1
Rory
“Grrrr-UH!”
My head jerked up at the sound of distress coming from the living room, quickly followed by something heavy thumping down on what I assumed was the coffee table.I saved the e-mail to my newest client as a draft, and moved from my lean-to against the counter to my full height—checking behind me to make sure the water on the stove wasn’t boiling over—before calling out.
“…Em?”
I ran a hand through my hair, missing its once pony-tail length.It was still longer—a good two or three inches in length—but I kept the sides short these days.
Turning the heat down on the burner, not wanting to burn the rotini I had going, I cautiously walked into the living room of the house I moved myself into about seven months ago.
I had to admit, I’d been a bit surprised that Emily allowed me to just drop my shit in her rental, further allowing me to stick around, but I rolled with it and in all honesty, this cohabiting thing was the shit.
Had someone to talk to every day.Someone to watch stupid movies with, even when she groaned the entire time.
And I do meanthe entire time.
Someone to sleep with every night.
That one took a few weeks to work up to, but eventually I stopped sleeping on the couch and moved my ass into her bedroom.
At her request, I’d like to add.
Sex was still off the table, but Emily was warming up to the idea.I mean, it wasn’t like my last performance was all that stellar; of course she wanted to work up to the idea again.
Twenty five months was a long fucking time to go without sex—I was pretty much a born again virgin.But I would relive every one of those days again, knowing that I would eventually get to this spot, right here.
I walked through the large archway all the houses in Arizona seemed to have, into the living room where Emily was sitting on the couch, cross legged, with her elbows on her inner thighs and her head in her hands.Stepping into the two foot area behind the couch, I crossed over to stand directly behind her and put my hands on her shoulders.
She was fucking tense as hell.
“What’s up, Em?”I squeezed her shoulders, digging my thumbs into the knots that had formed there.
She answered, but with her head down and in her hands, I didn’t catch a fucking word.I refrained from chuckling, instead gently putting a hand to her forehead and pulling her head back.“Say that again?”
“I don’t fuckingget it!”she yelled, kicking a leg out at the table.This time I couldn’t stop the laughter from passing my lips if I tried.
This wasn’t Emily’s first studying temper tantrum since I moved in.The girl was smart as hell and beat herself up when she didn’t grasp a concept the first time she read it, but even I knew that she’d sleep on it tonight, and like magic poofed and fucking pixie dust sprinkled around her, she had the shit memorized in the morning.
She jerked away from my hands, no doubt because I was laughing at her.“You’re a jerk,” she pouted, reaching for the large book she must have thrown down.She finished uncrossing her legs, both feet on the floor now, as she reopened the large textbook and picked up a pink highlighter.
I leaned over the couch, moving my hand until it was surrounding the mass of blonde in a half-assed knot on the top of her head, gently pulling her back.When she hit the back of the couch, I kept gently pulling until her head rested on the top, making her stare up at me.
Her clear blue eyes looked tired and she had slight bruises under her eyes.She hadn’t been sleeping this week.She was tired and free of makeup and damn if she still wasn’t the most beautiful woman I had ever come across.
I let go of her hair, putting my hand back on the couch and leaned down, pressing my lips to her upside-down ones.“Take a break,” I said against her mouth.
Emily first kissed me at a Halloween party under the ruse of our costumes, and you bet your ass I ran with that shit.This whole living together thing when we weren’t really dating but weren’t completely friends had had the potential to get awkward fast but it didn’t.
I moved in, plopped my ass on the couch, and showed her, up close and personal, all of the changes I had made in the previous year and a half.Three weeks of being a constant for her—feeding her, helping her study, cleaning the place up so she had less to worry about—and she offered me half her bed.Then, when one of the guys I met at the gym, Matt, invited me to a Halloween party at a trendy bar in Scottsdale, telling me if I had a girl she was more than welcome to come too, I maybe coerced Emily into attending with me.
…and by coerced her into going to the Halloween shindig, I mean I came home with a couple of costumes and told her she was going or I was burning her books.
I wouldn’t actually burn her books, but the girl needed a break.Her nose was in a book all of the time.I completely understood it.I mean, I read some of her texts over her shoulder and the fact she was acing her classes impressed the hell out of me.But I was just a guy with a business sense and marketing strategies.Medicine and pathways and whatever hell else she was studying went way over my head.
I had to deal with her mumbling and grumbling over costume choice for two full days after I brought them home, but she was too busy to come up with something different, so we arrived to Matt’s party as Batman with his sexy sidekick, Robin.
