Page 77 of Legally Mine

I turned to him. "I...kind of hate it."

Brandon sighed, almost as if he were relieved to hear me admit it. "Me too." He shrugged, looking around. "Margie found it last minute. It's a place to live."

"It just doesn't feel like you. It's so cold." I glanced around at the hard metal fixtures and the gray and white color scheme. "What happened to fireplaces in every room? And big comfy couches?"

Brandon just gave me a rueful half smile and walked into to the kitchen. I took a seat at the bar as he found us something to drink.

"Tea?" he asked. "Or something stronger?" He held up a bottle of Lagavulin and two glasses.

I nodded gleefully. "Ooh, you've got the good stuff."

I was rewarded with a grin that immediately warmed up the entire chilly room.

"I keep it around in case someone special stops by," Brandon said.

So he still hadn't given up that habit. At the big house on Beacon Street, he had kept an entire room full of bachelor-style furniture and accessories for old friends who never came. He wasn't normally a scotch drinker, generally preferring IPAs or maybe a bourbon or brandy. That scotch was for me, a girl who, up until just a few weeks ago, wasn't supposed to be coming back. My heart twisted a little at the thought.

Brandon poured us each a few fingers of the golden-brown liquid, then added a splash of water.

"Do you mind sitting here? The dining table makes me feel like I'm at a board meeting, and those couches are really uncomfortable," he said as he sat next to me at the bar.

Suddenly I couldn't bear the distance between us anymore. I craved our intimacy, the feeling of just fitting together. I slid off my stool. "Come here."

I grabbed ahold of his shirt sleeves and pulled him to me for a kiss. My fingers threaded through his soft, curls. Instinctively, he wrapped his big arms around my small frame to engulf me in his scent, in his body.

At last, I let go, and took my seat. Brandon watched with a sly half-grin, as if already a little drunk.

"What was that for?" he asked as he sat back down, although he scooted much closer and set a hand on my knee as he took a sip of his drink.

"That was for the scotch," I said with a wink.

He laughed.

"Did you keep it here knowing we were going to get back together?"

Brandon was silent for a second, conveniently taking another drink. He swallowed, opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again.

"I hoped," he said finally with a concessive shrug. "A man can dream, Red."

That was Brandon in a nutshell. A man who dreamed. He'd dreamed his whole life: of a family, of a better life, of a job, of money, of his firm, even of a family at one point...and of me. And now there was nothing to hold me back from showing him that I had dreams of him too.

We sat there, sipping our drinks, watching each other as a silence fell between us. He's been to my apartment a few times in the last few weeks, but we hadn't been fully intimate yet, always because I had put on the brakes. But now there was nothing to hold me back. Blue eyes or green? Now was also the perfect time to tell him.

I took a deep breath and opened my mouth.

"I'm sorry," Brandon interrupted. "You're too far away."

He dragged my stool even closer so that I was basically wedged between his knees. He picked up my hands and kissed them solemnly, one by one, then set them down in my lap, so he could cup my face.

"It's been a hell of a night, Red," he said. "I just need to keep kissing you right now."

His blue eyes were bright and curious. I hadn't said much since leaving the Petersens' house, and Brandon was clearly a bit nervous, considering the bomb he'd dropped. I didn't say anything, instead just fisted his shirt and pulled him to me.

He took my mouth slowly, continued the soft thoroughness that had characterized our kiss moments before. But now I was the one who couldn't get close enough. Suddenly the fact that it had been months since we had last really slept together seemed absolutely unbearable. I needed Brandon inside me, and I needed it right now.

He seemed to feel my sudden urgency. His mouth opened hungrily as his hands clenched at my waist. With a grunt, he reached down under my ass and lifted me up onto the countertop so that I was eye to eye with him.

"You," he murmured in between kisses as his hands ran insistently up and down my bare thighs, pushing the flimsy material of my dress farther up.