Page 51 of Only and Forever
I swallow roughly and shift just a bit on the sofa, lifting my leg enough to hopefully hide what the command in her voice, what talking about this, does to me. “I thought about what it would be like to touch you. Kiss you. Taste you. Make you come undone. To have those big, beautiful eyes holding mine while I did it.”
Her breath hitches. Her fingers curl around my wrist. “Did you ever... touch yourself to the thought of me?”
“Fuck, yes.” I flip my hand and glide my palm along hers, savoring her shiver when I curl my fingers along her wrist. “So much. I tried not to, but you were all I could see when I closed my eyes, Lula, when I’d get myself off—”
A soft moan leaves her as Tallulah tugs me by the shirt, drawing me near. Our mouths are so close, I feel her breath and catch the trace of smoky whiskey. “I did that, too,” she whispers.
A groan rumbles up my throat. It’s a hell of a fantasy, but I don’t believe it. No way did the chilly, close-lipped girl get herself off to the thoughts of a guy she wouldn’t even acknowledge. “Yeah, right.”
“I did.” She drags her hand up my shirt, toward my neck, and pulls me closer, her breath hot on my ear as she whispers, “I made myself come all the time, thinking about you. I thought about your hands on my tits, your face buried between my legs, fucking mewith your tongue. I was obsessed with you, your body, your hands, your mouth. It was infuriating.”
“Shit,” I moan, dropping my head to her shoulder. “You hid that very well.”
“So did you,” she whispers.
Her fingers slip so softly through my hair, I almost miss the sensation. Except that goose bumps dance across my neck, down my back. I turn my head, and my lips brush her collarbone. My hand grazes her waist, dying to wrap around her, drag her against me, and finally ease this ache. Her thumb trails down my ribs to my hip. I jerk reflexively, arching toward her touch.
Tallulah’s head dips as I peer up at her. We stare at each other, breaths sawing, rough, out of our lungs.
“And that,” she says, her voice as smoky as that whiskey she’s been drinking, “is why I think the beard is a tragedy. I know what a face like yours inspires. At least think about giving it a trim.”
Without another word, she slowly eases up off the sofa, then tugs my ball cap low, teasing, unexpectedly sweet. I tip back my hat and watch her walk straight down the hallway, shutting the door to her bedroom behind her.
And then I lie there on the sofa, unmoving.
For a very. Long. Time.
FOURTEEN
Tallulah
Playlist: “invisible string,” Taylor Swift
I am never drinking with Viggo Bergman. Ever again.
My head pounds and my stomach is queasy, but the latter has very little to do with drinking too much alcohol, and thankfully, neither are due to my blood sugar being out of whack—I checked; it’s always the first thing I check when I feel off. I’m nervous about bumping into him this morning, trying to survive this interaction without my trusty coping mechanism: avoidance.
Avoidance is not the healthiest way to live, I know this. But I’m still crossing every digit as I walk down the hall from my bedroom, hoping Viggo’s sleeping off his hangover so I can get myself coffee without having to face him or what we did last night.
Or maybe, more accurately, what we didnotdo.
What we both clearly wanted to do and didn’t.
He’s attracted to me. After last night, I know that. And while, on the one hand, it’s hot, exciting, gratifying—it’s bad news for my commitment not to try to get in his pants.
As I round the corner into the kitchen, I throw out a silent plea to the uncaring universe, hoping it sticks anyway:Let him still be asleep.Pleaselet him still be asleep.
When I enter the kitchen, my hopes are dashed.
There stands Viggo, mass-market historical romance in one hand as he pours hot water with the other, swirling it over a carafefilled with ground coffee beans. Like last year, out on the deck of the A-frame, he’s working a romance-lover T-shirt (this one saysUnapologetic Romance Reader) bed-head hair, and plaid slippers. This time, though, instead of sweatpants, he’s wearing a threadbare pair of gray athletic shorts that do nothing to disguise the fact that Viggo either deals with significant morning wood or he’s hurting from last night’s unresolved lust as much as I am.
I scrunch my eyes shut so I won’t stare at that formidable outline pressing into his shorts. Healthy or not, avoidance sounds pretty great right now.
Viggo doesn’t seem to have noticed my arrival. I can take a few steps backward, turn the corner, and slink back to my room and wait him out, eat a snack from my nightstand, and read for an hour, however long it takes for him to disappear into a different part of the house to get dressed for the day, maybe take a shower—
The image of Viggo’s naked body, what I imagine it might be, floods my mind. Those hard, strong arms flexing as he put together my shoe organizers last night. The peek of his stomach and his hips, as his shirt lifted the first day I came by, only to find him winded and sweaty. The sight of his long, muscular legs this morning. Every visual fragment I have of him coalesces into a filthy fantasy. Viggo, lean and hard and wet beneath the shower’s spray, sudsy water sliding along his tan skin, droplets drifting down his taut stomach, those sharp hip bones, lower, where he’s—
I grimace, eyes scrunched shut even harder, trying to banish the horny visual. When I take another careful step back, the floor beneath me lets out an outrageously loudcreeeeak.