I meant for the words to bite—if nothing else, for them to dissolve the tension of the moment. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even think. If he stood this close to me for much longer, I’d do it again. I’d let my urges take over and I’d wind up rolling around with him while some poor proper British family could walk in on us and get an eyeful.
Chris just smiled faintly. “I’d started to think women like you didn’t exist, or that I scared them off.”
“You do scare me.”
“You scare me too. Because I’m starting to think I’d fuck up my life to have you, if that’s what it takes.”
“You’re just saying things,” I breathed. “You just…” I looked down, failing to find the words. “It’s just what you do. This is, I mean. You make girls feel special so they’ll sleep with you. Then they are left feeling like idiots when you move on and they’re left realizing it was all just syrup with no pancakes.”
Chris burst out with a surprised chuckle. “Syrup with no pancakes? Belle. I promise you, there are two firm cakes behind all this syrup, and they’re all yours if you want them.”
I found myself smiling, even though, like always, I wished I wouldn’t. “Keep your cakes away from me, Chris Rose.”
“Not a chance. You’re my wifey, remember?”
Those words weren’t supposed to send golden blasts of gooey warmth rushing through my body, but they did. I wasn’t supposed to let him kiss me, either, but I did.
On the first day of our trip. Less than twenty-four hours since I resolved to be smart and keep this trip professional.
He slid his hand up my shirt, cupping my breast. “I knew you weren’t wearing a bra,” he said between kisses.
I stared up at the interwoven vines and speckling of bright color from flowers above us.
Just this one more time.
Oh, who was I kidding? I needed to move past thinking I was going to fight my feelings for Chris. It was in the open now, whether I’d voiced it or not.
His tongue was circling mine and his hands were squeezing my ass. I could feel his arousal digging into my stomach, and my entire body ached to have it inside me.
Chris knew how I felt. I knew how he felt.
Avoiding it was off the table, and now the only thing I could do was try to protect my heart. I’d let him get his hands on it—among other things—and now all I could do was brace myself for the ride.
I let him pull me to the grass, where he rolled me on my back. His thigh rested between my legs, and as much as I wanted to be reserved and pretend I was only reluctantly allowing this to happen, I found myself pushing my hips up to seek his friction.
Chris hung over me, his messy tangles of hair falling toward me as he watched me with an unknowable expression. “There’s a word I need to get off my chest. I don’t want you to freak out either, but it starts with an ‘L.’”
“Chris…” I said.
“Lackadaisical. It means exactly the same thing as lazy. Why does a word like that even exist, I mean-”
“Shut up and kiss me before I change my mind.”
28
Chris
It was an early morning in the French countryside. I leaned out over the balcony of our bread and breakfast as buttery light seeped from the horizon and backlit the funny little French trees lining the road. I briefly wondered if trees could think, and if they could, whether the trees in France would have accents. Then I decided there were certain thoughts you probably should never tell anybody you seriously considered, so I added that particular musing to the overflowing box of others just like it in my head.
Belle was still in bed, which I figured was a natural biological response to being so thoroughly, completely, and expertly fucked last night. Ever since our romp in the vine-filled flower enclosure, one thing had changed between us. She’d stopped fighting the obvious sexual tension.
The only problem was I found myself still wanting more. I imagined I’d get bored once she stopped playing chase, but it only made me feel greedier. Would I take her pussy? Yes, thank you. I’d take second and third helpings, even. But as we came nearer to the end of our trip, I was increasingly aware that I wanted more. I wanted all of her. I didn’t just want the sex. I wanted the shared, secretive smiles as we joked about something inappropriate during one of our venue tours. I wanted the way she rolled her eyes at me when I did something dumb—like she couldn’t believe I was so immature but that she didn’t want me to stop because it made her laugh. I wanted to know things about her like Lance had taunted me with—the small secrets that made a person who they were. What smells made her explode with nostalgia? What was that one crazily irresponsible thing she did as a kid she still thinks about on long, nighttime drives? Who was her first kiss, and why shouldn’t I hunt him down and execute him tomorrow?
I wanted more. Every time she gave me an inch, I craved miles and miles of her.
I sat down and propped my feet on the balcony with my phone in hand. I was composing an email to my brother when Belle stretched and yawned her way out to the patio to sit across from me. As usual, she had her laptop handy, which I’d come to see as a kind of shield she put up between us over the last couple days. Since the big bang in the garden, Belle was either “working,” which meant so focused on looking things up that she couldn’t talk, or we were sleeping together.
Improvement? Yes. But there was still work to do. And if she thought her little laptop could protect her, I was happy to prove otherwise.
“Question,” I said, pausing mid-sentence in my email.
Belle went a little more still, which I took as a response.
“If I were to say ‘for fuck’s sake’ in an email, would that be with an apostrophe or without? Like, is that a possession of the fuck in question, or is it more like a statement of purpose?”
My question earned me a direct glare from Belle. “Why does it even matter?”
“I’m sending an email and I want it to look professional.”
“Who are you even emailing?”
“Damon. Why, want to read it?”
“No. Definitely not.”
“Question.”
“No more questions,” Belle snapped. She closed her laptop with a click and stared toward the sunrise with a troubled expression. I liked that her hair was still a mess from last night. If I used my imagination, I could still picture my hand gripping that thick blonde hair into a ponytail while I took her from behind, or the sound of how wet she was for me as I drove into her.
“Statement,” I said. “You’re trying to keep me at arm’s length, but my cock, while impressive, is shorter than my arm. It’s an awkward position to try to maintain.”
“I’m sorry, am I supposed to know what that means?”
“I mean you can’t keep someone at arm’s length while riding their cock.”
Belle gave me one of her reluctant smiles I’d come to enjoy so much more than the easy ones. With her, I had to steal smiles, laughs, and affection. Just like candy as a kid, stolen things were always twice as sweet. Maybe that was my problem. Belle made me steal and connive every little droplet of emotion out of her, which only made me crave it more.