“Ready to admit you were wrong?” Vivian panted against Bryn’s mouth, voice devastatingly husky.
It took Bryn several disorienting seconds to translate the sounds into speech. “What?” She caught her breath. “Wrong about what?”
“About not wanting to sleep with me,” Vivian teased, testing Bryn with her lips ghosting over her neck.
She strained to feel more of her kiss. Fantasized for a single deranged moment that Vivian would bite her hard enough to draw blood.
“I never said I didn’t want to sleep with you.” She swallowed hard, working to disengage all the lustful desire vibrating through her skin. “I said that I wouldn’t until you were ready.”
Vivian’s hands roamed down her back. Slowly. Cruelly. “Are you really so restrained?”
It was a test. A crucial one Bryn was determined to pass even if her entire body was pounding with aching want.
“For you? Yes.”
Vivian toyed with the button of Bryn’s jeans. Promising her the most extraordinary relief with nothing but a playful tug and her lips against Bryn’s earlobe.
“I don’t have that kind of restraint,” Vivian muttered, hand sneaking under Bryn’s shirt and finding her trembling torso. “If you don’t want me”—she moistened her lips, the tip of her tongue taunting the shell of Bryn’s ear—“I’ll have to go home and listen to Kelly again.”
Bryn’s knees weakened.
“To finish that boss and secretary audio I started this morning.”
Bryn groaned, hands on Vivian’s waist to keep herself steady.
“To touch myself while I imagine it’s you splayed across my desk. Bent over and so incredibly needy.” Vivian cursed, breath hot and her words hotter. “I was so wet while listening to you, but I made myself wait. Wait until it was your fingers so deep inside of me.”
“Fuck,” Bryn muttered, body swaying when her legs tried to stop doing their one job.
Vivian’s grin against her jaw sent a million goosebumps rushing over her skin. “Ready to admit you were wrong and beg me to bend you over that couch?”
She sounded so good. Felt so good. Bryn’s aching core wanted to say yes. To convince her they could survive a single slip. That they’d already survived more than one small indulgence.
“What do you say, baby?”
Bryn whined, but her heart had always been more powerful than her baser instincts. She found the will to open her eyes, to pull away just enough to look at Vivian when she said, “I say that very expensive champagne is getting warm.”
Vivian stared at her, exhaling long and slow while she watched her. It was like she’d slipped out of character and back into herself.
When Vivian moved soundlessly to the couch, she didn’t go alone. She reached back, fingers intertwined with Bryn’s, and pulled her down to the sofa next to her.
One brick.
She reached for the champagne and took a surprisingly elegant swig out of the bottle even though Bryn had remembered to bring glasses. Glasses that were still in the car.
She handed Bryn the bottle. “To a beautiful first date.”
Bryn smiled, chest full and heart bursting. She took a sip, but all she savored was Vivian’s eyes on hers, the weight of her hand still in hers.
Another brick.
ChapterThirty-Four
By mid-December,Vivian had gone on more dates with Bryn in three months than she had in her entire life. Nearly every night they’d had dinner together, and sometimes Bryn surprised her with some experience intended to recapture Vivian’s misspent youth.
Bowling had been a sensory and hygienic nightmare, but a pop-up drive-in downtown had been enjoyable. More than enjoyable. She’d never had so much fun watching a campy 80s B-horror movie as she had while sitting in Bryn’s car. Huddled together in the backseat with Bryn’s arm around her, Vivian had paid more attention to the shape of Bryn’s face in the moonlight than to a screen held up by a crane, skyscrapers in the untouchable distance.
But nothing had prepared her for tonight. Seated at her bathroom vanity, Vivian applied makeup lightly. Just mascara, eyeliner, and a little nude lip gloss. Not that she was trying to make herself small, exactly. She just wanted to look like all the guests at Bryn’s mother’s birthday dinner. She wanted to blend in.
