Chapter 6
Paul:
The hallway doesn’t feel a whole lot safer than the bathroom, but at least I can breathe out here. And try to will away the erection tenting my pants. I adjust myself and lean against the wall next to the bathroom door, run my hands through my hair. How the hell did I end up back here, caught up in feelings for Abby that I thought were long gone. If it’s possible, I think she might have gotten even more beautiful over the years we’ve been apart. And she still has that casual confidence and easy charm that drew me in the first time.
If I’m being honest with myself, I don’t think I ever truly fell out of love with her. I just buried those feelings away, hoping to never have to revisit them. But here I am. If I were a smart man, I would leave right now, send Embry a sorry-I-missed-you text, and get the hell away from Abby. And all this damn sexual tension.
But damn if she doesn’t have this way of putting me under her spell, drawing me in and making me 100 percent a fool for her. All over again. I’m no wiser now than I was three years ago.
I scrub my hands down my face as the sound of the water turning on flows through the closed door, following by splashing. I picture Abby washing the sticky beer off of her perfect chest and try my damnedest to will away the mental image of me licking her clean instead. I groan in frustration and press the heel of my hand against my stiffening cock. I’ve got to find a distraction before she comes out and finds me listening at the door with my erection in my hand like some kind of pervert.
I push off the wall and pace several feet down the hall, spin on my heel, and pace back. I continue past the bathroom door, only stopping at the other end of the hallway, and turn back. Three roundtrip passes later, Abby emerges from the bathroom wearing my shirt and holding her now fully soaked top at her side.
I know the instant I see her that giving her my shirt to wear was a horrible decision. Sure, trying to ignore the way her wet top molded to the globes of her breasts was damn near impossible, but seeing her in my shirt makes me want to take her home, take her to bed, take her clothes off, and make her mine. Again. The mental images storming through my mind are made all the worse by the fact that I have actual memories to draw from. Memories in which we were together, in which I claimed Abby over and over. And over.
But she isn’t mine anymore. I shake away the image of her in my bed, stripped of everything except my shirt as I crawl over her and claim her body with my own. Fuck. This is not how I expected this night to go.
Idiot that I am, genuinely thought I would show up to the party, have a beer or two with Embry, and then head home to my empty apartment a few blocks from campus.
“Thanks,” Abby says, and my face must mirror my confusion, because she plucks at the collar of the shirt and says, “For the loaner.”
“Sure,” I answer, not certain what else to say. Can I have it back because you look too damn sexy in it and it’s making me crazy doesn’t seem like an appropriate response at the moment. Against my better judgement, I reach out and tuck an errant curl behind Abby’s ear. Her eyes slide shut, and she leans into my hand like she’s been waiting a millennium for my touch. Something deep inside me cracks open, and I find myself drawing closer to her, until our bodies are only a breath apart. Then I lean down and press a kiss to her forehead, the way I used to when we were together.
When I pull back, she lifts her head and spears me with a look so tender, so heated I can’t resist dipping my head and pressing my lips to hers.
Heaven exists in the space between my lips and hers, the place where our souls connect. Where a moment ago I was cold and sinking under the weight of loss, now I am ablaze, every nerve ending alive with sensation, awareness, arousal. Did I even exist before this moment, before this kiss?
The feelings I’ve been trying so hard to bury, to not give headspace or heart space to, well up, a volcano threatening to erupt and singe us both to smoldering ash. This is wrong. This is right. This is fated.
Denial was the security blanket I wrapped around myself, but her kiss has left me exposed, vulnerable. Her mouth moves over mine, her tongue slipping between my lips. I react by instinct, leaning tight against her as if I’m trying to melt into her. Maybe I am. How many nights after our breakup did I lie awake picturing this very moment? How many mornings did I crawl bleary eyed from a sleepless bed after torturing myself through the darkest hours with images of her kissing me, touching me? Just. Like. This.
Her hands land at my shoulders and stroke down to my biceps. I shudder, unable to still the movement as a frisson of excitement races from the crown of my head down my spine. The heat of her touch is everywhere, my back, my chest, my hips, my hair, like she can’t decide where she wants to put her hands most.
To keep my legs from collapsing under me, I nudge her body backward with my own until we hit a closed door. I grab her waist and press her into it, deepen our kiss. I slant my head for air, unwilling to break our kiss to take a breath. If suffocation is the price I have to pay to kiss her, then I will pay the price gladly. Lead me to my death, for I go willingly.
I’m faintly aware of Abby reaching for the door handle behind her, and then the door swings open. I lift my lips from hers just long enough to take stock of the room, and it feels like my lucky day. It’s a bedroom, and opportunely empty. I should turn tail and run. I follow Abby into the room instead.