“It’ll only be a kiss.” He pulls his eyes from the books to me.
“You think it will only be a kiss?” That warm feeling spreads further down my body to pool between my thighs. I’ve been turned on before when I was reading but never like this. My nipples harden too.
“I don’t want it to be only a kiss.” I sit up on my knees.
Big runs his hands down his face as though he’s trying to get himself under control.
“You need clothes to sleep in.” He changes the subject. He’s being respectful, which only makes me fall for him more.
He’s far from the idea of what my father would call a gentleman. Yet, that’s exactly what he’s being right now. Even though it’s the last thing I want him to be in this moment. He must see it in my eyes. The man practically runs from my place, but not before demanding I lock the door behind him.
I think I blew it. The only thing I’m going to wake up with tomorrow is a hangover.
6
Big
She’s on my mind. I spend all of a few hours with Amethyst, and now she’s all I can think about.
She was so fucking cute at the bar. Completely unable to hold her drink, trusting, and beyond innocent. Far too good for a man like me. A man with a past.
Even so, I’m still thinking about her lying in my bed as the morning sun pours through the wide windows at the back of my ranch house. I imagine what she’d look like draped across my bed. Her blonde hair spread out like a halo and those bright blue eyes focused on me.
Just the thought of it makes me so hard that I have to take an extra-long shower before I can start my day. But I have big plans for the entire weekend, and all of them center on Amethyst.
Once I’m showered and dressed, I hit up the local diner and collect a large order of every breakfast food on the menu, as well as a carafe of coffee. I don’t know exactly which foods Amethyst likes, so I’m going for a scattershot method. After all, food isn’t just the way to a man’s heart. Everyone can get behind some good grub.
The voice in the back of my head tells me that I'm too old for her. It keeps whispering that same mantra as I collect the food from Dottie at Dottie's Greasy Spoon and return to my car. I know that voice is right. I know I'm too old for Amethyst, too world weary, too jaded for someone as innocent as she is. Even so, I back out of my parking spot and head over to her place.
It may be a bad idea, but now that I've gotten to know her, there's no way I can stop this. She's the only woman who has ever gotten to me like this. I can't let go of that. Not yet. Even if it's taboo or forbidden or whatever people want to call it, that doesn't matter. All that matters is that Amethyst is happy and that Amethyst has a chance to choose the future that she wants, even if it does or does not include me.
I tell myself all this as I take her stairs two at a time and knock on the door to her apartment. I hear a groggy sound from inside and then noises at the door. She locked it like I told her last night. Good girl.
When she opens the door and I see those bright blue eyes, my heart does a strange skipped beat, and I can't help the smile that spreads across my face. "Good morning."
"Weren't you just here?" Her eyes go to the large paper bag of food I have in one hand and the carafe of coffee in the other. "Come in, come in. I'm starving."
"I knew you would be. But is there a hangover?" I walk into her place like I've done it a million times. As if we’re old friends who've known each other long enough to be comfortable in each other's space. But that's how it feels with her. Natural.
"I'm doing okay. Just still half asleep, and my head is thumping a little bit."
I put the bag on her small kitchen counter and start pulling out plates of hash browns, grits, eggs, sausage, fluffy pancakes, and a couple of large waffles. Her eyes grow bigger with everything that I set out.
"This is enough to feed an army, and I'm okay with that." She sits down at the small bar that separates her tiny kitchen from the rest of her apartment. She belongs with me at the ranch with tons of space and big sky above, but I can't rush into that yet. She barely knows me. I say that, but she certainly seems to trust me. I reach up for the cupboard, instinctively knowing where the plates are.
"Good guess." She reaches for silverware from the closest drawer, and we make our plates together. When I sit down beside her, she digs in, going first for the buttery grits and then the fluffy waffles pancakes covered in syrup. I make a mental note of each thing that she enjoys, because I want to make sure from now on I can make her happy.
I pour the coffees and eat a slice of sausage as she gratefully takes the coffee cup from my hand and sips at the contents.
When she makes this cute moaning noise low in her throat, I have the urge to kiss her, and not gently. I want to kiss her hard, to stake my claim and to show her that this could be forever. I don't. These intense feelings I'm having would just scare her away, and I'm not sure what to do with them either, to be honest. It's all so new.
"This is the best cure for a hangover I know of." I scoop some more eggs onto her plate. "You just have to eat the alcohol away and get some fresh blood pumping to your brain. There's plenty of remedies you can try. Old wives’ tales for the most part, but food is a sure way to get you back on your feet, as long as you're not too hungover and can't keep it down."
She smiles a little and spears another piece of sausage. "Despite appearances, I can always eat. My mom used to have me on these crazy diets where I could only drink weird smoothies made of kale and things like that. But ever since I moved here, I can eat what I want. Yeah, I may gain a few pounds here and there, but I'm happy."
"You should eat what you want to. You're beautiful. There's nothing that's going to change that. Not weight, not age, nothing."
She stops chewing and looks at me for a long while as if trying to figure out whether I'm being real with her or just saying things she wants to hear. I hope she knows that I'm as sincere as I can be.
"I think that's the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me."
"Then I'm glad it came from me." I add half of a waffle to her plate and pour some syrup on it.
She pats her stomach and eyes the food warily. "I'm getting so full, but at least the headache is going away."
We eat in comfortable silence for a few more moments, both of us drinking our coffee and fully waking up for the day ahead.
"Do you have any plans today?" I ask her.
"What, you mean besides having an enormous breakfast with the handsome bouncer who brought me home last night?" She gives me a sly look before hiding in her coffee cup.
"Well, I figured we could have breakfast, and then maybe we could spend some more time together?"
"You mean when I'm sober?" There's her little smile again. I like the mischief in her.
"I'll take you any way I can get you."
She blushes at that, and I can't help but love that I made her blush. "I know this is going to sound kind of fast, but I was wondering if you might want to come out to my ranch today. We have a new foal there, and with your talent for photos, I think that you could–"