Because the small of my back has hit the counter and I come to a jerking halt.
Unlike my heart that’s pounding like crazy, because he’s right.
I do like it when he curses.
I do like it when he talks to me so unapologetically. In a way that’s so raw and intimate and… dirty. I’ve always liked it.
“Ask me how I know that,” he says when he reaches me, the predatory quality in his tone so thick that I can taste it.
“How?”
“Because you blush,” he rasps, watching me, his face dipped. “Now ask me why I do it. Why I talk dirty to you.”
I grab hold of the counter at my hips. “W-why?”
“So you can tell me not to and get all hot and bothered, while blushing like a daisy-fresh schoolgirl.”
I don’t know what to say to that.
I don’t know how to respond because my heart is right there, in the back of my mouth, beating and beating. And then, he decides to send it to the tip of my tongue.
Where it sits precariously, on the edge of a deep and deadly fall.
When he raises his hand, the hand that I’ve been so fascinated with, and runs a rough finger down my cheek.
I feel something swirling in my blood. Heat. So much of it.
A current, a pulse.
But more than that, I feel relief, because this is the moment when I also realize that along with letting his predatory side sleep, he also hasn’t touched me.
It’s been weeks, actually, since he’s touched me like this.
I mean hehastouched me, of course. But it has mostly been out of necessity, protection, an arm around my waist to help me stand up after a bout of nausea or a hand on the small of my back to usher me inside the exam room.
But not like this. Not since that night in his Mustang back in October.
He’s been holding himself back.
It’s all clear as day. When I see the relief that I’ve been feeling on his face. In his loosened shoulders, his parted lips. In the way his eyes home in on my cheek.
And God, I have to tell him. I have to say it to him now.
So he’ll touch me more.
“I liked that,” he whispers, breaking my urgent thoughts.
“What?”
“When you laughed. This weekend. With Pest.”
His finger is on my parted lips now. “Oh.”
“Haven’t seen you laugh like that in a long time,” he murmurs, still watching his finger. “Back when you’d come over to the house. And you and Pest would be gabbing about something in her room and suddenly you’d burst out laughing.” He pauses and a muscle jumps out on his cheek. “I’d hear you and I’d stop whatever I was doing and I’d think…”
I don’t know how I manage to string words together but I do and I whisper, “You’d think what?”
He looks into my eyes, his finger tracing the curve of my lips. “She laughs like a fairy too.”
