Beck studied me for a moment. “And we don’t want that?”
I shrugged. “The neighbors don’t love it. Especially at this hour.”
“Right. Fair enough.” He nodded, saying, “Then we better get in there.”
I didn’t move. Not when my hand was in his possession and I had an idea what was coming next but also no ideas at all because what would really happen when we got in there? What would I say and what would he do and how would everything change? Itwouldchange, there was no arguing that. He would change and I would change, and the things that orbited us would change.
A grim smile stretched across Beck’s mouth because he knew it too. The only question was how much we were going to let that bother us.
“We don’t want to wake the neighbors,” he said. Unapologetically.
chapternineteen
Sunny
Today’s Special:
A Flight of Locally-Raised Rules
I should’ve anticipatedthe first thing that happened when we stepped inside the house because I knew my dogs. Most specifically, I knew Jem and the way he riled Scout up, and it should not have been a surprise that they bullied Beck the Bridge Troll to the floor within thirty seconds of the door closing behind us. He ended up flattened to the living room rug, paws on his chest and tongues lapping like he’d bathed in bacon, which led to the second thing I should’ve anticipated because I knew Beck.
He was kind to my dogs. More than kind. He wasgoodto them.
He treated them with the same interest and concern he had for my friends, his brother, Mel, and Hale. But the difference here was that he wasn’t stoic about it. He didn’t pretend to be cool or emotionless. He played with them, rolling around on the floor and not once attempting to dodge their slobbering inspection. He scratched behind their ears and clapped their flanks, laughing as they yipped and howled, and he talked to them like he’d known them for years. Like they were his.
My heart felt spiky and leaden in my chest as I watched my dogs give this one their stamp of approval. As much as it frustrated me to admit, I approved of this one too.
After a few more minutes of play, I sat down on the floor beside Beck and said to the dogs, “Gentle.”
They clamored away from their new friend and stalked into the kitchen where they sloshed water from their bowls. Beck started brushing the dog hair from his clothes.
“Eh, fuck it,” he muttered. “That’s what dry cleaning is for.” Then he shifted, dropping his head to my lap and roping one arm around my waist while sliding a hand under my skirt. “Can they wait ten or fifteen minutes before hitting the streets?”
He gazed up at me as he traced my knee and, not for the first time, I wondered what his life was like back in Singapore. He’d wear suits, always with the vests and the rolled-up cuffs and the ties he wouldn’t stop tugging, but who did he see every day? What were his routines? How did he spend his nights? Who did he date? Who did he fuck?
I knew without asking that they were nothing like me. No, he went for the corporate type. Like the cousin who wasn’t a cousin. He liked that whole vibe. Ice-pick heels and coordinating pantsuits, sleek, obedient hairstyles and the kind of flawless makeup that could trick someone into believing it wasn’t makeup at all.
And somehow, for some reason, he was here. With me.Painfully awareof everything I did. Nestled in my lap. Asking for ten or fifteen minutes for—for what, exactly? For sex? To step outside and shake the dog hair off his clothes? To unload my bike and leave?
“What is it you think will take ten or fifteen minutes?”
He smoothed his broad palm up my thigh, stopping right in the middle. Too high for there to be any confusion, too low to get off to the races. “I could talk a big game and make a lot of promises, but the truth is, I want ten uninterrupted minutes to kiss you the way I’ve wanted for—for a really long fucking time, Sunny.”
I wasn’t sure who moved first. Maybe we moved at the same time, both shifting and fumbling to fit ourselves together on the floor, and then we were there, wrapped together like vines that had sprouted from nowhere and grew back every time they were uprooted. No hedge trimmer could keep us apart.
He moved over me, his tree-trunk thigh heavy between my legs and one hand cupping my breast while the other cradled my head. His shaft was hard against my belly and he kissed me like he wanted to know if I could handle it.
I wanted him to know that I could handle anything—maybe, possibly—but I didn’t have his focus, his precision. My kisses were quick, biting, sloppy affairs that revealed more about what I needed than I was prepared to admit. More than I even understood before this moment.
My hands were everywhere at once, pulling at his clothes, his hair. Stroking his biceps because who the fuck gave him the right to have muscles like that? Grabbing for his belt and his trousers despite knowing I couldn’t reach. Not when his torso was approximately seven feet long.
To be clear, his torso was not actually seven feet long but to someone who required a stepladder to reach the back of the freezer, it certainly seemed that way and I was content to exaggerate without restriction. And right now, I wanted my exaggeration with a side of thick, hot friction between my thighs.
“What are you doing?” He laughed against my lips as I made another futile attempt at getting him where I wanted him. He smiled down at me, his gaze warm and hazy as he swept a thumb over my nipple. It was enough to rip an appalling whimper-whine from my throat that turned his smile into a smug grin. “More of that, I take it?”
“Do you have to be so pleased with yourself?”
“Pleased that I got that sound out of you? Fuck, yes. I’ll take anything I can get.” He kissed my lips, my jaw, my throat. Scraped his teeth over my skin, nipping just enough to send a shiver through my body but then soothing it with tiny, gentle brushes of his lips. “You have no idea how many times I’ve thought about this, all the ways I’ve thought about you. How you’d feel, how you’d sound.” He groaned. “How you’d taste.”
