“Fuck, baby. I’m never going to last if you keep doing that.”
I shrug, still stroking him. “We have all night, right?”
“Yeah,” he whispers with a devilish grin. “We do.”
* * * *
Images of last night flit through my mind on repeat as I yawn and refill coffee cups at the counter. A blush creeps up my cheeks as I remember Lincoln with his head between my thighs as I screamed his name so many times that my voice is a little hoarse this morning. In fact, I completely lost count of the number of times he made me come but my body is achingly satisfied this morning. So much so that I almost couldn’t drag myself out of his bed. Although, that could also be because we didn’t sleep much either. I was able to sneak in an hour or two before I would wake up again with his mouth or hands all over my body.
“Good night?” Mia asks, nudging me and I blink, turning to look at her.
“Huh?”
“I asked if you had a good night but I think I already know the answer,” she teases, laughing and my cheeks heat further. It’s been so long since I’ve done anything with a guy that it probably is written all over my face.
“Leave her alone,” Nate, one of the cooks, adds. “She looks happy.”
I glance back at him through the pass through. “Don’t I normally look happy?”
“If this is you happy,” he says, motioning to my face. “Then, I’m going to go with no.”
Turning back to the dining room, I mull over his words. I guess if I really think about it, I wouldn’t say I was happy before. Not that I was sad or depressed or anything but I just existed. I was so focused on just getting to the next day or getting to the day when all my worries would be behind me that I wasn’t really living my life. And then Lincoln walked into the diner and changed all that.
“Hey, Darlin’,” a gravelly voice says and I turn, grinning as Lincoln’s eyes drop down to my lips.
“Hey, what are you doing here?”
He shrugs. “Came to pick you up after your shift and I was kind of hoping you’d spend the day with me.”
“Okay, but only because it’d be really awkward right now if I said no.”
He barks out a laugh and holds his hand out to me. I take it and let him pull me closer. “Really? Is that the only reason?”
“The only one that comes to mind,” I whisper, distracted by his tongue trailing across his bottom lip.
He leans in and I repeat the move before I realize what I’m doing. His lips brush my ear and I fight to keep my eyes open as goose bumps race across my flesh. “So, you haven’t spent all morning thinking about last night or how mind-blowing it will be when I finally take you?”
“Nope,” I whisper, my hands trembling as I picture just that. He pulls back, grinning, as he releases my hand.
“Oh, okay. You about done?”
It takes me a full three seconds to register his question and I turn to the counter where Roger is pouring over the books to find Mia, Nate, Roger, and half the customers staring at me. I blush and Mia grins.
“Hey, whatever you’re doing, dude,” she calls to Lincoln. “Keep doing it. I’ve never seen her this happy.”
I glare at her before turning to Roger. “Do you need me to stick around?”
He checks his watch. “No, you’re good to go.”
I slip back into the hallway and take off my apron before grabbing my bag and meeting Lincoln in the dining room. His smile makes my heart skip a beat as I slip my hand in his and I can’t believe I almost didn’t let this happen. How could I have ever walked away from him? From us?
“So, what do you want to do today?” I ask when we get out to the parking lot and he shrugs.
“I was going to ask you.”
He opens the door to the Camaro for me and I slip inside before watching him walk around the front of the car. There is one thing I’ve wanted to do lately but it’s a little silly and I’m not sure he’d want to. He climbs behind the wheel and glances at me as I bite my lip.
“What?”
“Well,” I muse, pursing my lips. “There is something I want to do but it’s kind of silly and you may not want to.”
“What is it?”
“Well, when Mom, Theo, and I were traveling,” I say, unable to think of a better word to call my nomadic first years. “We would get bored in the hotel rooms so Mom started buying us board games and it kind of became a tradition for us. It’s been a long time since we played and I was just thinking about it this morning.”
His brows furrow. “You want to play board games?”
“Yeah. Is that stupid?”
“No, not at all. Actually, I have an idea.” He pulls his phone out of his pocket and starts texting someone. Leaning across the car, I try to peek at what he’s saying but he hides it from me with a grin on his face. “Just wait. It’s a surprise.”
“I thought we went over this last night and again this morning when you cooked me french toast. I don’t like surprises.”
He chuckles, still hiding the phone from me. “Aw and see here I thought you were coming around to the idea.”
“I have no clue what gave you that idea.”
I cross my arms over my chest and he just grins as he continues typing away. When he’s finally done, he puts the phone back in his pocket and fires up the Camaro. As he pulls out of the parking spot, I glare at him.
“Are you really not going to tell me?”
He laughs. “You’ll find out soon enough, baby. How was your morning?”
Sighing, I tell him about work, which was fairly uneventful, and he tells me about some bike he’s working on. As we pull up in front of the house, I scan the area, looking for both whatever surprise he’s planning this time and still unable to shake the habits my mother instilled in me. The door to the Camaro opens and he scowls at me.
“What are you doing?”
I shake my head, climbing out. “It’s stupid.”
“Tell me anyway,” he insists, taking my hand as he shuts the door and I sigh.
“When we were younger, Mom had us play this game whenever we left the place we were staying. We would have to scan the room and memorize where everything was. When we came back, she would quiz us and if we got it wrong, we had to do push-ups and wall sits.”
He glances down at me, his eyes wide. “Wow. That’s…intense.”
“Yep, it was and even now as an adult, I do it without thinking.”
“I suppose that was the point of it though, wasn’t it?” he asks and I nod as I unlock the front door.
“You’re not wrong but it’s a pain in the ass. Especially when I can’t remember how I left the damn curtains. It’ll bother me all night long.”
He blows out a breath and shuts the door behind us. “You know, I half thought you were exaggerating when you told me about your childhood.”
“Nope,” I snap, letting out a humorless laugh. “I could also knock you out before you even realize what’s happening if I wanted to but I won’t.”
“What did you train in?” He sits at the dining room table and I go into the kitchen, grabbing two mugs and turning the coffee maker on.