A few water droplets landed on her cheek and I was helpless to reach for her, thumbing them away and stroking the softness of her skin. When she leaned into my palm like she’d missed my touch, giving me this look that fucking unravelled me, I lost what small control I had left.
“What are you doing here, little doll?” My voice came out guttural but coated with layers of my undeniable longing. “Besides torturing me with what I want—and what I can’t have—so fucking bad, hm?”
Her eyes closed and she let loose a breathy noise as though my words landed like a shot straight into her sternum. I hated the wrongness of it, wanting to ease her discomfort. “I…”
I leaned down until our foreheads touched and our lips were a hairbreadth away. “Talk to me, baby.”
Gabriela’s eyes snapped open, swimming with conflicted emotions. “You were never in that class to begin with…You only joined because of me.”
I expected her to tell me that she was here to further push her friendship agenda, not state that she somehow figured out my secret. I wasn’t even embarrassed that she now knew the truth.
“Haven’t you realized by now that I’m obsessed with you?” I confessed. “That I would do anything to be next to you—anything for you to acknowledge my existence?” I wrapped myhand around her neck, her pulse hammering under my thumb, and dragged my open mouth across her cheek, until I reached her diamond-earring-adorned lobe. “I saw you four hundred and forty-seven days ago and you’ve never left my mind since. You fucking live in there, Gabby. I go to sleep dreaming of you. I wake up thinking of you.” My lips grazed the shell of her ear. “And I spend every hour in between like a pathetic fool trying to talk to you, to be next to you, to just please you as though it’s my life’s sole purpose.”
Gabriela jerked back, blue eyes flaring with intensity as she watched me. Her hands rose to cup my cheeks. “You’re not pathetic, Hunter. Far from it,” she said firmly. “The truth is that there aren’t enough words in any language to properly encompass what you are, but I can say with conviction that it’s nothing short of perfect.”
She leaned up on her toes to stamp her mouth to mine in a kiss that heated my blood and pulverized all my resolve to stay away from Gabriela.
I’m undone, I thought.I have no defences against her. I’m an open vault and she can take anything and everything from me. So long as she keeps coming back. So long as she never leaves me alone.
I kissed her back with equal fervour, sipping from her roughly like a thirsty man wandering barren lands and finally finding sustenance. Gabriela’s fingers plunged into my wet hair. With the hand still clasped around her neck, I dragged her deeper into me, plastering her fully clothed body to my naked one.
“You can’t say shit like that to me. You’re killing me, Gabriela,” I growled against her lips between short, passionate kisses, squeezing her ass and neck for emphasis. The soft whine she released drove me mad. “Did you come here to pick up where we left off Friday night?”
Gabriela panted like she’d run a marathon, pulling away just enough to gaze at me. The water had drenched her high ponytail, her lashes, and her fur coat. The heavy-lidded look on her face, coupled with flushed cheeks and a kiss-smeared red mouth, was extremely sexy. I remembered it from three nights ago. I had memorized it like a sacred scroll, including the taste of her pussy on my tongue, the sounds of her needy moans, and the feel of her hands on my body, pleading for more.
“N-no. I came here to talk to you. I want to mend what I broke, pretty boy.”
That term of endearment wrenched at my heart. “I don’t want to talk right now.”
I didn’t want to hear her apologizing for not being on the same page as me. We couldn’t help who we liked or when our feelings weren’t reciprocated. I made peace with it. From the very beginning, I was in too deep. While I wished I could be enough for Gabriela to forgo whatever it was that was holding her back…I wouldn’t hold it against her.
“No?” She arched a daring brow. “Then what do you want right now?”
“For you to end my misery and take off your coat,” I found myself saying, my voice low and pressing. “I want to see what you’re hiding underneath.”
I couldn’t think of anything else truthfully.
Gabriela’s slow smile was hot as hell. “Fine. I’ll play by your rules. Let’s pick up where we left off Friday night.” She dragged a manicured finger against my bottom lip. “But after that? We’re talking. Whether you like it or not.”
There was something different about Gabriela today. She was determined and bold, an unspoken resolve sketched in the lines of her frame. Unlike the shy and nervous neighbour who knocked on my door last night reeking of guilt and regret.
In this moment, she appeared like she wanted something for the taking and that thing wasme.
Hope bloomed in my chest. I squandered it quickly. I shouldn’t dwell on the possibility of us being more than whatever it was that we were now. But goddammit, she was lassoing me back into her orbit with just one look.
I forced myself to stay quiet and see how this panned out, retreating two steps so my back was once again immersed under the water and I had a better view of the show she was putting on.
Chin held high and fire burning in those blue eyes, Gabriela watched me sultrily as she opened her fur coat and let it tumble past her shoulders, over the crooks of her elbows, and down her wrists until it landed in a heap on the floor just outside of the shower stall with a flourish.
Leaving her in red heels and a short leopard print dress with a joke of a neckline that showcased an ample amount of cleavage and was so tight I could see her nipples, hard like diamonds, poking through the fabric.
Fucking hell.
By the time she toed off her heels, pushed aside the straps of her dress and let it shimmy down her body, revealing smooth expanses of that moonlight skin just begging to be marred with love bites, I was rendered speechless.
I dragged a palm over my mouth, muttering a curse under my breath. “Keep your panties on.”
She paused with her fingers tucked in the sides of her crimson thong. It barely covered her cunt and was damp with arousal. “Why?”
