‘I can’t believe we’re standing in the kitchen talking about this,’ she murmurs, bringing a hand to her face.
‘This? About sex, you mean? Honestly, I’ve had a chub in stranger places than this.’ True story. ‘Often when I’m thinking about you.’ Somehow, the one thing she picks up in my confession is the ridiculousness.
‘A chub?’ she asks, her brows drawing in.
‘A semi,’ I add, though her expression stays the same. Adorably unsure. ‘A partial hard-on,’ I qualify, and as Nell’s mouth falls open and her gaze dips south, I realise the it’s not quite a semi anymore. As her gaze snaps back to mine, her cheeks are wonderfully flushed. ‘You thought I was kidding.’ Jesus, her expression. Has no one ever been forthright with her? Whispered dirty things in her ear while sunk so deep she doesn’t know where she ends or begins, or called her up just to say they couldn’t wait to get their tongue on her?
‘Don’t laugh at me,’ she chastises. ‘Of course, I thought you were kidding. You’ve done nothing else since you arrived. You have my head spinning.’
I like the sound of that. Nell, dizzy on me.
‘I never joke about my dick,’ I reply. Fuck it all to hell, this girl makes me feel a little unhinged. Makes me want to tell her things, and not just the dirty things I have in mind for her body but real things. Feelings and shit.
When I get back from a tour, I’m always a little desperate to rut and fuck where, God forgive me, a girl is less than a hookup and little more than a receptacle. But this time, I don’t feel the same. I’m not the same animal, hungry for the blind ecstasy of a warm body and a release. I still hunger but only for her. She brings out the boy in me, the boy who wants to fuck with her, but she also brings out the man who wants to kiss her for hours, who wants to spread her out under him, to drag his tongue the length of her body just to learn all her sounds. So yeah, she brings out the man who wants to fuck her, too. God, how I want her. I want to be inside her more than I can remember ever wanting anything.
‘Come here.’ I hold out my hand, gesturing her closer as my heart hammers in my chest. In answer, she shakes her head, her eyes seeming a little dazed.
‘Come on. Trust me.’
‘Says the wolf in no clothing,’ she whispers, addressing her words to the vicinity of my crotch.
‘I have only good intentions, I promise.’
‘Yeah, but which of us are those intentions good for?’
I close my eyes for a beat. She really doesn’t have a very high opinion of me.
‘Please,’ I ask softly. ‘I promise I’ll keep my hands to myself.’
‘It’s not your hands I’m worried about,’ she replies with a frown. A beat later, I realise she’s crossing the room, and a thrill courses through my veins. The object of my teenage fantasies, here in the flesh, drawing closer.. . and closer. ‘Just remember,’ she says, stepping over the spilled apples. ‘I know how to use a scalpel.’
My deep burst of deep laughter surprises us both, and then she’s there, in front of me, her chin tipped upwards, her dark amused gaze suddenly boldly holding mine. For all the quirk of her brow and the hand she props on her hip, the pulse tripping in her neck belies what’s going on in her mind.
‘Closer,’ I murmur, holding out my hand.
‘All the better for you to see me?’
‘I don’t just want to look at you. I want to get my teeth on you.’ Her eyes flare, but she warily lets me take her hand, and as I pull her against my side, those dark eyes flick unconsciously down my body again. ‘You’re allowed to look,’ I whisper, making to move the tiny towel.
‘No, stop,’ she begins quickly. Her soft pink lips open in shock, and it takes every ounce of my restraint not tilt my head and press my lips to hers. Instead, take her hand. It’s strange how pleasurable just holding her hand can be. I couldn’t have done this when we were kids. She wouldn’t have allowed it, firstly. But now? Now she’s looking at me. Seeingme. Oaky, seeing quite a bit of me.
‘Did you engineer this whole naked in the kitchen thing just to—’
‘No, but I think it’s only fair that you get to see my backside after I shoved snails down your bikini bottoms just so I could get a peek of yours.’
‘You were a little pervert,’ she says, trying to take back her hand, not that I’ll let her.
‘And now I’m a big pervert.’ I pause before carrying on. ‘I still dream about you, you know.’
‘Ben, stop,’ she says softly. ‘Maybe you shouldn’t say those things.’
‘Even when they’re true? When I’m cooped up in some desert shithole, and I need cheering up, I just have to close my eyes and conjure you up.’ Before she can speak or pull away, I place her palm over my heart. ‘Shush.’ My eyes fall closed, and I tip my head back. ‘Feel here. Feel what you do to me.’
I inhale and release a deep breath as I press Nell closer to my side. The day I’d arrived, while standing at the doorstep, I’d desperately wanted to pick her up and spin her around. I know it’s been years, and that I barely know her, but I feel like I’ve already lived half a lifetimewithher.In our childhoods. My dreams.
As she coughs—a delicate clearing of her throat—I open my eyes. ‘I can also see,’ she whispers.
‘See what?’ I ask a little distractedly.
