Page 77 of Hello Kitten

In the morning, I reach out for Adrian. I should know better. He never stays in bed. He always goes for coffee or starts making breakfast. But my palm doesn’t hit the bed, it hits a warm body and Adrian groans.

“You’re aggressive in the morning,” he grunts.

I tilt my head and look at him. “You’re here.”

“You exhausted me last night.” He gives me a guilty smile. “Plus, I was thinking we should go somewhere.”

I sit up, rub my eyes and glance around. “Are you serious?”

He rolls his eyes. “Fine, I’m going to lock you to the bed. I have the restraints to do it. I’ll have to feed you, give you sponge baths, pamper you, turn the pages for you while you read, do it all.”

“We can’t go out in town! Someone will see. You can’t get—”

“We have multiple days, Emily. We can go anywhere. I could get an AirBnB on the coast for us. Who’s going to spot us three hours away?” he teases.

That gets me up quickly as my stomach flutters and excitement rises.

We pack, tease each other, kiss, and manage to get coffee. I put the book I chose in my bag too, just to be sure we have it. The last time we went on a long road trip, it was awkward and I couldn’t wait to just get to the destination and watch shit hit the fan.

Now, I toss snacks at Adrian, laughing when he misses. He lets me play ‘DJ’ on his phone, going through his music options and playing songs that make me happy. We have a great time and it only gets better when we get to the house he rented for the next two days.

It’s right on the beach and gorgeous. A two-story, Key West inspired home that’s all bright colors and beach décor. It almost makes me think we’re in a hotel. The pool and jacuzzi in the back shocks me, but when I turn around and see Adrian looking through the kitchen to see what’s there, I forget about all of it.

“Boyfriend,” I say, more testing the word than calling him, but he looks up, expecting a question.

When I don’t give him one, he smiles. “Yes, kitten?”

“You’ll respond to that?”

“It’s what I am,” he says simply.

“I mean, I know we’ve been dating, but um ...” I try to figure out how to word this correctly. I should have written it down.

“We’ve been dating,” Adrian says while shutting the fridge and walking towards me. “We’re exclusive. We have sex. We kiss.Your sister knows about us. You fought for our relationship. Pretty sure that means we have titles now.”

“Well, if you’re going to be logical about it,” I grumble.

He chuckles, wraps his arm around me, then pulls me against him to kiss me. I moan and stroke over his chest. “You haven’t had enough of me?”

“Not sure that’s possible. Let’s test it,” he says against my mouth.

“How?” I ask.

“Spending all break together,” he says between hungry kisses. “Doing this ... fucking, dating in public.” The way he says it makes it so dirty. “Let’s give a relationship a real try.”

“I think we need to have a tour of the house first,” I hint. “To know how many bedrooms we have. How many couches there are. How many chairs there are ... bathrooms, tables ... options.”

When we go out for dancing and dinner, Adrian leads me through dances I’ve never done, whispering the steps in my ear and laughing when I get them wrong before making me try again. The next day when we go to a market to get things for lunch after having coffee and nothing else for breakfast, then we cook in the kitchen before walking along the beach and collecting shells.

We have sex, we kiss whenever we want, we go to the movies.

Anything that excites us, we do. We go book shopping and try to buy books for each other without hints, we do everything over the three days we have.

When it’s the morning we’re supposed to leave, I wake up on his chest. His arm is around me and Adrian is still snoring softly. I nibble my bottom lip, not sure how to process what I’m doing here.

I now know he was never looking for a one night stand. I know he’s seen me as his girlfriend for a while, I know that this was never just sex for him, so that means we’ve been dating for three months.Three... Well, minus those first two and a half weeks I tried to avoid him and the eight days after the wedding, but ...

But now we’re on vacation together and suddenly things seem serious. The worry about someone finding out, the worry about him getting hurt one way or another hurts me. I’m uncomfortable thinking about how much I like him, especially when I think about us having to drive this far away just to be a real couple.

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