Talk about serious.
Keeping a straight face, I was proud of my ability to regain the upper hand.
“So then what? You’re going to live here? Is that how it’ll work?” Again, there was so much interest in his voice that it was impossible for me not to make that one of the rules.
“Can you think of any other way?” I countered, thankful he’d given me the idea originally because I might not have been brave enough to suggest it in the first place.
He nodded, busying his mouth with the last of his coffee. My dick took on a life of its own thinking about what that mouth was capable of. “And we just—”
Interest and curiosity were suddenly replaced by nerves and anxiety, so Ihad to cut him off to keep him with me. “Relax,” I coached as I walked around the island. Yeah, I wanted him more than anything, but at the same time, I didn’t want to scare him away. And right now, I was dealing with nothing more than a frightened, caged animal. His breathing slowed as I approached him. Taking a risk I wasn’t sure would pay off, I reached for his arm. Electricity pinged betweenus and we both looked down at where our skin was touching to verify that it was our touch alone that made us feel that spark. “We take it day by day. Hour by hour even.” I took a deep breath and decided I needed to put all my cards on the table. “Can we be honest for a few minutes here?”
Ryan blinked slowly, let the air pass by his lips with a feather touch. “Yes,” he answered.
“You want mehere,” I stated plainly. Not giving him any space to respond, I continued without checking his reaction. “You would have told me to fuck off when I followed you into your office the other day. You never would have answered your door just minutes ago when I made a fool of myself. And you certainly wouldn’t be here now, entertaining how this week is supposed to go if you didn’t genuinely want this.”
My eyes were immediately drawn to his thick and rugged neck as it moved while he swallowed. “Just like you wouldn’t have driven all the way here, hunted me down at work, and showed up here acting like a caveman, trying to claim me back.”
I didn’t even need toplanmy next move. It came so naturally, I knew it had been written in my DNA. I leaned in, pressing my lips up against the shell of hisear so softly he must have wondered if I was touching him at all. “I don’t have to claim what’s always been mine.”
There was simply nothing else to say.
After a few seconds of silence spanned out between us, I built on my courageousness and asked, “So what were you up to before I got here?” I made sure to scan his fucking perfect body from head to toe before settling on his bourbon eyes.
“Weights,”he choked out before clearing his throat. He thought the move gave him some sense of control, but I saw his pulse fluttering in his neck, saw his fingers moving along his thumbs, his pupils dilate.
Upping the ante, I challenged, “Perfect. I love a good workout.”
And there it was. Our first interaction of our week-long experiment.
What could go wrong?
Pushing that thought away, I said, “I’mgoing to go out to my car and get my bags.” I reached around him to put my mug in the sink, purposefully brushing my arm against his as I did so. “And I’m not going to faceplant on the steps this time.”
I left him standing there, speechless. Turned out he was also unable to move, because by the time I came back in with my bags, he was still leaning up against the counter, in almost the exactsame spot. I’d like to think he was wondering how the hell he was going to survive the week, because I knew the exact same thought was running through my head.
He directed me to the bathroom and, after a quick change, I met him back in the kitchen. “The gym is this way.” Of course he had his own gym. His house was open concept, with huge sliding glass doors serving as the wall along the entireback of the house. A smile pulled at my lips as I realized his backyard looked very similar to the one from my childhood. There was a beautiful pergola right off the doors, but if you walked a little further into the yard, there was a small dock leading out to the lake, which butted up right against his property. And to the right of his house, there was another structure. Not quite big enough tobe a house and not quite small enough to be a garage, it matched his house perfectly.
Something twisted in my heart when I realized half of it was a gym and the other half a workshop. What he’d been denied in his childhood, he gave himself as an adult. So even though it wasn’t my place to be proud of him, I couldn’t help it. There were about a dozen half-finished projects all over the workshopside, something I immediately planned to cover on another day.
Right now, the task at hand was to get all good and sweaty with Ryan. “So what were you working? Legs? Arms? Chest?”
With mischief in his eyes, he said. “Full body.” There was a challenge there and I wasn’t afraid to accept it.
