His grin was pure sexual magnetism, nearly blinding me. “Even if I don’t mind being your dirty little secret?” His fingers were kneading my scalp and making it so I couldn’t concentrate.
“We should be more than that,” I finally managed to say. “We should be out in the open.”
“How would that even work?”
“I don’t know.” Mostly because my brain functions had ceased. “I was kind of hoping you might have the answers.”
“I don’t know, either. But we don’t have to figure it out tonight.” He leaned me back against the couch, into the corner so that I was in a reclining position. He hovered above me, his arms braced on the arm and back of the couch, trapping me. “From my keen observations, it looks as if this storm isn’t letting up, and we’re going to be trapped here overnight. The only thing we need to decide tonight is who’s going to sleep where.”
“I’m planning on sleeping in a bed.”
“Sounds good. I’ll join you.”
I smiled up at him, reaching up to run my fingers along his spiky five o’clock shadow. He turned his face into my palm, nuzzling it before he kissed it. “It will be easier to keep this slow if you sleep in a bed and I sleep in a different bed in another room.” Possibly a room in another cabin at the rate this was going.
“Okay,” he muttered as he lowered his body to mine. “But can we make out a little first?”
“Well, that seems only reasonable.”
Then he showed me just how much he agreed.
Later, he walked me to one of the bedrooms, his arms still wrapped around me as he pressed me into the doorway and kissed me good night. As he set my entire body ablaze once more, I was tempted to tell him to forget the slow thing. That I had been mistaken.
Just as I opened my mouth to tell him as much, he whispered, “Good night,” and kissed me softly one last time. He walked across the hall to what looked like the master bedroom. The room I was staying in had two twin beds, just like what I had in my room in the apartment.
I suddenly felt a chill, even though the heat was on. I’d been glorying in and surrounding myself with Bash’s warmth, and now that it was gone, I missed it. As I opened my overnight bag, I realized I hadn’t exactly brought anything warm to sleep in. I’d brought a blue silk set; it had a button-up top and a pair of matching shorts, and it had not been designed with snowy nights in mind.
I changed, grabbed my notebook, and got under the covers. Bash and I had spent the evening talking and kissing (admittedly, more kissing than talking), but the conversations we’d had made me believe what he was saying. That we would last. That we could be together forever. I felt too wired to sleep and tried to continue my story about Sven and Julia. I was on the fourth chapter, and they had just arrived in Rome to train Sven to become a gladiator.
I was about to separate my main characters, and I realized that I didn’t want to. Not in my story, not in my real life.
Bash was right there, across the hallway. We’d already spent years apart. We weren’t going to have another chance like this for a long time. Where we wouldn’t have to say good night.
My heart thundered in my ears as I threw off my blankets and headed for his room. I knocked softly on his door and let myself in, closing it behind me. What if he was already asleep?
“E?” he mumbled when I tiptoed over to his bed. Not asleep yet, but almost there. “What’s wrong?”
Acting braver than I felt I said, “Could we . . . tonight . . . can I stay here? With you?”
He sat up in bed. He was shirtless, and he absentmindedly rubbed his face. “I thought you wanted to take things slow.”
“I do. I’m not offering to have sex with you. I just want to sleep here. I don’t want to be apart from you anymore.”
I couldn’t see his face clearly in the dark, so I didn’t know what he was thinking. I was afraid that I’d made a big mistake. I’d almost started to apologize and slink back to my own room when he pulled the covers open and patted the spot next to him.
That was all I needed. I climbed in as he lay down again. I rested my head against his shoulder, fitting perfectly against him. Even though I had my mom and my sister, I hadn’t had what felt like home in a long time. We lived in Doug’s house, and then I lived in a dorm and then an apartment. All of those places were temporary.
But this? With Bash’s arms around me, his warmth enveloping me, this . . . this was my home.
I draped my leg on top of his, stealing my arm around his ridged stomach. I wanted this. A lifetime of nights like this one. I could see forever, too.
“You must think I have incredible willpower to sneak into my room wearing this.” His fingers toyed with the hem of my top, feeling the fabric.
“I trust me and I trust you.”
He let out a groan. “Great. You had to go and make it about my integrity.”
I giggled, snuggling closer. “I can go. I’m not trying to tempt you. I just want to be close to you.”
“I don’t want you to go.”
“I don’t want to go, either.”
“Then it’s settled,” he said as he kissed the top of my head. “But I vote that the next time we do this, we do the naked version of it.”
“That’s a possibility.”
His arms tightened around me slightly, and as his breathing grew more even, I felt his chest moving up and down in a rhythmic way that made me sleepy, too.
Right before he drifted off, he said, “I totally knew you were going to sleep with me tonight.”
I laughed and held him tighter.
Life was fantastic, and the universe was amazing. As my own eyelids became heavy, I decided things couldn’t possibly get any better than they were in this moment.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
BASH
The sun was bright, the sky clear the next morning, and it was beyond hard to climb out of that bed with so much lush warmth and softness waiting for me there. But I wanted to do something special for Ember, so I got up, threw on my shirt, and made her breakfast.
She had just woken up when I returned with a plate of pancakes, bacon, and scrambled eggs.
“What’s this?” she asked, and the delight was evident on her face and in her voice.
“I made you breakfast in bed.” I situated the tray on her lap. I lay next to her, propping myself up on my elbow. She immediately picked up a piece of bacon, taking a bite.
“This is really good,” she said, holding it out to me. “Try it.”
I took a bite and couldn’t hide my smile.
“What?” she demanded. “What is that look for?”
“You just shared your food with me.”
She raised her eyebrows. “And?”
“For you? That’s the biggest declaration of love I’ve ever seen. If I wasn’t sure of it last night, now I know you love me.”
“All I’m declaring is that I appreciate you doing this, and I was being nice because I know you’re hungry, and I was trying to help keep it at bay.”
“One tiny bite of food is not going to fill me up. And when it comes to you”—I leaned over to kiss her on the pulse point between her neck and her collarbone, and I felt her soften beneath my lips—“one small taste is never enough. I’ll never get my fill of you.”
From the darkening of her eyes I knew she felt the same. “Can I tell you something?”
“Always.”
“Now that I know how you feel about me and about all this”—she gestured at herself—“it feels a little weird. Like I suddenly feel like I have this superpower over you. As if I could make you lose control with very little effort.”
Her words turned my insides molten hot, my body coiled with tension. “You keep talking like that, and you’re going to find out how true that is. Besides, didn’t anybody ever teach you to use your powers for good?”
“But . . . I think this would be good.” Her teasing, seductive smile was back, making my breath catch.
“Stop playing with fire,” I wa
rned her. I knew Ember. It would be one thing for her to joke but another for us to move too quickly.
Fortunately my phone buzzed with a message, and I reached over to the nightstand to grab it. “It’s from Deja. She said the roads have been cleared and they’re on their way up here.”
“Oh.” Ember pouted a little, making me want to kiss her lower lip. “I was kind of hoping it would just be the two of us today.”
I put my hand on top of her leg, still feeling a little awestruck by the fact that I could touch her or kiss her now. “I wanted that, too. I could stick around.”
“Yeah, but knowing my roommates there might be a male ritual sacrifice planned for later on this evening. Or they will hound you endlessly with questions.”
“I can take a little interrogation.”
“This wouldn’t be a little interrogation. This would be like . . . a Guantanamo Bay type of situation.”
“Well,” I said, “in the interest of not being waterboarded, I should probably go dig the truck out.” I squeezed her leg. “I hate the idea of leaving you.”
“I don’t want you to leave, either.” Her voice sounded different, strained.
“Hey,” I said, waiting for her to look at me. I was surprised to see pain and fear filling her eyes. “I’m not going anywhere. You know that, right?”
“I do. It’s just . . . I don’t know. I’m being silly.” She shook her shoulders, as if she could make her feelings disappear just like that. “I’ll see you when I get back to school.”
“Right. We’ve got all the time in the world now.”
“Although,” she said, that playful tone back, “I liked it better when seeing you didn’t involve a shirt.”
I reached behind me and yanked my shirt off so quickly that she started laughing. “Is this better?” I asked.
“Much.”
“Your wish is my command,” I said, crawling over to her. I moved the tray out of the way, down onto the floor. When I straightened up I tugged on her legs until she was flat on her back. Then I braced myself over her. My mouth hovered above hers, loving the feeling of anticipation, the way my abdomen would tighten, how my breathing went shallow, right before our lips met.
“Do you know what I really want?” she whispered as she ran the tips of her fingers along my jawline, leaving trails of fire in her wake.
“Tell me. Anything, and it’s yours.” If she asked me to bring her the sun, I’d find a way to accomplish it.
“What I really want . . .” she said as she leaned in so that her lips touched my earlobe, sending shivers from my head down to my feet, “. . . is more bacon.”
I tried to time my departure just before Ember’s roommates’ arrival so that I could spend as much time with her as possible before I had to go. Her bacon-flavored kisses were hard to resist.
And when the weekend ended and she came back to school we got to behave . . . like any other normal couple. Nobody knew about our other lives, about our parents who would probably have strokes if they saw us together. Instead we held hands during algebra and kissed in the hallways like any other couple who had just discovered they were in love. At practice I was cool with Woodby now. I even felt a little sorry for him. Because that dude had seriously missed out, and I was glad that Ember was mine.
Unfortunately, our other life did decide to rear its ugly head. It was the night of the breast cancer benefit/ball, and Tricia had asked if everyone could come home to get ready and then go to the ball together. Like one big happy family.
Ember and I drove home together, and I stole as many kisses as I could at stoplights, knowing that we were going to have to behave at the dance. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep my lips to myself.” I said the words against her throat before kissing it. She made that sighing sound of pleasure that drove me absolutely insane.
“You’re going to have to try hard,” she said. “Which, to be honest, may not be easy once you see me in my dress.”
“What dress?”
“It’s actually the one I bought for prom.” Her words hung heavily in the air. The prom that we had planned on going to together. The prom that never happened. “I had been really excited. I bought the dress before you left. I found the perfect one, but I had to get the sales clerk to bring me one from the back in a size for people who ate food. Anyway, I ended up going to the dance with a bunch of my girlfriends, and it was kind of a bummer.”
“If I could go back and fix it, I would.”
She slipped her hand into mine. “I wish I hadn’t been so emotional. I should have enjoyed myself instead of missing you. So my gorgeous dress has had nothing but sad memories. I’m glad I get to give it some good ones. Especially since it’s going to be so perfect for our waltz tonight. The skirt is poofy and princessy.”
Ember parked in front of the house, and now that we were in non-touching territory I smiled at her one last time before we got out of the car. She placed her new phone on top of the car, and, remembering what had happened the last time she did that, I told her, “Don’t forget your phone.”
“I’m being more careful now!” she said, grabbing it and walking inside with me. Lauren pounced on us as soon as we walked in the door. “I’m going to help do your makeup!” she told Ember.
With an apologetic look, Ember followed her younger sister upstairs. I went and snagged some leftover chicken from the fridge. I noticed four cellophane boxes. I reached for one and realized they were corsages. My old man could do things up right when he wanted to. I put it back and headed upstairs to my room. They’d left it exactly as it had been in high school. Guilt washed over me again that I couldn’t figure out back then how to stay. I grabbed the suit I’d brought with me. My dad was a big believer in having at least one nice suit you could wear to church or a funeral if you needed to. It didn’t take me long to get dressed, and I decided to go back downstairs and find something else to eat. When I stepped into the hallway I heard my name. Ember and Lauren were in the bathroom, talking.
“When Bash sees you in this dress, he is going to die. Tongue rolling out of his mouth and onto the floor, eyes bugging out of his head like a cartoon character.”
Ember laughed, a sound I adored. “You need to let this Bash thing go.”
Did Lauren not know about us? For some reason I thought she did. Probably due to all her little remarks about our relationship.
“Never. I’m ride or die for you two.”
“How do you think everybody else would react?”
“Everybody else? You mean, like, Mom?” Lauren asked.
“Yeah. Do you think she’d hypothetically be okay if Bash and I dated?”
“Oh, no. Mom would absolutely flip. Which is one of the reasons I’m shipping you guys so hard. Because the fallout will be epic. She has this whole image in her head of this perfect blended family, and that blending does not include the kind of, you know, blending you’re talking about.”
Feeling like I’d intruded enough, I went down to the kitchen. Tricia came in wearing a black dress that made her hair look even pinker.
“Bash! You’re here!” She came over to give me a hug, which seemed strange. We’d never really had a hugging type of relationship. “I’m glad you were able to make it.”
Before I could respond, my dad came in the kitchen behind her. He told her how beautiful she was as they sweetly kissed; it reminded me of why I’d run away in the first place. My dad deserved this. He deserved to be in love and happy.
So do you, a voice whispered to me.
But I was in love and happy. My heart hurt a little that I couldn’t share it with the people I cared about most because I knew what their reaction would be. Ember had the right idea. We should just stay quiet about it for now, see where it went. And when the time was right, we’d tell Dad and Tricia and figure the rest out from there.
Dad grabbed the corsages out of the fridge as Lauren and Marley came downstairs. He passed the wrist corsages out. Ember wasn’t with them, something Tricia noticed as well.
“Where’s Ember?”
“Still curling her hair. She’ll be down a little later,” Lauren said, giving me obvious side-eye.
“I don’t want to be late,” Tricia worried. “I’m on the committee.”
Lauren said, “The four of us can go, and Bash can drive Ember over when she’s ready. You can just text him the address for the club.”
“I’d be happy to,” I responded. Very, very happy to.
“Okay,” Tricia said with a slight frown. “I had wanted us to all drive together, but I need to get going. You two have to leave in the next twenty minutes. Promise me you will.”
“I promise. I’ll pick her up and carry her out to the car if she’s not ready.”
Lauren shot me an amused grin, which I ignored. Dad handed me the one unopened corsage. “This is for Ember.”
“I’ll make sure she gets it.” I walked them to the front door, again promising to see them soon.
“Ember?” I called up the stairs. “We’re going to be late if we don’t get going soon!”
“Be down in a minute!”
I considered going upstairs to look for her but knew if I did that, we’d never make it to the ball.
Then I was glad I waited. I heard a noise behind me, and I turned to see her at the top of the stairs. I nearly swallowed my tongue. She looked . . . phenomenal. Her dress was a dark wine color, with a strapless top that reminded me of a heart and a lighter shade for her princess skirt. Her long dark hair hung in waves, and my fingers itched to touch her. My teenage self? His head would have exploded seeing her in that dress.
Wow. Wow, wow, wow.
I couldn’t believe she was mine and I was hers. Completely. I would have done anything for her.
She walked down the stairs slowly, her skirt making a rustling sound as she moved. She came to a stop in front of me and twirled around. “Well?”
“You’re always beautiful, but you just made me forget how to speak.”
“You seem to be doing okay,” she teased.
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