“I’m an open book.”
I sat on the edge of his bed by a side table and picked up a framed photo. Three kids and two adults posed with a chocolate lab. It was winter, and they wore coats but weren’t entirely bundled up.
“This is your family?”
He sat beside me. “Yeah. This was my parents’ anniversary. We had a surprise party for them.”
“I thought you had five siblings.”
“Right.” He pointed at each person in the picture. “My brother Will. My sister Lydia. Jasper was her dog. This is me. I was sixteen. Mom and Dad. And that was our dog, Cadbury. My older sister, Emma, and the twins, Harry and Oliver, were off at college.”
“Wow. That’s”—I absorbed all that—“a lot of British names.”
“Yeah. Did you know Alfie is one of the most common names in England?”
“Is it?” I remembered how he’d bemoaned it in his journal. “I really love it.”
“Well, I’ve grown to appreciate it.”
“I can’t imagine having such a big family.”
“I’m closest to my brother Will.”
“Where is he, now?”
“Atlanta. You might meet him if you hang around long enough.”
I scanned the photo. In the background, I thought I made out a field but no signs of a street or other houses or even cars. “This is the farm where you grew up?”
“Yeah. It’s gone now.”
I put the frame back on the table and took his hand. “What happened?”
He looked at the floor and exhaled sharply. “My dad died four years ago.”
I squeezed his hand and waited.
“Massive coronary.” He swallowed. “He passed away, and then my mom couldn’t take care of everything. Since the kids had all left anyway, she sold the farm and bought a small place in Athens.”
“So the inheritance?”
“Yeah. Divided amongst us, it wasn’t a massive windfall, but it was enough to let me take a step back and think about what I might do if I could do anything I wanted.”
“If you couldn’t fail.”
“Exactly. When Dad died, I kept hearing him say things like ‘Nobody gets out of this world alive,’ and I realized I might as well do something I love.”
I gave him a side hug. “So you bought the bar.”
“Yeah, I went from being practically alone to having a hundred acquaintances. Then you came along, and I realized what I’d been missing all along.”
How was it he could make me swoon when I’d been on the verge of crying a moment before?
The sun played in his hair, and I reached up to touch a reddish-brown curl. “You know what I’m missing right now?”
“What’s that?”
I pressed my lips to his, so soft and warm, so delicious. When I drew back, the look he gave me was one I’d never seen before on any man. Was it desire? Gratitude? Hope?
He leaned in for a deeper kiss. His tongue gently scraped along my lower lip, and I wanted to bite him, suck on him, rip his shirt open.
But my stomach growled. Traitorous body.
He stood. “Do you like Indian? I can order some from down the street.”
“God, yes.”
My phone buzzed.
“Fuck.” Tristan’s name displayed on the ID. I opened the message.
Correction, messages plural. I’d missed a couple at some point earlier.
That guy from the bar tagged you in a picture yesterday.
I thought you were with me.
Are you ignoring me?
Shit.
The newest message, sent about an hour after the first five, read: Fine. See you Friday, I guess.
I scratched my head. We’d never made promises to each other. Was I supposed to explicitly break up with someone I wasn’t explicitly dating?
“Important?” Alfie paused halfway to the stairs. “Can you still stay for dinner?”
“It’s not important.” I put my phone in my bag. “It’s just Tristan trying to mess with my head.”
He dropped on the bed next to me. “Are you . . . ?” He shook his head. “We haven’t talked about what’s happening here between us.”
He was right. If only I’d had this conversation with both of them.
“What do you think is happening, Alfie?”
“I don’t really know. Are you going out with Tristan?”
“Tristan who?”
He laughed, but his smile faded and he sighed. “Sorry. I don’t want to sound like an asshole, but I feel like I’ve played this game once before and lost.”
“In college? I never went out with him then.”
“No, but you wanted to, right?”
I obviously couldn’t deny that. I shrugged one shoulder as if that were a satisfactory answer. My past crushes shouldn’t count against me now.
His skin flushed. “Yeah. I know. It was a long time ago. It just sucked to be overlooked.”
I didn’t know what to say. All I could do was acknowledge him. “I wish things had been different.”
He nodded, and I thought that might be the end of it, but he gazed into my eyes, like he was trying to read my mind before going on. “I guess it still feels like I’m invisible.”
Urgh.
Alfie had no reason to trust me yet, but I could reassure him at least with regard to Tristan.
I slipped my hand into his. “I admit I got caught up in the idea of Tristan, but I only want to be right here. Next to you.”
“Yeah?” His shoulders relaxed.
“Truth.” I touched his cheek. “I see you, Alfie Jordan.”
“I have always seen you, Sierra Reid.”
His hand slid around the back of my neck, and he looked so mischievously adorable, I wanted to do wicked things with him. When he kissed me this time, I swung a leg over him so I could face him straight on, and something grew between us.
Physically.
He moaned and shifted to adjust himself. And suddenly, I was completely zeroed in on the connection between us at a much more primordial level. I had the overwhelming urge to pull off his clothes and ride him like a mechanical love bull.
My fingers gripped his hair, and his palms flattened against my arching back, drawing me in for a kiss that went beyond romantic into purely erotic. It was messy and needy and wild. He sucked on my lower lip, and I nudged his head to the side so I could drag my teeth down his neck. I couldn’t fight my desire to suck on his skin, unbutton his shirt, and run kisses along his collarbone.
He smelled so clean with the barest hint of something I couldn’t place. Cedar? Sandalwood, maybe? I inhaled him and lost my mind for wanting him.
Dying to find out what his chest looked like under all that fabric, I popped the first button. Alfie took my hand and pressed his mouth to my palm, breathing heavily. “Sierra, hold up.”
My eyes regained their focus as I took in the situation. I was straddling Alfie on his bed in his loft while his family stared at us from the picture frame. And he was hard as a rod between my thighs. A thick rod.
I wanted him in me immediately. My hips moved of their own accord, and he let out a ragged breath. I wished I could pull up an inventory screen and remove our clothes with a click of the mouse. Other than that barrier, we were in a perfect position to get instant relief.