“Then why should you have kept it to yourself?” he asked. “Isn’t an important part of this whole thing we have going on honesty?”
“Bedroom only, I thought.”
“Trust then,” he picked a different word, and it was the right one.
“Keeping feelings like that to myself when I’m about to come inside of you isn’t necessarily an obstruction of truth.”
My coffee had gone cold, but I choked it back anyway, desperate for something to do with my hands and my mouth that wouldn’t tell—and show—Hendrix just how true the admission from the night before had been.
“It’s important information.”
“Is it?” Now it was my turn to arch a doubtful brow.
“So I know I’m not alone in it,” he whispered, looking down at his lap.
“Hendrix.”
His name made him shiver, and I set my coffee down behind me before taking his and setting it aside as well.
“I’m falling in love with you too,” he said.
“You shouldn’t.”
“I know.”
I shook my head and he smiled at me in this very sage and knowing way that left me reeling from the gap in our ages and the physical space between us. I reached for him, taking his hand and threading our fingers together, kissing the tops of his knuckles with my parched and cracked lips.
“This all feels very careless of us,” I muttered, turning our joined hands to kiss the top of his. “Very young and immature.”
“Maybe you’re rubbing off on me.”
I scoffed, the joke about rubbing one off on him sitting ripe and ready on the tip of my tongue, but Hendrix stole it with a kiss. He moved quick, leaning and tilting and twisting all at once. He moved until we were slotted together perfectly, then closed the space and kissed me.
With his lips and his tongue, he took every argument and protest out of my mouth, transforming them all into something that felt like a promise.
I combed my fingers into his hair and took control of the kiss, a swift reminder that this moment was on a fine line between bedroom and not-bedroom and in one of those places, I was in charge. We were, after all, half naked on his sheets, even if said sheets were in the grass in the middle of the sun. I pushed him onto his back, climbed on top of him and pinned his wrists against the grass. He grunted, then he groaned, going soft beneath my fingers.
“I like it, by the way,” he whispered when I pulled away to catch my breath.
“Hmn?” I hovered just above his mouth, the sides of our noses pressed together while I waited for him to answer.
“When you say my name,” he repeated. “I like it. I liked it too much and that’s why I told you to stop.”
“And now?”
“I still like it too much.”
“Hendrix.” I smiled at the way his cheeks flushed, pressing my lips against the corner of his mouth. “Kiss me.”
“Yes, Sir,” he replied, taking my mouth and any future protests away for good.
CHAPTERNINETEEN
Hendrix
It would have beeneasy to fall into the trap of seeing Miles every day. Lord knew I wanted to, but I restrained myself.
It had been years since I was handled the way Miles handled me. No shame to my ex, Rome, but Miles definitely knew how to play me like a classically-tuned violin. It probably had to do with the fact he wasn’t touching me the way he wanted to be touching another man, like Rome had done for so many months, and for the small change, I was thankful.
