Slow Twitch - Реинхардт Лиз. Страница 57

Her face dropped to the crook of my shoulder and she breathed hard for a minute. I felt protective of her, nestled there against me. I righted her bra and put her tank top back on over her head. I smoothed my hand over her hair and smiled at her. I felt a genuine sense of happiness for once. Her face was sweet and looked…kind of loving.

She reached a hand up and brushed my hair away from my forehead. “You’re very nice,” she said a little woozily. “That never happened before.” She moved her hand down my jaw and rubbed along it with her thumb. I rubbed my face against her hand, liking the feeling of being rubbed by her.

“You never got fingered?” I asked, surprised. Then again, I didn’t know much about her background, sexually. There was a lot I needed to learn about her.

“No. Not that. I never came. I’ve never come from someone else doing that. I can do it for myself, but not for anyone else. Except you, now,” she said, smiling, then giggling. “Thank you.”

“Glad I could help.” I kissed her again. She kissed back. I thought about how open and sensual she was and it made no sense to me how she hadn’t come before. Even if the guys were tools. But maybe she wasn’t wild with everyone. Maybe she was only that way with me. That would be such a turn on, I didn’t know if I could stand it.

We were about to get worked up again, and much as I liked doing it for her, I was still a living, breathing red-blooded guy, and I needed to give my balls a break. I took her by the hand, and we headed to a warm, soft patch of grass and lay down.

It was the city, so there weren’t many stars visible, but we looked up at them anyway.

“I never see the stars,” Cadence said. We started out lying side by side, but she moved over so that her head was nestled against my shoulder. I loved the weight of her on my body.

“You need to visit the country.” I ran my hand up and down the smooth skin of her arm. “I could show you the stars.”

She laughed. “That’s a smooth line, Saxon. Is that how you lure all the girls to your little pokey town?”

“The stars. My natural charisma. Whatever works.” I kissed the top of her head. Her hair was smooth and sweet-smelling.

She took my hand in hers. “I like the way your hands feel. They’re very rough.”

“They weren’t always.” I looked at my hand with hers wrapped around it. “Once they were the soft, manicured hands of a man of leisure. The roughness is only since I became a respectable working man.”

She rolled her eyes. “I wouldn’t go that far. I mean, you’re practically on probation.”

“Yeah, you keep reminding me.” I felt the extremely uncool grip of grumpiness take over.

She shrugged. “You want to make me face the truth? Then you have to do it, too. You’re here because you were an idiot. Admit it.” She sat up on one elbow and smiled down at me. The coil of her smile made my heart feel like it was being squeezed by a beautiful anaconda.

“I admit it,” I said, then pulled her down and kissed her. “You were dating the world’s biggest asshole. Admit it.”

“That one’s easy to admit.” She blew on my face and laughed when I blinked hard.

“You had a huge-ass crush on me.” I traced her upper lip with one finger. “Admit it.”

She blushed a little. Very cute.

“I did. But I thought you were different. I thought you were still into drugs and all that. And I thought you were…” She laughed and shook her head.

“What?” I asked. “Tell me.”

“I thought you were cocky. Like you thought that you were all that. But I thought…that you’d be really good, you know, sex-wise.” She put her hands up over her face.

I rolled onto my side and looked down on her. “That was just a tiny sample. If you want, we could try some more.”

“No!” she cried. “You made me feel all that in like ten minutes. And it was just…it wasn’t even sex! You’re going to make me into a freak!”

I kissed her hard. “What would be so wrong about that?”

She kissed me back, her mouth open, her hands all over me. “Maybe nothing?” She sighed.

We kissed for a while, but there was a lot I wanted to know about her, so I broke it off. Yep, hell probably froze over. I chose talking over sex.

“So you had a major crush on me all this time?” I lay back, eyes half shut, while she kissed my forehead.

“Yeah. That night that you rescued me and Sullie, I had been thinking about you. I thought about calling you and asking you to hang out.” She covered her face with her hands again.

“Did you know Jeff was coming over?” I wanted perspective on that night’s insanity.

“No.” She looked down and her lashes made long, spiky shadows on her cheeks. “I mean, I thought he might because he felt guilty, but it was really late. He wound up being pretty drunk. And he wanted to fool around, but I didn’t.”

“You didn’t?” I swallowed back the acid taste in my mouth that appeared when I imagined Jeff’s hands on Cadence. I squinted at her. “I remember you being a wild cat with me.”

She laughed and punched my arm. “You bring out something crazy in me. I’m not usually like that.” she insisted.

So the wild was for me. I loved that. “So you weren’t just playing me that night?”

“No.” She pulled the word out, long, slow, and sweet. “I wanted you so badly. I wanted you to stay. And working with you the next day was hellish. I’d never felt that way about anyone before. Ever. I couldn’t even stand to have Jeff touch me. It just felt gross.” She looked at me from the corner of her eye. “And then he came to confront me about it. He didn’t want to break up, I did. That’s what the fight was about.”

“Why were you so pissed that I punched him? He was being a dick to you.” I let that big-ass bubble of self righteousness float to the surface and pop.

“Punching Jeff in the face? In my parents’ parking lot? While you were clocked in? They’ll be lucky if his family doesn’t sue. You’ll be lucky,” she added sharply.

“I like how you look when you’re pissed off,” I said and kissed her. She held back for a second, then put her arms around my neck and pulled me back onto the soft damp grass.

“You’re an asshole.” She kissed me again.

“You’re the girlfriend of an asshole,” I said, and she smiled at me.

She ran her fingers over my sides, feather-light, until I got ticklish chills. “What makes you think I’m going to agree to be your girlfriend?”

“Because you want my body, and I’m not the kind of guy who screws around with just any girl.” I raised my eyebrows at her and grinned.

She laughed hard at that. Then she stopped and took a long, deep breath. “I wasn’t really pissed at you because of some lawsuit.”

“So what was it?” She looked down, but I ducked my head and met her eyes, determined to not let her look away when she confessed to whatever she was going to confess to.

She gathered up all that long, dark hair at the crown of her head, then let it spill back down her back and looked me in the eye.“I was pissed at you because I didn’t want to be with you, even though I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I have neverfelt so out of control with anyone. Not like I feel with you. And I didn’t think I wanted it.”

“So you were mad at me for being so perfect for you?” I ran my hand from her shoulder, down her arm, over her hand, to her hip and back up.

“I was scared of you.” She swallowed so hard I saw all the little muscles in her throat move. “Jeff was so perfect. He was the most perfect of all of my boyfriends. He met every requirement on my list. And I felt absolutely nothing for him. Not one thing. And you called me on it, so I hated you. Because I managed to trick everyone else. I even tricked myself.” She rolled on top of me, and I put my hands up into her hair and pushed it away from her face so I could kiss her.

“This night feels fucking weird,” I said once she pulled away.

“I know. Like we might wake up, and it won’t be real.” She looked a little panicked at that.