Page 94 of Sneak Attack

I’d waited what felt like forever for this moment, so sure it’d never happen I’d given up.

This time, I took Cole’s hand in my hand and stepped backward toward Marley’s door, tugging him along with me. “I don’t want to wait.”

* * *

Nerves hit as we tiptoed through the house and up the stairs.

“I feel like I’m sneaking a boy into my parents’ house,” I whispered once we reached the second-floor hallway.

“That’s because youaresneaking a boy into the house. You naughty little thing.”

“Shut up.” I smacked Cole’s hip and hit a wall of hard muscle. He took my hand and squeezed. “Which room?”

“Last one.” There were four rooms upstairs, including the primary bedroom but I didn’t have the nerve to take what had once been Marley’s room even if she’d moved into the downstairs guest bedroom years ago.

She’d claimed then she did it because the stairs were proving too much for her, and she’d moved all of her belongings downstairs, but it hadn’t felt right to me to takeherroom when I arrived.

The benefit of choosing the room I did, which I hadn’t had to think about yet, is that the room I was in was farthest from hers downstairs.

“It’s…flowery,” Cole muttered, and I bit down a laugh.

He was right. The walls had been wallpapered over thirty years ago, back when pinks and greens and floral patterns were all their age. There was a quilt on the bed that was most likely equally as old but since she didn’t have many visitors or guests who stayed the night, it was practically brand new. Artwork was on the walls, more flowers framed in dark wood with a thin, gold trim, and the curtains were an exact match of the quilt.

Stepping into this room felt like stepping back into my own grandmother’s room when I was a young child and still living in Illinois.

I tried to ignore it every time I stepped into the room, but out of all the options, this one was the best. “You should see the other rooms,” I told him.

“I feel like my testosterone levels just plummeted.” He scanned the room again and shivered. “Did you know that high schools used to paint the walls in the visiting locker room a bright pink color because studies showed men felt less masculine and tough, or aggressive, after being around that color for twenty minutes? It gave the home football teams a competitive edge and it was banned about twenty years ago.”

“Well thank you for that interesting and completely non-sexy fact. And how have you never been up here?”

He shrugged. “Don’t know. I think Graham and I spent the night here every once in a while when we were kids, but I only have vague memories of it. But I’d know if we were in this room. It’d haunt me forever.”

“That explains the bunk beds in the room at the top of the stairs. Would you feel more masculine doing it in there?”

“No, I would not feel betterdoing itin a bunk bed.”

“Well, then this is your last option.” The only other room upstairs was more of a junk room. Back when Marley sewed and knitted and crocheted, she’d turned that room into her craft room. Now there was a wall of shelving, filled entirely with rolled-up skeins of yarn she probably hadn’t touched in years.

“I’ll survive,” Cole muttered, and then he wrapped his arm around my lower back and yanked me to him.

I fell against his chest with athumpand muffled laughter against his shirt before he pressed his thumb to my chin and lifted my face to meet his.

“I’ve waited a long time for this,” he whispered. “Floral bedspread be damned, I want you in my arms and we don’t have to do anything you’re not ready for.”

The flames he’d stoked out on the boulder had diminished somewhat, but all it took was that gentle touch of his hand on me, and the unnecessary reassurance and the embers rekindled, turning me needy and ready for him.

Instead of answering with words, I rose to my toes and pressed my lips to the dip between his collarbones at the base of his throat, the highest point of him I could reach while standing.

A low rumble slipped from him, and he walked me backward until my legs hit the end of the bed and then I was falling, controlled by his arm at my lower back. “I have imagined all the ways I wanted you, all the things I wanted to do to you.”

It was a threat. A promise. One I was more than willing to succumb to.

“Prove it.”

Cole laughed against my jaw before trailing his lips back to my ear. “I will. Tonight, I’ll prove it at least twice.”

He was still standing at the edge of the bed, and with one quick move, gripped his T-shirt at the back of his nek and tore it off. He flung it somewhere, but I was focused on the first sight of all that bare skin exposed to me since a pool party we’d both been to shortly before high school graduation.

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