back, rubbing the back of my neck.
“I need to redress my wound—”
She shifts on the counter about to jump into action.
I shake my head, caging her in once again. “Angel.” The nickname comes out as a warning. “I can do it. You go crawl into bed with that book.”
“Emmett.”
“Not up for debate. I’m taking care of you for a change. Go. I’ve got the food too.”
“Thank you.”
I take her hand in mine, linking us together and helping her slide from the counter. Then I lead her through her room.
I pause at her dresser.
“T-shirt?”
“How’d you know.”
As if I could ever forget.
“You tend to answer your door half naked.” Continuing to the bed, I pull back the mint comforter and set the shirt down on her pillow.
“Only for you.”
The possessive part of me likes that answer far too much.
“I’ll grab us some food.”
“Not the spaghetti. It needs to be tossed.”
“Noted.”
While she’s relaxing, I root through her pantry and refrigerator. There’s not much. Unsurprising, considering the hours she’s worked since I’ve been here. Most of her meals seem to be from the hospital or takeout.
I do find a handful of frozen pancakes, some sausage, and a few other random odds and ends that I manage to turn into a respectable breakfast for dinner in under ten minutes.
And then, I’m piling it all on a cookie sheet and bringing it back to bed, stopping just long enough to grab her book off the coffee table.
She’s curled up against the pillow, scrolling on her phone, when I step back into her room.
“Before you laugh, you should know that breakfast for dinner is my speciality.”
I set the feast at the foot of the bed and join her.
“What kind of a monster do you take me for? Breakfast for dinner is sacred.”
“Thank fuck. I’m not sure I could overlook it if you were a pancake purist.”
“Never. It was a Tuesday tradition in our house for years.” She reaches for a pancake, sets a sausage on top of it and rolls it up before dipping it in syrup.
“It was always our busiest night with activities—my brothers both had practice or training and I had games.
My grandma would pick me up from school and take me to the gym.
“We’d be the first ones home so I’d help her make dinner so that when everyone else got home dinner was ready.”
I turn that over in my head as she takes another bite.
Breakfast was the first thing I learned to cook.
It was quick and easy, and the staples were cheap enough that I could usually sneak them without my parents noticing.
An egg and a few pieces of bread going missing while they were passed out wasn’t enough to draw their attention, unlike that time I got busted making mac and cheese after school without asking.
“Is that how you and your grandma got so close.”
Sticky syrup beads at the corner of her mouth and I swipe it away with my thumb then hold it up to her. When she’s finished chewing, she wraps her lips around it, sucking it off.
“Partially. She helped take care of me a lot—trucking me to practices and open gym when my parents had conflicts. They couldn’t have done it without her, and I loved our time together. It made me feel special.”
“Did it ever bother you that your brothers got more time with your parents?” I ask.
She rolls another sausage up then dips it, letting the syrup drip off.
“Sometimes, but my brother’s didn’t get Grandma the way I did. So it was a trade off.”
“Ah, so you’ve always been like this?”
Aspen pauses mid-bite. “Like what?”
“Selfless to your own detriment.”
“It wasn’t that big of a deal. They did their best and for the most part it didn’t bother me.”
I drop my gaze to my plate, cutting off another piece of pancake before glancing back at her. “But sometimes it did?”
She shrugs one shoulder. “Sure. Once in a while I wished I could have my mom or dad there if I had a really good practice . . . or a bad one.”
Her smile fades around the edges. “But it was easier for everyone that way. My practices were shortest and closest to home. I had the least gear and was always inside.”
“Easier for who?”
“For everyone.”
“For everyone except you,” I say quietly.
Aspen scowls over the rim of her water glass. “This is not the relaxing night you promised.”
Noted. She doesn’t like having the spotlight turned back on herself.
I grab the book from beside her pillow and flip it over, scanning the black-and-pink cover. “I’ll drop it if you let me read you a chapter.”
“Blackmail on top of character assassination?”
I grin. “I just happen to like you the way you are. There’s nothing wrong with caring about people.” I glance up at her. “I just think there should be room for someone to care about you too.”
Her expression softens for half a second before one eyebrow lifts. “Funny. Pretty sure the same thing could be said for you.”
The air shifts between us.
“Your past doesn’t define you, Emmett. At least, not the man you’ve shown me.”
And that’s my queue to crack open her book. I take a bite of the pancake and thumb to the bookmarked page—a whopping three pages in. I start at the beginning and read between bites until all the food is gone. Then the cookie sheet gets moved to the floor so we can stretch out.
She looks so right tucked against me that I lose my place more than once staring down at her.
Her eyes grow heavier and my arm starts tingling from the lack of blood but I don’t dare move. Instead I lower my voice and keep reading as she drifts off.
When Aspen falls asleep before we’re finished with the first chapter I replace the bookmark and set the book on the nightstand next to her lamp. Slowly I shift just enough to be able to feel my hand, but I can’t drag myself away.
I don’t sleep worth a damn, but I’d rather not sleep here than anywhere else.