Chapter 5
COLE
She puts the stuffed bear on the couch like it owns the place.
White, ridiculous, roughly the size of a piece of luggage. She arranges it against the armrest, tilts its head, steps back, and nods like she’s hanging a painting. I grab two beers from the fridge and twist the caps off.
“That thing is not staying there.” I hold out her beer.
“His name is Gerald.” She takes it, and her fingers brush mine. The contact hums through my whole hand. “And he lives here now.”
I lean against the counter. She leans against the one across from me, close enough that our knees could touch if either of us shifted forward. “Gerald.”
“You won him.” She tips her bottle toward me. “You should’ve thought about the consequences.”
Dahlia. Hip cocked, beer in one hand. Sunburn across her nose.
Powdered sugar on her collar, and I’ve been hard since she licked it off her thumb three hours ago.
All I could think at that picnic table was how I wanted to lick the sugar off her lips and keep going, move my mouth down her neck and her collarbone and the swell of her tits above that neckline, down her stomach, between her thighs.
I wanted to drop to my knees right there and bury my face in her pussy until she screamed my name.
My body hasn’t come down all day. Her thigh against mine on the Ferris wheel.
Her ass grazing me in the ride line. I’m hard right now just from watching her lean against this counter, and I don’t want this day to end.
I don’t want to go to the guest room and close that door because what I’m feeling is so far past lust that it scares the shit out of me.
“That booth guy’s face,” she says, grinning behind her beer. “When you hit the twelfth target. I thought he was going to cry.”
“He was overcharging. Five dollars a round for a rigged sight.” I take a pull of my beer.
Dahlia steps closer to bump her shoulder against my arm. “You adjusted for it in two shots.”
“One. And I still hit the target on that shot.”
She shakes her head. “Show off.”
She’s close enough now that I can smell her hair. Sunscreen and fried sugar and the salt on her skin. Heat floods up the back of my neck, and my cock needs to be inside her more than I’ve needed anything in my life.
“You’re the one who picked the biggest prize on the wall.”
“Go big or go home.” Her shoulder is still pressed against my arm. “That’s my motto. It’s also why I screamed on every single ride, and you just sat there like a statue.”
“I wasn’t a statue.” My arm is burning where she’s leaning into it.
“You didn’t flinch. Not once,” she says, though I know she’s teasing me.
“I flinched.”
She tilts her face up at me, and her mouth is right there. “When?”
When your back hit my chest in that line and your ass grazed my cock, and I couldn’t move without exploding in my jeans.
When you licked sugar off your finger and looked up at me, and every thought in my head went white because I wanted you licking my cock and looking in my eyes when you do.
When you leaned into my hand on the midway, and my whole body lit up so hard that I couldn’t see straight.
“The Gravitron,” I say. “Little bit.”
Dahlia laughs. She’s laughing more than when I picked her up Friday night, and I’m proud to have given her every laugh. Every time I hear it, the desire in my veins burns hotter and hotter, and I don’t know how much longer I can hold back.
“You know what my favorite part was?” she asks. “Not the rides. Not the bear.” She looks at me over the rim of her bottle. “The Ferris wheel. When we stopped at the top, and you said that thing about my smile.”
“I meant it.” My voice comes out lower than I intended.
“I know you did.” She sets her beer down, and her hand finds my forearm, her thumb pressed lightly against my wrist. “That’s why it matters.”
Dahlia does an impression of the ride operator, some kid trying to look tough while running a machine that was built before he was born. It’s so dead-on that I laugh harder than I have in months. Possibly years.
She stares at me with her beer halfway to her mouth. Her lips are parted and her eyes are wide and she’s watching my mouth with an intensity that makes me catch my breath.
“I haven’t heard you do that before,” she says softly, her hand still on my arm.
She’s so close that I can feel the heat coming off her skin.
If I turn my hand over, her fingers will be in mine, and then I’ll pull her in and my mouth will find hers.
And she needs to know this isn’t just tonight.
It’s Dahlia. All of it is Dahlia. Every minute since I picked her up at that damn bougie restaurant.
“You’re the only one who makes me laugh like that.”
One second she’s staring at me, and the next her mouth is on mine, hot and open, and my whole body ignites. She tastes like beer and sugar. I grab her waist and pull her close. She moans against my lips, a soft, needy sound that goes straight to my cock. I’m so hard so fast my vision whites out.
Her fingers twist in my hair and pull. I groan into her mouth and lift her onto the counter.
Her legs wrap around my waist, and the heat of her through my jeans makes my cock strain for her hot pussy.
I grind against her, and she gasps and rocks into me.
I’d better slow down, or I’m going to come before I’ve even gotten started.
Dahlia pulls back an inch, leaning her forehead against mine. She makes a sound, half-laugh, half-moan, and tugs me back in. This time, it’s all tongue, and my hands shake on her hips.
I pick her up. Her legs lock around me, and her arms circle my neck, her mouth never leaving mine. I carry her to the couch and go down with her straddling my lap. Her hands find my shirt buttons. She gets three undone, gives up, grabs the fabric, and pulls. A button pings off the coffee table.
She laughs against my mouth. “I’ll buy you a new one.”
“Burn them all.”
I exhale hard as she shoves the shirt off my shoulders and flattens her palms against my bare chest. Her hands are so hot. Everywhere she touches me, my skin comes alive, my nerve endings firing in a wave that rolls straight to my cock.
Her hands slide up my stomach, and my muscles clench under her fingers. I inhale sharply as her thumbs drag along the ridges, and every place her skin crosses mine flares white-hot.
She finds the scar on my collarbone and pauses there with her fingertips on the raised edge. “What happened here?”
“Shrapnel.” My voice sounds like somebody else’s. “Long time ago.”
Dahlia looks at me for a beat, then dips her head and presses her open mouth to it. Tender. My throat locks, and my hips buck up hard. She gasps and grinds down against me. I grip her hips and pull her tighter into my lap, and the friction through two layers of denim makes me groan.
I pull her shirt up, and she lifts her arms, leaning back so I can remove it to reveal her white bra.
The kitchen light catches the flush spreading down her neck to the tops of her breasts, and my hands freeze in the air between us.
I run my thumbs slowly along the lace edge, following the curves.
Goosebumps race up her stomach, and her breath quickens.
I unclasp it one-handed and ease it off.
“Jesus, Dahlia.”
The freckle below her left collarbone. That tiny brown fleck on all that bare golden skin, and my hands won’t stop shaking. I’ve rappelled out of helicopters under fire with steadier hands. Right now, I’m trembling.
“You’re staring.”
“Can’t stop.”
“Don’t.”
My thumb brushes across the freckle. Her skin is so hot under my fingertip that my cock aches.
I cup her breast, and she’s so soft that I’m scared I’ll break her.
My thumb teases her nipple, and she arches hard into my hand, her lips falling open on a moan I feel in my cock.
Her nipple stiffens under my thumb, and I do it again, slower.
“Right there.” Her voice is barely there. “Cole.”
My vision blurs at the sound of my name in her mouth while my hands are on her. Her head tips back, and her hips roll against my lap.
“Tell me what you want.”
“Your mouth.”
I pull her in and put my mouth where my hand was.
Her skin is hot and salt-sweet under my tongue, and her body arches into me, pressing against my chest. She cries out, running her fingers through my hair, clamping her thighs around my hips and rocking in my lap.
I’m so hard it hurts. She moans my name again, and the sound hits me low in the gut before spreading through my whole body.
I want Dahlia in my bed. Not just tonight. Every night. Her face on my pillow, her laugh in my kitchen, that freckle under my mouth whenever I want it. The intensity of how deeply and how fast I’ve fallen in love with her should scare me, but it doesn’t. It just makes me hold her tighter.
She pulls back to look at me, breathing hard, lips swollen. Her eyes drop to my mouth and come back up. Her chin lifts, her eyes steady on mine.
“Stay with me tonight.” My voice is raw.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Dahlia pulls me back in, and this kiss is deeper, slower. Her hand cups the side of my face, and her thumb strokes my jaw. My body jolts from a touch that barely weighs anything.
She moves her lips up to my jaw and scrapes her teeth there, light, testing, and my fingers flex hard into the muscle of her thighs. Her lips find the scar on my collarbone and press there, soft and unhurried.
We freeze at the sound of a key in the lock.
Her legs are around me, my hands under her thighs, her shirt on the living room floor, mine somewhere behind the couch.
The door opens and Jared stops. Looks at Dahlia and me, Gerald next to us on the couch. His face turns hard.
“What the fuck is going on?”