“What?” she blinked up at him and then down at her bare legs in confusion. She’d dressed in an oversized sleep shirt every single night since she’d moved in here. Why would it be a problem now?
“Please, Elena.” He looked like he was in physical pain looking at her legs. “I’ve gotta say some stuff and I won’t be able to get through it if I’m staring at your pretty legs.”
She gulped. Couldn’t think of a single damn thing to say to that. So she turned, dug her yoga pants out of a drawer and slipped them on. His eyes darkened as he watched her put her pants on.
She padded over and sat on the bed, hoping he would sit with her. He didn’t. Instead, he stood in front of her, still as a statue, his arms crossed over his chest.
“I’ve wanted to make out on a bed with you since high school.”
Her cheeks colored and she grinned up at him goofily. “Really?”
“Really. I used to lose hours dreaming about it. For a while there, you were the first thing I thought of when I woke up and the last thing I thought of when I went to bed.”
“I—” she cut herself off, usually so verbose; she found that she was incapable of responding just yet.
“I imagined long, winding conversations with you. I hung on your every word in every class we had together.” He remained perfectly still. “I thought you were the smartest, most brilliant, most special person I’d ever met.”
“But…” Her brow furrowed as her natural instinct rose to argue the story. Then she thought of what she knew about Cedric. So calm and honest. He wouldn’t lie to her. “We barely spoke to one another.”
He nodded. “That’s how it had to be. I was so tongue tied talking to you. And like I said, I was terrified you would find out about my learning disorder. So I kept my distance. I was horrified and so goddamn excited when we got assigned to do that project together.”
“Horrified?”
“Because I knew that I couldn’t hide how much of an idiot I was. My only hope was to make you think I was uninterested. Just a dumb jock who didn’t care about school or about your time. But I cared about those things so much.”
“I thought you were hot,” she blurted and then grinned goofily again.
His face went completely blank, even as color rose in his cheeks. “What?”
“Yeah,” she nodded. “I really did. I was nervous to be sitting in your room, on your bed all those times we studied together.”
“You…” he shifted on his feet. “You never seemed nervous.”
She shrugged. “Neither did you.”
Cedric finally dropped his eyes to the carpet and ran a hand over his hair. “Fucking high school. Why did everything have to be so confusing?”
“Right. We could have been making out all of senior year.”
He dropped his hands to his hips and stared at her. “You would have let me kiss you? In my bedroom? While we were supposed to be studying?”
She nodded. “I wanted you to.”
“Motherfucker,” Cedric groaned and covered his face with his hands. “I’m such an idiot.”
“No, you’re not, Cedric.” She went up on her knees on the bed so that they were closer to eye level. “And I don’t like you saying that about yourself, okay? You might be a slow processor, but you’re thorough. And considerate. And I value those things, okay? You think I look down on you because you listen to books instead of reading them? You know how many men I know who are reading the classics out of genuine interest besides you? A big fat zero, Ced. I don’t care what your SAT scores were, okay? I didn’t care then and I don’t care now. I think you’re smart and sweet and—”
Cedric lunged forward and clapped a rough palm over her mouth. He dropped his forehead into the crook of her neck and just sort of nestled there. He scented her skin and when he was sure she was done talking, dragged his palm around to the back of her throat.
“You have to stop talking,” he whispered in her ear, close enough to make her shiver. “Because I can’t sleep with you without losing my job and if you keep talking, I’m going to try, very hard, to sleep with you.”
She shivered again and swayed forward. She tilted her head to look him dead in the eyes. They were close enough that the tips of their noses brushed.
“We can’t sleep together?” she asked, point-blank.
He shook his head no, but one of his hands traveled down to the hem of her shirt and he traced the skin at the top of her yoga pants.
“Can we kiss?” she asked him, so close to his mouth that he could taste her.
He shook his head no again and this time, both of his palms circled the bare skin of her waist, gently pulling up her t-shirt a few inches.
“No,” he finally said. “Not until you’re not a client anymore. But I can hold you. And I can talk to you.”
His hands moved another inch up her stomach.
She had the strangest sensation that someone was playing her lungs like an accordion. It was like Cedric took up all the air in the room and she was scrambling for the smallest sips of oxygen.
“I can tell you that when I was in high school, I used to dream about sucking on you right here.” He brushed his nose against the curve of her neck. “I used to sit in the back of the class and imagine walking up behind you, leaning down and giving you a hickey right here.”
She whimpered when he pressed his lips there but didn’t quite kiss her.
He lowered to his knees beside the bed. Elena looked down at him and felt an unwieldy vertigo. Sometimes she forgot just how humongous he was. Even kneeling before her he was still almost at her eye level as she sat on the bed. She tried to speak, to tell him that, but found that her voice was stuck in her throat like wool on velcro. She was pinned by those soft, deep, midnight eyes of his.
His hands went to the back of her calves and held her there. “I think you’re like an orchid, Elena.”
“What?”
His hands traveled up the back of her legs to her knees and back down to her feet. “I’m not sure that I can explain it. I guess I mean that you’re so pretty in an interesting way. Almost too pretty for Earth. Nothing is as pretty as you.”
He crouched further down and Elena watched as his eyes fell from hers. She could almost feel their path as his gaze hitched on her breasts for a moment before bottoming out between her legs. She was both grateful and wildly disappointed that he’d made her put on yoga pants. With his palms flush against the back of her knees, Cedric brought himself further down, so that he was eye level with her hips.
Gently, gently, he spread her legs, just a few inches.
Elena planted her palms on the bedspread, her eyes wide and her heart galloping.
“Someday,” he told her, though his eyes were still planted between her legs. “I’m going to put my mouth on you for hours. I’m going to taste you until I’m crazy with your flavor.”
He laid his cheek on her knee, still staring between her legs. His eyes flickered up.
“Breathe, Elena.”
A smile pulled slightly at the corners of his mouth when she suddenly gulped down air. She hadn’t even realized she’d been holding her breath.
“I used to dream about going down on you,” he told her.
Yeah. This time she was well aware that she’d stopped breathing and there was nothing she could do about it. “Really?” she asked in a rather strangled tone.
“Really,” he nodded, his head tipped to the side, still resting against her knee even as he looked up at her. “A million times I dreamed about you spreading your pretty legs for me, letting me lick you.”
She couldn’t help pushing her knees apart a few more inches. It wasn’t an invitation he could take her up on, but it still felt good to do it. Both of them breathed hard.
“I thought high school boys were way more into the main event,” she said breathily. “Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am.”
He laughed. “Oh, I thought about having sex with you too, trust me. I thought about that plenty. But it was goin
g down on you that haunted me. I’d wake up in the night thinking about it, sweaty and aching.”
“I wish you’d told me back then,” she whispered.
Was it just her or was he slowly inching forward? She could have sworn his cheek had been on her knee, but there his face was, halfway up her thigh.
His eyes pinned hers in place. “If I’d told you how I felt, would you have spread your legs for me?”
“I— I’m not sure.” Her chest was doing that accordion thing again. It was exhilarating and terrifying to be the center of so much focus. She felt as if she were the only thing in Cedric’s mind. Nothing would distract him from her. She’d never felt as if she was someone’s entire universe before, but here they were. He was studying her the way a scientist might study a wild animal. She knew, with a gut-deep certainty, that there was nothing she could do that would be wrong. He simply wanted to learn her. It made it easy to tell him the truth. “I was a virgin then, I might have been too nervous to let you.”
“I would have gone slow, Elena.”
“I know,” she answered immediately. “Everything you do is slow, Cedric. I find it so fucking hot.”
That statement had him blinking, he chuffed out a laugh. “I run the 40 in four and a half seconds. That’s not exactly slow.”
She laughed too, tilting her head back to the ceiling and searching for the words. “No, that’s not what I mean. I guess I just mean that you move with such certainty and care. Even then. I remember that about you. You were so huge but never scary. It’s sexy as hell. So powerful and so gentle.”
“But I was always so clumsy around you. Knocking stuff over.”
“Sure, but I thought that was cute.”
“I wish I’d spoken up back then.” His brow was furrowed but his hands started a slow slide up and down the backs of her legs.
“I wish I had too.”
“I would have made everything so good for you.” He was definitely inching forward again. His face wasn’t more than five inches from the V of her legs. “All I wanted was to make things good for you. Still do.”
Then his face was so close to where she was wet and achy for him that she could feel the heat of his breath through her pants.
“The first second that I’m allowed to touch you, Elena—no, the first millisecond—I’m going to make it so good for you. I’m going to take such good care of you.” He inhaled fully, drawing her scent into him and Elena stiffened.
She flopped herself backward onto the bed and groaned, tossing an elbow over her eyes.
She heard him laugh and felt his heat move away from her. “Too much?” he asked.
“Not enough,” she groaned.
She felt the bed dip under her hips and pulled her arm away. She looked up to see him with a fist planted on either side of her hips. He looked aroused and focused and humored and enamored and calm and intense all at once.
“Elena, something tells me it’s never going to be enough.”
***
Cedric was true to his word. He didn’t kiss her and he definitely didn’t have sex with her. But that didn’t mean that he didn’t crawl under the covers with her and pull her weight onto his chest. He tucked some of her wild, silky hair under the strap of the undershirt he wore, just because he had to, he had to feel her against him in all ways.
Despite the erection that threatened to pull the band of his sweats away from his stomach, Cedric was able to drift into a deep sleep. He waited to fall though, until he felt her breaths get even and deep. They’d worked one another up into a high sexual heat, but because there was nothing to do besides savor it, they’d simply fallen asleep all tangled together.
Cedric loved this. Sure, friends cuddled sometimes, but never like this. Cedric had the first knuckles of one hand slid under the waist of her yoga pants and one leg inserted between hers. She had a hand under his undershirt, all the way up to his pec. Her weight was sprawled across him in a delicious press. The fingers of their free hands were tangled together, her thumb buried in the cave between their palms.
He loved how clearly they were into each other. They couldn’t sleep together, but this was about as rated R of snuggling as two people could get.
The other part he loved was how high school it all was. If they’d gotten together in high school, they wouldn’t have slept together immediately either. They most likely would have taken things slowly, step by step. Base by base.
And because he’d spent so much time wishing things in high school had gone differently with her…well, he guessed that he didn’t mind reenacting it. This time with a much better outcome.
When he woke the next morning, they were curled like spoons, the length of his erection against her ass and the flats of her feet on his shins. He had one hand under her shirt and the other arm was dead asleep under the weight of her head. He couldn’t kiss her, he knew this. So, instead, he buried his nose at the nape of her neck and just breathed her in.
He had a few hours until he had to report for duty. He would be strictly professional with her, then. So he had to get his fill right now. He highly doubted that was possible.
His dead arm was starting to be a problem so he gently shifted away from her, hoping he wouldn’t disturb her.
He rolled out of bed, went to the bathroom and finger brushed some toothpaste onto his teeth. He couldn’t help but laugh at himself. He was grinning like an absolute idiot.
Cedric could barely believe his reflection. He looked like he’d plugged himself into an electrical socket. His eyes were bright and clear, his beard a little scruffy where he needed to trim it up, his auburn hair messy. His cheeks had color and he was breathing fast.
Jesus. He looked like he’d just gotten absolutely everything he’d ever wanted.
He heard her shifting around in the bed and left the bathroom quickly, not wanting her to think he’d left her without saying goodbye.
She rolled over, spooning with the pillow he’d left behind and tossing one leg out over the blankets. “Hi,” she said in a gruff morning voice, half her face hidden by bedclothes.
“Hi,” he answered. He knew that goofy grin was still covering his face, but he couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
She rolled onto her back and stretched hard. And then she was out of bed and padding past him to the bathroom.
He suddenly wasn’t quite sure what to do. They hadn’t slept together, but it sure felt like a morning-after type of situation. And if he was being honest, he’d never been good at those. As much mojo as it took to get a woman into bed, Cedric felt as if morning light always just kind of sucked it all away into oblivion. He was often funny and charming at night. But in the mornings? After sex? He found himself quiet and tongue-tied and never quite sure what to say next.
He’d hoped with Elena it would be different. But there he was, just standing in the middle of her room, unsure if he should be getting his shoes back on and giving her some space or what.
He settled for sitting on the edge of the bed and waiting for her to come back out. Hopefully she’d have a better idea of what the hell they were supposed to be doing.
She came back out from the bathroom piling her hair on top of her head in a messy knot, just the way Cedric liked it. “So,” she said, leaning against the doorway. “What happens now?”
Yeah. Great. So apparently she was going to be zero help figuring out what the hell he was supposed to do next.
“Ah.” He rubbed his palms on the legs of his sweatpants. “You mean with your investigation or…”
“I meant with you and me.” She gave him a sphinx-like smile.
“Oh. Right. Well—”
He cut off when she bounded across the room and plunked herself right down in his lap, her hands linking behind his neck. “You think there’s any chance at all that Sequence would deliver some pancakes up to our room?”
And just like that, Cedric let out a long breath and felt his nerves just sort of deflate away. Apparently, he was invited to stay. And if her ha
nds playing in his hair were any indication, he was still invited to touch.
“I think we have a snowflake’s chance in hell of Sequence ever delivering food to anyone ever.”
“Damn,” she frowned. “Then that means that we’re going to have to leave the room at some point.” She leaned forward and nuzzled her forehead into Cedric’s neck.
His goofy grin was back.
“Well, I’m reporting for duty at noon, so I’m definitely going to have to leave. You, however, can stay in here as long as you like.”
She frowned and pulled her head away. “Cedric, when you’re on duty… Are we just friends?”
His heart skipped. This beautiful woman on his lap was looking at him with so much sweetness in her eyes. She was soft and warm and his feelings for her were anything but friendly.
“We’ll have to be professional.” Cedric stroked a hand over her shiny hair and, as he already had a million times in the last ten hours, resisted the urge to taste her bottom lip.
He looked back up to her eyes just in time to see a light dim in her demeanor. Her lips twisted slightly to the side as she nodded. “I understand.”
“Wait,” he said, putting one crooked finger under her chin and lifting her face. “I want to make sure you actually understand what I’m saying, okay? I’m not willing to have any misunderstandings right now.” He took a deep breath and shifted his hands slowly down over her back until he got to her hips. He pressed her down, slowly but inexorably until she must have felt the steel of his erection at her ass.
“Elena, I just want to be clear. We’re not friends.” Her eyes widened in surprise. “I mean, of course we are. We always will be. But look, I can’t have sex with you or kiss you while you’re our client. And that might be a month, or it might be a year.” He sighed and was obliged to see that she, also, looked like she really, really hoped it wouldn’t take a year. “We don’t know. But that doesn’t mean that I view you as a friend.”
He lifted her off his lap and set her on the bed next to him so that they were lying on their sides, her leg hitched up over his hip. “Every moment that I’m on duty, I’m going to be devoting every ounce of my focus to keeping you safe. I am not going to let anything distract me from that. Not even your gorgeous mouth.” He let his thumb trace her lips and she smiled. He felt like a campfire had just been started in his chest. He wanted to make her smile a hundred million times. He figured they could probably stop burning fossil fuels if they figured out how to bottle her smile.
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