Page 100 of Attached At Heart
I heard Blake’s distant chuckle. “Funnily enough, I like my women to be conscious when I fuck them. And I think I just ate you into oblivion.”
“Mm.” It took a second for his words to register, and then I frowned. “Women?”
“Woman,” he corrected. There was a smile in his voice. “Just one woman. Just you. No need to be jealous.”
“I’m not jealous,” I mumbled, but my bones melted with relief.
“Okay, Lane.” I felt a kiss brush my forehead. “I don’t want to rush this,” he whispered. “I don’t want to rush anything with you. You’re tired, and that’s okay. We have a long day of travel tomorrow that you should be well rested for, and if we keep going—” His words morphed into a soft groan.
I forced my eyes open to see his twinkling brown gaze cutting through the semi-darkness. “But?—”
“Delaney. It’s okay.” He pressed a finger to my lips. My body tingled from his touch, and even though I was exhausted and my limbs felt like jelly, I couldn’t ignore the disappointment that tonight was ending.
Still, my eyelids drifted shut.
Blake’s lips brushed against my ear as I clung to semi-consciousness.
“We wouldn’t want you to not be able to walk through the airport tomorrow, now would we?” His words were like a promise. I felt him tuck a piece of hair behind my ear, tender and soft like he hadn’t just threatened to fuck me until I couldn’t walk straight. “Just sleep right now, sweetheart.”
I gave in despite my reservations, curling into a tighter ball in our shared bed.
“Just sleep,” he murmured, and I couldn’t fight it anymore.
eight years ago
DELANEY
Blake watched as I piled spaghetti noodles onto his plate, his lips twisting in a way that made it easy to tell he was holding in something.
“What?”
“Nothing.” He struggled even more to withhold his grin. “Thanks for making dinner, Lane.”
I began to reach for the pot of sauce before pausing with a frown. “Is there something wrong with it?”
He shook his head with a laugh that finally escaped. “No, not at all. This is just enough pasta to feed an entire army. We have an Echo practical tomorrow, not a cross-country meet.”
I rolled my eyes and continued what I was doing, ladling a red meat sauce onto Blake’s spaghetti. “I’m not convinced you’re getting enough to eat. I looked in your fridge just now, and all I found was beer.”
“Helps me study,” Blake grunted, his amused expression falling.
“It does not,” I scoffed. “If you want to fuel your brain, you have to fuel your body.”
“I think after I eat this, I’ll be fueled enough to study and do a 5K.”
I snorted. “I didn’t realize you were a cross-country runner.”
“I’m not, and I never have been.” Blake raised a brow. “Do I look like a runner?”
I flicked my gaze over him in a way that should be forbidden, and yet, I felt like I could because he invited it. No, Blake didn’t look like a runner. He looked more like a contact sports athlete, more brawny and sinewy than a runner would be. He looked?—
Blake cleared his throat to get my attention when I still hadn’t answered, and I jolted, causing the ladle to slip out of my hands, clanging to the counter. Red sauce splattered onto my white shirt, and I groaned, looking down at what I knew would be stains.
I swore beneath my breath before grabbing a towel to wipe off the sauce. Meanwhile, Blake stood, striding across the room. “I’ll go find you a new shirt so you can soak that one.”
Before I could protest, he was gone. And a few moments later, he returned with a U of M alumni shirt in his hands.
“Here,” he said, handing it over. “Now you can pretend you went to the U for undergrad, too.”
