Chapter 8
Chapter
Eight
Nell unwrapped the bowl she’d bought at the Saturday Market and set it in the center of the dining table.
She then opened the earring box, running one fingertip over the hammered silver before she closed the lid.
Ryder had been so sweet to buy them for her.
It had made her feel a weird little thrill that he’d do that.
That he’d said they were pretty with her hair in that broken voice.
She turned to him and watched him standing across the kitchen drinking a glass of water.
His muscles filled out his shirt, and she imagined running her palms over the hard flesh.
Nell blinked and bit her lip. Then she turned and smiled to herself.
These thoughts weren’t unpleasant. It was just so strange to start wanting her friend like this.
They ordered Thai food and ate at the dining table while rain tapped the tall windows. Ryder turned his phone toward her, and they went back through the photographs he’d taken. Nell noticed how many of them were of her.
After they ate, they carried the cartons into the kitchen.
She rinsed while he wiped the counter. The kitchen was narrow enough that he had to angle past her to reach the sink.
It was such an ordinary movement, it shouldn’t have meant anything.
But tonight she was hyperaware of the exact width of the space between them, and the fact that he’d been careful not to close it.
It was almost like she could feel him holding back.
Her wren was flying against the walls of her mind, trying to reach for him.
They sat together on the sofa and put on a cooking competition.
She couldn’t keep herself from tracking his every movement.
The shift of his weight, the pause before he laughed, the arm he’d laid along the back of the sofa.
When she laughed at a contestant scorching a pan, her knee pressed into his thigh, and his hand came down to rest on it.
She knew she could lean into him, climb into his lap, kiss him.
And he’d let her. She could feel the heat of him.
It was like she could hear his inner wolf howling for his mate.
Nell pursed her lips. She felt like she was going crazy.
One day, Ryder was her best buddy, her pal.
The guy she could tell a fart joke when she was feeling nasty.
Today, she could barely sit next to him without wanting to jump his bones.
“Is the couch okay?” she asked after the episode was over.
“Sure,” he said, his eyes scanning her face and dipping down to her body. He looked away, red crawling up his neck.
“I’ll get you a blanket.”
He always slept on the sofa when he slept over, whether they’d been up late watching horror films or drinking too many beers to drive home after finals. Tonight, she wanted to take him to her bed. She wanted to undress him, see what was inside his pants. Touch his…
Nell cleared her throat as she dropped a spare pillow on the coffee table. She lingered, watching him as he finished spreading the blanket. The way his ass filled out his jeans made her mouth water. Her inner songbird trilled, flapping its wings. He straightened and looked down at her.
“Hug?”
He opened his arms and Nell fell into them. The warmth and safety she’d always felt with Ryder was still there. She clutched the back of his shirt, not wanting to let go. When she felt him harden against her, she backed up, breaking the embrace. “Good night,” she said as he turned away.
“Night. Bestie,” he said, his voice hoarse.
She looked at him for a second before turning around and walking down the hall to her room.
She closed the door, feeling like a maniac.
She couldn’t understand any of these feelings.
Sure, she’d felt aroused before. She’d had deep feelings of love for her parents, feelings of loyalty and friendship to Ryder, Stella, and Reese.
But what she was feeling now, this intense longing.
This inescapable desire for the man who had just been her best friend, it was impossible to understand.
When she’d first met Ryder, she couldn’t make herself speak above a whisper.
Ryder had sat on the floor of a hotel room and talked about nothing so she wouldn’t have to.
He’d been her safe space ever since. But nothing about this felt safe anymore.
She lay down in the dark and listened to the rain and let herself want him.
In the morning she put on the silver earrings after showering and getting dressed.
“They look good,” Ryder said when she stepped out of her bedroom.
She tucked her hair behind her ear. “Thank you.”
After coffee and bagels with cream cheese, they drove to the International Rose Garden.
The rain had passed and left water standing in the folds of the blooms. The beds stepped down the hillside in long rows.
The roses bloomed in brilliant hues of red, pink, yellow, white, and orange.
Some roses opened wider than Ryder’s hand; others clustered in sprays no bigger than a nickel.
Nell bent over a deep pink rose and breathed in. “This one actually smells like a rose.”
Ryder lowered the camera. “What did you expect?”
“The yellow one smelled like pepper.”
He leaned beside her and inhaled. She watched him take in the sweetness that was heavy enough to taste.
They worked down the rows, stopping whenever one of them found a bloom the other needed to see or inhale.
He photographed rain caught on a red petal, an orange rose lit from behind, her hand next to a miniature.
She found a cluster of pale roses with pink deepening at the edges of the petals. “These are so pretty they look like a painting.”
She bent close to study the way the color ran out toward the rim and looked up at him over the blooms, and the shutter snapped.
He was looking at her the way she looked at a set of records she’d finally understood, and it made her cheeks warm.
She turned back to the roses so he wouldn’t see her blush.
On the lower path she reached for his hand. She’d decided on it four steps earlier and then done it fast, the way she did anything she’d talked herself into. He threaded their fingers together and smiled down at her. She led him toward a row of apricot-colored roses and inhaled.
“Smell this one.”
He bent beside her. “Peaches.”
“Mm-hmm.”
They sat on a bench above the lower beds. She rested against his shoulder, and he turned his hand under hers so their palms met.
“What time do you need to leave?” she asked.
“Not yet.”
She settled in closer and they stayed until the sun came off the wet leaves and she felt too hungry to ignore.
They ate sandwiches near Washington Park and got back to the apartment mid-afternoon. Ryder sent photographs of their weekend to a printer that would mail them to her.
As the afternoon light faded outside the windows, he carried his bag to the door. Her heart dropped at the realization that he really did have to leave.
“I don’t want you to go,” she said.
“I don’t want to either.”
She stood, walked over to him by the door, and put her arms around his waist. He held her and didn’t let go. She knew he wasn’t going to make the first move. He’d been not-moving-first since he got here. He would stand here all night being careful with her instead of doing what they both wanted.
Nell lifted her face and rose onto her toes.
His mouth came down to meet hers. The first brush of his warm, soft lips made her mind go blank.
Not the way fear made it go blank, all narrow and loud.
This was wide open and quiet. Her hand went behind his neck.
He kissed her more deeply, making a growling sound in his throat.
She opened to him and let out a soft moan.
She had been afraid, somewhere underneath, that this would be the place where her trauma took over.
That her body would confuse being wanted with being taken.
It didn’t. There was only Ryder’s hand at her waist, his breath, the ordinary miracle of a mouth she’d looked at a thousand times and never once tasted.
Heat flooded her body, and she knew if she didn’t stop now, they wouldn’t stop until they’d claimed each other. That was something Nell was not ready for tonight, so she let him go.
“I’ve wanted to do that since you opened the door yesterday,” Ryder said.
She smiled. “I’ve wanted to since the match.”
He laughed and pressed his forehead to hers.
“Call me when you get home,” she said.
“I will.”
He picked up his bag. She opened the door and he went out into the corridor fast, as if he stopped he wouldn’t leave. At the stairs he looked back. Nell stood in the doorway with two fingers against her lips. He gave her a smirk and a little wave before turning and disappearing down the stairs.