Page 50 of A Temporary Forever

Her silence draws my gaze to her face. Celeste is looking at the ceiling with a solemn expression while she plays with the golden watch on her wrist. “She was,” she croaks.

“Shit. I’m sorry—”

“Thank you, but I had to learn to live without her a long time ago. I’m fine.”

“What about your father?”

Now her jaw ticks as she searches for a response, her eyes darting around the room. “He loved my mom, but not in a healthy way. He was chronically jealous, and we had to leave.”

“You don’t have contact with him?”

She shakes her head, lost in memories or regrets, I’m not sure. She doesn’t say anything else, and I don’t think she will. Not yet, anyway.

While I found freedom when my parents cut contact, I can sense that Celeste is on the opposite spectrum of feelings about not having them in her life.

Or at least her mom, because it feels like her relationship with her father is about as complicated as mine, if not more so.

I don’t know when my hands’ movement slowed down, or when I stopped massaging her soles. I’m nowtracing through the soft fabric of her leggings, up and down to her knee.

It probably started as a mindless move, but somehow the contact penetrated into my awareness, like everything about this woman.

And now I’m so hyperaware of the feel of her under my fingertips that I can’t stop. She closes her eyes, and I take that as encouragement. Drawing circles up her legs until my thumbs graze between the thighs.

She grips my wrist. “Caleb.” Her warning is tentative. Or maybe that’s what I want it to be.

“Yes, black swan?”

She swats me away, pushes up to her elbows, and swings her legs over the edge to sit beside me. With a gap for two more people between us.

Fuck. I better go take a cold shower and paint the tiles with my cum, yet again, to prevent a severe case of blue balls.

How is it I can seduce any woman with my smile, and here I am, rubbing my cock against her like a horny adolescent, and she’s immune?

The woman has some amazing willpower. It would be rewarding to break it.

But behaving like a desperate idiot?

“Sorry, your ass greeted me today and—”

“No need to explain. I’m sorry I submitted you tothat. I needed to practice one part of the choreography, and there’s carpet in my room. It’s not a good practice surface. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. For the record, it was a welcome sight.”

I wink at her as our gazes collide. There’s a softness there, and a lingering smile on her face. Heat colors her cheeks, and in the light coming from the window, she looks angelic.

We stare at each other, suspended in an intimate moment that feels significant. Deep. Almost tender.

The world ceases to exist, fading into the background, while Celeste is the focus of all my senses. Her subtle flowery scent infuses the air. Her chest rises and falls in the rhythm of her faintly audible breathing.

We are frozen in this moment of attraction and restraint. Of connection and distance. Of desire and reluctance.

And then she looks away, and the spell is broken. “Look, Caleb, I’m not saying you’re not attractive—”

“Why do I feel like this is a consolation speech? You won’t believe it, but I’ve never gotten one.”

She laughs. “Oh, I believe that. But you and I… it’s not a good idea. I’m sure you agree.”

“Well—”

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