We stand in the doorway, the cozy air warmed by the fireplace wrestling with the chilled outside. “I don’t know what’s going on, but you weren’t at practice, and I called Teague and he—”
“You called my brother?” The blue of his eyes is intense enough it feels like gravity, pulling me closer… yet there’s a flicker of uncertainty underneath, a tiny tremor that says he’s not nearly as sure of himself as he pretends.
My shoulders drop from my ears and I tilt my head, taking him in, “Yes. I didn’t tell him much of anything except that you left for home early. First, I had to make sure you were okay.” At this realization, I lightly press a hand to his chest. My fingers can feel his sculpted chest, the rise and fall of his breathing.
He grabs my wrist and keeps it there.
“I was worried something happened. To you or back at home. I sent you messages, called, but you didn’t respond. I had to call your brother.”
“I didn’t even think about that.” His face falls, but he still holds my hand to his chest, the other hand still on the door. “Fuck. Sorry.” He looks at the small amount of ground between the two of us, almost like it’s an actual threshold to cross. “You were worried about me?”
Anger rains and puts out some of the nervous energy filling my body. He doesn’t think I’d notice if he wasn’t there? If he left me behind? “Of course I was. How can you even ask that?”
“I’m just—”
“No, don’tjustme. You know me better than that, or at least I thought you did. You know me, the real me, down to my marrow. How can you stand there and say that to me? Wonder if that’s true?” My voice is louder than I hoped but anger is winning, as it should be.
How did we get here?
His shoulders hunch, the broad lines I know so well folding inward, making him look smaller somehow. His mouth opens like he’s about to say something, then closes just as fast, jaw shifting like he’s wrestling every word. He’s a mess of ‘almosts’ and ‘I’m sorrys’ he can’t seem to get out.
“My heads a fucking mess. I’m a mess. I shouldn’t have left like that, without saying anything, but I needed to be home. I needed something the way I remembered it, consistent.”
Consistent. The way he remembered it. It feels like my heart drops into my winter boots because I hear it. It clicks. He regrets kissing me.
I take a step back and move the hand that was on his warm chest to my hip, shifting my weight. “You know what? You were the one who kissed me. If you didn’t want to, or want to take it back, just say it. Tell me. So we can salvage what’s left!”
He meets me outside, our chests almost flush, “You think I want to take it back? That’s the last thing I want.” He raises his voice and it pebbles my skin with want.
Deep down, I know there’s still more to figure out. But, in the moment, I push it all aside, letting a slow smirk pull my lips up, and challenge him instead.
“Then prove it.” The words are smooth like velvet but with razor sharp consequences.
His mouth is on mine before I can even second-guess the words. I smile into it, relieved, because if he did want to take it back I think it would’ve broken me. Instead his lips are full, demanding, and pressing into me. His tongue sweeps along my lower lip before lightly nipping it, which pulls awhimper from me. Tyson matches it with a moan that seems to come from the deepest part of him, and I can’t get close enough to him.
And like he can read my mind, he bends his knees, arms around my back, and lifts me. I wrap my legs around his waist, my winter coat awkwardly bunching up around my waist.
He turns and pushes us inside, closing the door, and sets me down. Quickly, he locks the front door and why is that so ridiculously hot? Grabbing my coffee tumbler, he sets it on a table by the doorway and turns back to me.
“Happy to prove it to you.” His hand grabs at my coat zipper, slowly pulling it down while wearing a mischievous grin that could bring me to my knees. Fuck. I almost do it. But then he takes my coat off, tossing it on the sofa.
The fire crackles and pops when he kneels down, unlacing my boots. He’s so close to me, to the place I dreamt of him kissing. When he looks up at me, wearing the same grin, I roll my eyes and let my head fall back, a breath escaping my mouth.
He takes his time, and it’s a different type of torture. He finishes one boot and his hands move up my legs, starting at my calves and stopping at my ass, before raking back down to work on the other boot.
My hand pushes into his hair and I’m making a mental note to keep this image, him on knees like this, looking at me like that. Fuck, it’s so hot. I’m turned on by a single kiss and this man taking off my boots. Can’t say that’s ever happened before.
When the boots are off, Ty looks up at me, “How do you want me to prove it to you?”
I can barely get the words out without begging him. “However you want.”
“We might be here a while,” he says, voice breathy and heavy as he slowly stands, his hands crawling up my body.
Fuck.
Twenty-One
Tyson
