Two hours. One hundred and twenty short minutes that seem like a lifetime to a man who loses himself in deep, critical introspections over his life choices. Let’s just say that in the past couple of hours, I did a lot of soul searching while waiting out here.
I watch Douglass warily come up the walkway and take each porch step one by one at a snail’s pace. Her cautious eyes are pinned on me, but mine are zeroed in on the square of gauze peeking out from the pushed-up sleeve of her cardigan. I force down my anger, which has been riding a thin line all evening since I left Mickey’s.
Douglass stops on the top step and crosses her arms over her chest. All it does is plump her cleavage and make her already perfect tits look even more delectable. She briefly looks over her shoulder in the direction of Harper’s taillights and sighs dramatically. My lips quirk.
“This was a setup, wasn’t it?”
More like an ambush, but I keep my mouth shut because I don’t want to get kicked in the balls. Harper texted me that Douglass destroyed an entire room with a crowbar and a sledgehammer at It’s All the Rage. She attached a few pictures of the carnage to her text message.
“Did you have a good time?”
Her face softens a little. “Yeah, I did. It was surprisingly fun.” Her head cants in question. “How long have you been sitting out here?”
I reach out and lift a strand of her hair with a finger, enjoying how it feels like satin as it slides over my knuckle. The wind whips up, stealing the lock of hair I’m playing with, and blowing her ponytail across her face. She nervously flicks it back over her shoulder. As clichéd as it sounds coming from a man, my thoughts immediately dive down into the gutter as I imagine fisting her ponytail to hold her in place so I can devour her mouth with a claiming kiss.
I take in her features, one by one. The graceful arch of her brow, her plump, pink lips, the deep, forest green flecks in her hazel eyes.
Forcing myself to focus on what she said, I reply, “Not long. I wanted to check on you and make sure you were okay. Nat turned in already, about fifteen minutes ago. Said she put some homemade chicken vegetable soup in a container in the fridge we could reheat if we got hungry.”
I checked in with Natalie when I arrived to make sure she was doing okay and to ask if she needed anything. I was tempted to tell her what happened tonight with Amelia and about my suspicions that it wasn’t the first time she had hurt Douglass. It’s a conversation long overdue, but one I wasn’t going to initiate without talking to Douglass about it first.
Nat kept insisting I come in, but I needed the time to think. No better place than on the front porch in the quiet of the night. She came back out a half hour ago to let me know Douglass was on her way home. Said she would leave the door unlocked in case I changed my mind about waiting out on the porch.
“We?” Douglass asks with a tiny bite of sarcasm.
“Yes, we.” My heated gaze lands back on her beautiful, haunted face. “We, as in you and me.” I cut the inches-wide distance between us. She cranes her neck to look up at me, her breaths faltering and becoming choppy the longer we stare at one another. “Because make no mistake, sweetheart, you and I are happening.”
She presses backward into the railing, the pulse point in her neck fluttering wildly. Her bangles clang the metal handrail and make a tinny sound, almost like a grandfather clock chiming out the hour.
“We can’t.”
She can try and deny it all she wants. But it won’t matter.
My hand touches her cheek and ever so lightly, I feather my thumb across her mouth. Her choppy breaths turn into full-blown pants and have my cock hardening uncomfortably behind my zipper. I splay my other hand across her breastbone where her heart pounds a beat that matches mine.
“Hell, yes, we can. Stop fighting it. You want me as much as I want you.”
“I don’t even like you most of the time,” she whispers in a last-ditch effort to push me away.
“Liar.” I smile and reach around her nape to gently press my fingers into her skin. Her lips part, and a soft moan escapes. The sensual sound spurs me into action. I nuzzle her silky cheek and feel her body tremble. The breeze blows a cooling breath over my skin, and with it, the sweet scent of her gardenia shampoo. I drown in the alluring fragrance by pressing my nose into her hair and inhaling deeply.
“Jordan.” The lilting sound of my name from her lips stokes the embers of desire between us.
“Invite me inside, Douglass.”
Her hands reach for me, fingertips tracing the column of my neck before they fist the front of my shirt. Tonight is the first time she has initiated any form of physical contact between us, and it gives me faith that I’m finally breaching those tall walls she surrounds herself with. That hope dies when she shakes her head in denial.
“I can’t.”
Frustrated, I back away from her. Not by much because I’m not allowing her to run away from me again. But I need the extra space between us in order to think clearly and not do something stupid, like push her against the side of the house and fuck the stubbornness right out of her.
“Why do you keep fighting this? Is it because of Amelia? Because I was with her first?”
Douglass looks at me like I’m stupid. “Me not inviting you inside has nothing to do with her.”
“Then why? I’m going to need you to spell it out for me. Is it because I can’t remember we had sex? Will you just tell me? I’m trying hard here to set things right between us, but you’re making it impossible to do that.”
Douglass pinches the bridge of her nose and exhales loudly. “Why does it matter so much for you to know?”
