by Aven Ellis
Anticipation burns through me like a raging wildfire. One that is building with intensity each second I stand before him.
And my heart tells me my questions can wait.
“What’s that?” I ask softly.
Landon slowly moves his fingertips down from my bracelet, to the back of my hand. He carefully lifts it up and his fingertips sexily brush over each one of mine, making my heart explode inside my chest.
“TriviaPlayOrPass,” he says softly. “The lips are one hundred times more sensitive than the fingertips. DesignerA, do you care to answer?”
My heart is pounding against my ribs. Landon continues to touch my fingertips teasingly as his blue eyes lock on mine. And I see nothing but desire flickering in them.
“I don’t know the answer,” I say.
“I don’t either,” Landon says, moving closer. “But I intend to find out.”
And then his lips are on mine.
Chapter 12
TriviaPlayOrPass!
True or False: Dopamine levels rise when you kiss someone for the first time, causing you to desire even more kissing.
Landon’s lips brush against mine in a whisper-like graze. Fire burns through me from that innocent touch, the mere sensation of his warm mouth lingering against mine.
His hands slide up to my face, gently holding it as he lightly parts my lips with his. My heart explodes inside my chest as he kisses me, his tongue exploring me in a slow, deliberate kiss. I’m feeling dizzy. Fears about kissing him vanish the second I feel his mouth seek more from me. His stubble is lightly scratching against my face. I inhale the intoxicating blend of vanilla and leather that I associate with him. I find my hands reaching for the lapels of his luxurious overcoat, drawing him closer into my body.
Landon’s hands are still on my face, caressing it as he kisses me in the sweetest, slowest kiss I’ve ever shared with a man. Heat swirls within me as he continues to kiss me, deliberately, carefully, not at all what I expected in a first kiss. It’s romantic and sexy, and I don’t want to stop kissing him.
“Mmmm,” he murmurs against my mouth. “I like this, Livy,” he whispers in that sexy voice that sounds like he downed a glass of brandy. “I really like this.”
I dare to reach up and touch his face, feeling his stubble underneath my fingertips. Landon kisses me again, in the same slow way, sending shivers down my spine. I relish each second of it—the way he tastes of mint, the way his hands are so warm against my skin, the way he’s caressing me with his full lips and teasing me with his tongue.
Finally, Landon breaks the kiss, and he gazes down at me with nothing but tenderness in those gorgeous blue eyes.
“I could do that all night,” he says, his fingertips dancing across my cheekbone.
“Me too,” I say.
Landon cocks an eyebrow. “Yeah?”
I grin happily at him. “Yeah.”
He leans down and lightly kisses my lips again. “Good. I plan to do more of that later.”
“Oh, is that a promise?” I flirt back.
“Yes, but I believe you have questions you need answered first.”
Butterflies shift manically in my stomach. Landon could have easily gone for the hook up, but he’s not. He’s going to give me the night I asked for because it’s important to me.
I’m not a hook up. I know I’m not.
Landon peels off his coat, then his suit jacket, and now he’s wearing the crisp white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up and his gray vest. My breath catches in my throat. It’s so damn hot, seeing his tattoo-sleeved arms like this, the black ink against the white fabric of his designer dress shirt. He’s so sexy, and I can’t help but stare at him.
“Would you like a glass of wine?” Landon asks, interrupting my thoughts.
“Yes, I would,” I say, following him into the kitchen.
“I only have red, does that work?”
“Red is perfect,” I say, studying how the vest and dress shirt stretch across his muscular back.
Landon opens his miniature wine refrigerator and retrieves a bottle. “Cab okay?”
“I love cab,” I answer.
Landon nods and uncorks the bottle. Then he grabs two wineglasses and the wine. “Let’s go to the living room.”
I head into the living room and now the butterflies are swirling like crazy. I sink into his couch, and he puts the glasses on his coffee table. Landon pours two glasses, handing one to me.
“Thank you,” I say.
“You’re welcome,” he says, his eyes locked on mine. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“I’m glad I’m here, too,” I say.
Landon sinks down next to me, his leg brushing against mine and sending a jolt of excitement through me.
“To getting to know each other tonight,” Landon says huskily, tipping his glass against mine. “Cheers.”
“Cheers,” I say, clinking my glass against his.
“Okay. Fire away,” Landon says, reaching for my free hand and putting it on his leg. “Whatever you want to know.”
“You mean that, don’t you?” I ask softly, relishing the feel of his strong hand wrapped around mine.
“For you, yes. I do.”
Emotion fills me. Landon is going somewhere new, somewhere serious, somewhere out of his comfort zone, because I need him to.
And that tells me everything I need to know without asking him a single question.
“Thank you,” I say, my voice growing thick. “That means a lot to me.”
“I know it does,” Landon says, squeezing my hand in his. Then he clears his throat. “So go ahead. Ask me anything.”
I smile at him. “All right. Tell me about your family.”
Landon nods slowly and draws a breath of air, and I realize this topic isn’t the best one to start with from his reaction.
I instinctively reach up and touch his face. “You don’t have to answer it. I mean it.”
Landon wraps his hand over mine and draws it to his lips, kissing it sweetly. “No, I do want to answer it. But it’s messy, Livy. I hope you can deal with the answer.”
I squeeze his hand in response. “I can. No matter what.”
Landon exhales. “My parents are divorced. I have one younger sister, Emily. She’s a senior at the University of British Columbia. We’re close. We talk every day on Connectivity video chat.”
He stops for a moment, and I wonder what he’s about to say. He begins tracing his thumb back and forth across the top of my hand and clears his throat.
“My parents split up when I was four,” he says softly. “Emily was a baby. But they never should have been married. My dad cheated on my mom the whole time. He made a mistake trying to settle down so young. I think he would have divorced my mom if she hadn’t gotten pregnant right away with me. So my dad is cheating, and my mom fell into this deep depression. Like, my earliest memories of her are her crying. Sleeping a lot. She was vacant.
“I know now she was in the grips of it, but as a kid I didn’t understand why she couldn’t take us places or be happy,” he continues. “I would give her tissues when I’d find her crying and beg her not to be sad. I’d draw her pictures to cheer her up. I thought I could make her happy, but I couldn’t.”
My heart lurches inside my chest. I’m about to speak but Landon continues.
“My dad eventually filed for divorce and disappeared until I was a teenager. Mom spiraled so badly that my Aunt Cate stepped in and raised me and Emily. When I was about six, Mom started seeing a therapist, and eventually she was able to be a mom to us, and we moved back home.”
“Landon, I’m so sorry,” I whisper, fighting back tears.
“Don’t be,” he says, squeezing my hand. “All of that made me who I am. My aunt is the
one who enrolled me in hockey as a distraction from the crap at home. She saved me. Hockey saved me.”
I realize how much hockey means to him—the ice was his salvation from the depths of sadness at home.
“Do you ever talk to your dad?” I ask gently.
Landon nods. “Yeah. He remarried and divorced twice after my mom. He finally grew up, so to speak, when I was thirteen. He told me, ‘Landy, don’t get serious with any woman until you’re in your thirties. You don’t want to hurt anyone like I hurt your mother.’ It’s a guilt he carries around to this day.”
Oh my God. Now Landon makes sense to me. Why he’s into hook ups and not being serious.
He’s terrified of being his father.
“Is that why you don’t date?” I ask quietly.
“The million-dollar question,” Landon says. “I don’t want to do what my father did. I don’t want to feed a woman a bunch of BS lines that I know I don’t believe. So I don’t. I don’t promise anything I know I won’t give. I refuse to hurt anyone the way my mother was hurt.”
“I understand,” I say honestly.
“But maybe I haven’t met anyone I wanted to date.” Landon lifts his eyes to mine. “Until now.”
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
“Your turn,” he declares, taking a sip of his wine. “Tell me about your family.”
My head is still fixated on that last comment, but I refocus on his question.
“My parents are married and live in the suburbs,” I say. “I have a younger brother, Jamie, who goes to Northwestern but he lives in an apartment off-campus.” Then I feel a twinge of awkwardness run through me. “Um, I still live at home, though.”
Landon cocks an eyebrow. “Yeah?”
My face grows warmer from his expression. “I know, it’s ridiculous, being twenty-one and living with Mom and Dad.”
“Um, the economy is crap. Apartment rent is astronomical. I don’t think it’s crazy at all.”
Relief sweeps through me. “Thank you. But initially I thought I’d get a job as a jewelry designer with a fashion company, with the goal of working toward my own line and that would give me the income stability I need to move out, but that hasn’t happened. And I’m rethinking that.”
“In what way?”
“I’m focusing on doing more ‘outside the box’ art projects,” I say. “Like the puppy party. Teaching more classes. I’m going to start doing trade fairs. In fact, I booked my first big one, in March up in Minnesota. So I think I’m going to give my own line a shot first.”
“So circumstances have you redefining what you want?” Landon asks.
I stare into his mesmerizing eyes. That’s exactly what it is. The failure to land a designer job has me redefining my career path.
And meeting Landon has me redefining what I want on a personal level, too.
“Yes,” I answer, my heart fluttering. “I have.”
“You don’t have much up on your Etsy site,” he says.
I wrinkle my nose. “You found my Etsy site?” I ask, surprised.
Landon affectionately brushes his index finger over the crease in the bridge of my nose. “Yeah. So how come only fortune-cookie bracelets and glass-beaded necklaces?”
“You never show all your stuff on Etsy,” I say knowingly. “People can steal your designs. In fact, I was so pissed off the other day. I had someone at the guild steal the design I was working on!”
“The guild?”
“Sorry. It’s a co-op place where artists can go to work. That’s where I do my metalwork. Anyway, I had taken a photo back in Seattle of ripples in the water, a reflection photo. It has great contrast, and I was going to translate that to a bracelet. Anyway, this girl—Dana—swung back and picked up my printout and asked what it was. I explained it, and she said it was great, then took it to the photocopier. I was livid.”
“What? Are you serious?”
I groan. “Completely.”
“In my line of work I would have ripped off the gloves and leveled her ass.”
I laugh. “That would make for an interesting day at the guild. Me decking another artist.”
“Still, that’s not right.”
“That crap happens all the time,” I say truthfully. “But I know my work is original.”
“So do you do everything at the guild?”
I explain to Landon that I work two places—simple projects at my makeshift studio in the basement and the metalwork at the guild. I talk about my design process, and how I’m creating two lines: Simple Pleasures by Livy, about the little things that bring me joy, and my nature vision of that line-based on seasonal interpretations of what I see outdoors.
Landon asks me all about it, from the design process to making the actual product, and I happily share my work with him.
“I want to see you make something,” he says, taking another sip of his wine. “Can I come with you sometime?”
Joy fills me. “I’d love that. We can work around your schedule.”
“I fly out for Cleveland tomorrow afternoon, but it’s an up and back,” Landon explains. “I’ll be back early Sunday. So how about Monday, when I’m done with practice?”
I excitedly agree to that, and we go on talking about everything under the sun. We both have dreams of having a family one day. I want one that is close, like my own, and Landon wants that, too—a family like the one he never had—but only when he’s ready. We talk about his vision for life after hockey—he’s still expanding his modeling work and hopes to do that, and possibly coach hockey for kids, too.
“I know I’ll be set financially,” Landon explains, “I’ve made sure of that, so I want to do something fun. I think teaching little kids hockey is what I want to do.”
I smile. “Kids love you. You’d be great at that. As long as you don’t teach them how to fight,” I say, teasing him.
“So leave the fighting until they are six?” he asks, grinning back at me.
The time goes by so fast, and I’ve learned so much more about him. How he loves to read science fiction and his favorite books are the Jurassic Park series. I share that my favorite book is Alice in Wonderland, which inspired part of my ‘Simple Pleasures’ line. Landon easily shares his disappointments, his dreams, and I do the same. And with each word spoken, I feel the bond between us growing stronger.
As the evening grows late, I find myself in his arms, reclining on the couch. I trace my fingers over his sexy tattooed arms as he holds me close, studying the intricate ink work he has done on them. I see a map and a compass and a magnifying glass beautifully tattooed onto his olive skin.
“Tell me the story of your tattoos,” I ask quietly.
“I started when I was eighteen,” Landon explains, running his hand over my hair. “The map represents the journey I’ve taken in life. So my left arm is Vancouver, where I’m from, and the places where I played in Canada. On the right arm is the journey since my draft, from spending two years in Milwaukee, in the minor league, to Chicago. But it’s also symbolic of the places I have left to go, and that’s what the compass and magnifying glass represent. The places I have left to go, the ones I can’t see yet.”
I turn and gaze up at him. “I love it,” I say softly. “I love that it has deep meaning to you.”
We sit in silence for a moment, and Landon clears his throat.
“Livy, I have a question for you,” Landon says, sweeping his fingertips gently over my cheekbone again.
“Anything.”
“Have you been in love before?”
I hesitate. I don’t want to burden Landon with my past. To put any doubts in his head. But he has bared his soul to me tonight, and he deserves my truth, too.
“Yes, once,” I say honestly. “He was a football player at Washington. The stereotypica
l athlete player.”
Landon doesn’t flinch at my words, so I continue.
“He chased a lot of girls, but I was immune to his charms at first,” I say softly. “That made him want me more. He promised me he was ready for commitment. To be exclusive. And I believed him.”
I feel Landon’s hand flinch against my face. “He cheated on you.”
“Yes,” I admit. “And he broke my heart. It took me a long time to trust anyone again.”
Until I met you, I think as I gaze into his eyes. You make me want to trust again.
“Livy, I can’t promise you where this will go,” Landon says quietly. “I don’t date. I don’t. But you’re different. And I know I like this. I like what is happening right now. I can’t speak to the future, but I swear to you I’ll never say things I don’t mean.”
I hold my breath as I study him. I can see it in his eyes.
He doesn’t want to be his dad.
But he wants to take a tentative step with me.
And that’s all I want from him right now.
“I’m not asking for anything more than that,” I whisper to him.
Then Landon lowers his mouth to mine, easing my lips open with another sweet kiss. My heart swirls with happiness. His kiss tells me he’s not going to run. He’s going to give this a chance.
He’s giving us a chance.
As I kiss him back, as I feel his hands caress me, I know this is exactly where I’m meant to be. In the arms of this hockey player tonight.
And that’s exactly where I intend to stay.
Chapter 13
TriviaPlayOrPass!
What major US city was founded near the mouth of the Cuyahoga River in 1796? DesignerA, play or pass to Scott921?
“Uh-oh. I see the wrinkle in your nose. You have to pass it,” Landon chides.