Chapter 12 #3
Aravind skated a touch up my spine, and I fought the urge to kiss him. “Do you seriously have to stay here though?”
“I’m hoping to find a place tomorrow. They have me rooming with my teenage nephew.”
“Oh, good. So neither one of you gets any privacy. And you have nowhere to jerk off to the memory of me stuffing my panties into your mouth.”
“Christ,” I gasped. Then I felt him tip his head up and thought, Fuck it.
And I kissed him.
Aravind groaned, threading fingers into my hair and tugging until I was rock hard and ready to throw him on the ground and rut against his lithe, gorgeous body until I came.
But I had a feeling my sister-in-law would definitely call the cops if I did that.
“Stay with me,” Aravind whispered.
Those three words ripped me out of my head, and I pulled back. “What?”
“Stay with me. I have a place. It’s like ten minutes from here, so you can come back for…I don’t know, whatever Canadian white people do on family vacations. BBQ spiceless vegetables to serve with too much mayo and fries covered in gravy? Sing kumbaya by the fire—”
“Shut up,” I growled and kissed him again.
He laughed against my lips, but the sound died off after a second. “I’m serious. My place really is just down the road.”
I took a breath. “Aravind…” He tensed the way he always did when I said his name, and I wondered if I was fucking it up that badly. “I don’t want to encroach on your family vacation.”
He snorted and laid his cheek on my shoulder.
The position was so comfortable, so intimate, I didn’t know what to do with it.
“First of all, I’m alone. My aunties aren’t coming in until Wednesday, and my dad’s busy dealing with end-of-season NHL coaching shit he has to wrap up.
Second, if they were here, they wouldn’t care.
My aunties would be over the moon at having another person at the house to fuss over and feed. And my dad fucking loves you.”
I liked his dad. A lot. Rohan was one of the best coaches I’d ever met.
But it was hard for me to say yes. I was used to giving pieces of myself to other people for their comfort. Not the other way around.
“I have an idea,” Aravind said before I could answer. “You come stay with me for—however long you want, I don’t care. And I’ll come with you to your family stuff.”
“Oh.” That sent something like fear skittering up my spine. “I don’t know.”
“I can tone down my whole…thing, if you want me to. I know I can be a bit much—” he started.
“Oh my god, no. No. That’s…it’s not that. Jesus.” The horror I felt that he’d think for even a second I’d want him to dull himself for my fuck-ass family was too awful. “I just don’t want to subject you to them. They’re not nice.”
“I’ve met worse,” he said flatly.
“I’m sure, but…”
“Look, we’re both petty bitches, right? So what’s pettier than you parading around their house with your gorgeous boyfriend who’s wildly in love with you.”
In spite of myself, in spite of the truth, hearing him say he was in love with me sent my head into a spin. I knew it was just to fake it. I knew I’d never be worthy of a man like him.
But it gave me a hunger I didn’t realize I was capable of feeling, and it took me a moment to answer him.
“It would be kind of nice to shut them up about how sucky my life is going to be.”
He laughed and brought his hands down to my hips, squeezing them. “Exactly. So go inside and tell them you thought I was caught up in a work project, but it ended early, and I surprised you with a beach house by the cove.”
It was too fucking tempting. Propriety told me to say no. Want told me to say yes.
“And we can definitely make use of the week we have before my family gets in,” he added.
My face heated. “What, ah…what do you mean?”
“I think you know what I mean.” He was quiet for a second. “You had fun, right? On the ferry?”
“Yes,” I breathed.
“We could have more fun doing that while also pissing off your family, and if you stay even longer, you could take some of the attention off me when my aunties get here, which will make it a nice quid pro quo, Clarice.”
I couldn’t stop my smile. “They won’t mind you dating a white boy?”
“Oh, they’ll give me shit about it, and you’ll have to prove you can take spice. But honey, trust me. They are going to love you.”
“And when it’s over?”
Aravind was very quiet now. He took in a breath and let it out. “I think maybe you’re not so bad. Friends could be nice, right?”
“Friends could be nice.”
Giving him up would wreck me, but it was honestly the best of all worlds.
“Just tell your parents that I had to take a job back in Bangladesh and you had to stay here for hockey reasons,” he said. “Tell them I cried and wailed and cursed all the gods for taking you away from me and that I vowed to never touch another man so long as I lived.”
I laughed again. “They would never believe that.”
“Trust me,” he said, his gentle fingers tracing my jaw, “when I’m done with them, they won’t doubt those words for a second.”
Fuck. This really was going to kill me.
Bowing my head, I gave in. “Alright.”
“Amazing,” he whispered, and then he took me by the chin and sealed it all with a kiss.