Page 40 of Crazy In Love
“At least you admit it.” Laughing, she turns to her door and shoves it open, sliding out until her feet touch the road. Then she slams it shut again and waits for me to do the same. “It’s clear Alana spent her entire youth mothering you, and hell if you didn’t come to rely on it.” She wanders to the shop door and pats her pockets. Searching. Panicking. And then realizing. No keys. No purse. Nothing but the phone in her pocket and hopes and dreams—and puppy dog eyes glittering up at mine. “Can you…”
“Bet you’re glad I drove you now, huh?” I unlock the door and push it open, then I hold it wide and wait for her to pass under my arm before I follow and close up behind us.
Fuck knows, Barbara will waltz on in if she sees the place unlocked for more than three seconds. “You would have walked your cranky ass across town, kicking stones and cussing me out for no reason except your own bad mood, then you would’ve arrived and realized you couldn’t get inside.”
“Lucky me.” She tears the scrunchie from her hair and cuts a line through the store. “You get to be my knight in shining armor. Oh, Sir Lancelot. They were right to dub you the most perfect knight.”
She swings her hips and traverses the stairs, and coming to a stop on the top landing, she peeks over her shoulder, doe-eyed and sugary sweet. “Please, my sweet knight. Putteth the key in the locketh.”
“Pretty sure that’s not how they spoke back then.” I unlock her door and knock it wide to allow her entry. I open my mouth to tell her which way to walk, but then I snap my lips shut again. There’s no need for a tour of her new digs; the place only has one door beside the one we just walked through.
I close up behind me and set my keys on the counter, my phone right after them. Then, bending at the hips and pressing my elbows to the countertop, I drop my head and run my fingers through my hair. “I haven’t pulled an all-nighter in a good long while. Turns out I’m not twenty-one and buzzing with teenage energy anymore.”
“Yeah, because being twenty-nine and an athlete means you’re not literally in your prime right now.” She strolls through the bathroom door and closes it most of the way, and tossing her hair tie to the basin, she peels the hoodie up and lobs it to the floor. But I guess the fabric is kinda heavy, heavier than she’s used to, because it hits the bottom of the door and knocks it a few inches wider without her realizing.
Fuck me. I catch her reflection in the vanity mirror, the perfect view of her smooth skin and muscular shoulders as she peels her shirt up. She reveals a flat stomach and a glittering belly piercing, and higher up, a lacy red bra that matches her underwear perfectly.
Her spine creates a deep valley in the center of her back, and the ink I glimpsed earlier turns out to be a million times more detailed than I even guessed, stretching all the way around her hip and up to her right shoulder blade.
She didn’t touch her arms. Not her neck. She didn’t even mark up her stomach, except the very lowest section.
I lick my lips and watch, a prisoner to the show she unknowingly puts on, as she unbuttons her shorts and wiggles them over her hips. They’re wide enough to create the perfect hourglass shape. Her backside, just thick enough to force her to work the denim down instead of letting it fall.
Turn around, Christian.
This isn’t a peepshow, and she hasn’t invited you in.
She slides the shorts all the way to her feet and steps out of the denim. Her sinfully long legs are made longer now that she’s almost completely in her skin, then she reaches back and unsnaps the catch on her bra.
God save me. Please. Because maybe she’s infuriating, and perhaps we’re destined for a lifetime of bickering. But she’s fucking beautiful, and I’m just a man who hasn’t touched a woman in too damn long.
She releases the straps of her bra and shucks the lacy material down, until all she has left is her and her panties, and damn her to hell and back, but they hug her ass and provide me a challenge;see if your hands can do the same.
I’m not sure I breathe. I’m not sure I even know how.
But I stare and consider. I hungrily study her long limbs and delicate ink. Her thick thighs, the kind I’d assume belonged to an athlete. And then her eyes, when they come to mine in the mirror.
“Shit.” I drop my head and clamp my eyes shut, squeezing them tight and gritting my teeth. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—” I shake my head. “I meant to tell you the door was knocked open, and I?—”
“I’m not mad.” Her voice is stunningly husky, and fuck if it’s not needy enough to draw my eyes open again. Swallowing, I glance across and watch her hide on the other side of the door. She rests her cheek on the wood, her bottom lip between her teeth. “Not sure if inviting you in would be the most satisfying thing I’ve ever done,” she murmurs. “Or if it would be opening a can of worms I’m not entirely sure I could manage.”
Beautiful brown eyes search my face, her gaze, as warm on my skin as her touch would be… if only I allowed myself to walk closer. I push off the counter and turn, dangling my hands by my sides, but that might be a mistake, too. Because she lowers her eyes, trailing them over my thundering heart, my swirling belly… finally, my crotch.
“At least I know what you think of me.”
Groaning, I press my hands to my cock and cover the tent it makes of my pants. “I’m sorry.”
“If I go to bed with you, are you gonna be a control freak, like the fork thing?” She plays with me, teasing as she runs her tongue across her lips. “Or a control freak, likeyou’regonna decide when I get to breathe and how often I get to come?”
Fuckkkkk meeeee.My cock throbs.
“Because if it’s the first, I’ll tire of you really fast. No woman everwanted to be screwed by a man who never quite grew out of his ten-year-old dysregulated phase.”
“Fox—”
“But if it’s the second,” she hums, suckling on her bottom lip. “I can’t say I haven’t thought about it. Six weeks can be a really long time if all we’re doing is swiping at each other.”
“So you wanna fuck instead?”Shut up, shut up, shut up!“You think instead of fighting, we could direct our energies elsewhere?”
