Page 62 of Love and the Laws of Motion
Oh, Christ—soft and sweet and warm and every damned thing he’d been trying so hard to forget.Now it all came rushing back, and his hands curled into fists as he resisted grabbing hold of her.
Slowly, she leaned back and opened her eyes, looking at him expectantly.She was waiting, because she was a good and decent person, for him to sort out what he wanted, if he wanted her.
He drew in a deep breath.Blew it out slowly.Waited for the right words to assemble themselves in his brain.“Livie...”
“I know what you’re going to say.I know Poppy messed with your head and you’re in a bad place.I know you’re not looking for forever or even next month.I know all that.And I don’t care.”
“This is, um, unexpected.”He was stalling for time and he knew it, scrambling to figure out which response was the right one.
“But is it really, though?Nick, you kissed me.”
“I did.”
“So?”She lifted one eyebrow, that same challenging, knowing look she’d given him back at the bar, the one that had totally scrambled his brain cells.It was so fucking hot.
Fuck it.He wasn’t spending one more second stalling, trying to talk himself out of what he really wanted to do.He reached out with both hands, took her face between his palms, pulled her in, and kissed her hard.
Part of him knew she had a point about all of this—his life was a mess.Hewas a mess.He was about as bad for a girl like Livie as it was possible to be, but he didn’t care either.Right now, he was practically howling at the moon, fucking delighted to have this chance to do the thing he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about for two weeks.
Her hands found their way to his shoulders and she melted into him.He teased her lips apart and she opened for him, letting his tongue invade her mouth.He slipped an arm around her waist, pulling her firmly up against his body.Last time—that impulsive fumble in the hallway—his head had been such a mess and blurry with alcohol, that he missed what it truly felt like to kiss Livie.He wasn’t making that mistake tonight.
She was all softness in his arms, those amazing breasts pressed against his chest, her thighs brushing his, her silky hair tickling the back of his hand.Her kiss was totally unstudied, which was—surprisingly—hot as hell.It had been a long time since he’d kissed someone inexperienced.She wasn’t trying to seduce him with her sophisticated technique, or trying to bring him to his knees with some erotic trick she’d read about online.She just kissed him, let herself be kissed by him, let him explore her mouth with his tongue, slowly, thoroughly, and for a very long time.And that was enough, all by itself, to nearly bring him to his knees.
Somehow he’d managed to back her up against the steel rolling security gate of the butcher shop.Livie’s hands gripped his shoulders, then slowly slid up into his hair.The feeling of her fingernails scraping the base of his neck sent a tremor of desire shafting through his body.
He kissed across to her ear, tonguing her earlobe.She sighed, a shaky little exhale that made his dick twitch.The skin of her neck was silky, smooth, and warm under his lips, exactly the way he’d been imagining.Her head fell back, making the metal gate behind her rattle.His hand was drifting north from her waist, and she was doing nothing to stop him.When he cupped the magnificent fullness of her breast with his palm, she sighed again, and this time, his dick did more than twitch.With his other hand, he pulled her hips tighter to his, pressing against the rapidly increasing swell of his cock.
Who knew how long he’d have pinned her to the gate, grinding against her?But a couple of pedestrians passed behind them on the sidewalk, one chuckling and whispering to the other.Okay, this definitely wasn’t the place.
He drew back enough to make out Livie’s face.Her lips were slightly swollen, sheened with moisture, parted and ready for him to kiss again.And God, he wanted to.Kissing, touching, and a whole lot more.But there was something he needed to say, a niggling of guilt that needed to be dispelled.The last thing he’d ever want to do was hurt her, but she deserved to know there was every possibility he’d wind up doing it anyway.
“You’re not wrong, you know.”
“About what?”she whispered.He could feel her words on his lips more than he could hear them.
“I’m a mess right now.You deserve better, Livie.You—”
She reached up and pressed two fingers to his mouth.“I told you, I don’t care.I want you.”Those words sparked a warm glow in his chest, something more than lust, but something he was happy not to examine too closely tonight.
Maybe tomorrow, in the cold light of day, he’d have second thoughts, reservations.Right now, there was nothing but the pure satisfaction of her declaration humming through his blood.He didn’t care about the rest of it either.Tonight, all he wanted was her.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Nick, this is amazing,” Livie said as she sat cross-legged on his bed, scrolling through the first set of data he’d produced on her laptop.“I can’t believe you processed this much data this quickly.”
He’d had to dosomethingto keep himself busy for the past week.Since that night outside the bar, they’d done plenty of kissing, but not much more than that.Clothes had stayed on, they’d stayed vertical, and usually, it happened downstairs in the living room or the kitchen—where, in theory—someone could walk in at any moment.All of that had been intentional on Nick’s part.He was trying to be a decent guy and take this easy, even though he was going slowly mad imagining everything they weren’t doing.Nothing like throwing yourself into a complex batch of coding as a distraction.
“Ididn’t process anything.The program did.”
“But this is incredibly complex data.”
He shrugged, swelling slightly with pride.His achievements always felt better when Livie was the one he was impressing, because blowinghermind wasn’t easy.“Nothing’s all that complex if you write the right algorithm.”
“I thought it would take weeks to crunch these numbers.”
“Not if you’ve got me, it doesn’t.”He leaned across the bed, laid his hand against the back of her neck, and kissed her.“Now tell me how brilliant I am.”
“You’re brilliant,” she muttered against his mouth before looking back to the screen.“I need to analyze these for patterns.If I find a pattern, we can identify an area of the sky where we have a good shot at predicting an event.”
