Page 102 of Sweet Caroline
She came so hard she sobbed, taking everything from me untilwe were both wrecked and shaking. Hell, maybe we were both crying. All I know is, for the first time, sex hadn’t been about some list. Hadn’t been about anything other thanus.
“Come with me?” I whisper against her bare shoulder, then raise an amused brow when I remember uttering those exact words about eight hours ago—under much sexier circumstances.
“What? Where? What time is it?” Caroline’s disoriented questions have me nipping at her neck, kissing her skin with smiling lips.
“The gym. It’s about five-thirty, I think.”
The idea of leaving her here makes my chest ache. Our connection last night—not only physical, but emotional—rocked something deep inside me. Inside her too; I’d put money on it. And there’s no way it was just the fear factor or some kind of trauma bond.
Would that be trauma bonding or bonding over trauma? Is trauma superglue a thing?
Whatever you’d call it, there was already something real growing between us even before last night. The fire didn’t create it out of thin air. Only cemented it.
She rolls over to face me. “Aren’t you meeting Gus there?”
“Yeah, but you should come with me.” I kiss the confused furrow on her forehead, certain I’m clinging too hard, but unable to stop myself all the same. I’m not sure at what point this inability to let her go becomes unhealthy, but that’ll have to be a later-me problem. For now, I’m just grateful my gym bag was in my truck so I could stay here a little longer instead of having to drive home. “Please? Promise to punch any jackasses who try to talk to you.”
“What about Gus?”
“Alright, Gus gets a pass. Unless he sings.”
“Tell you what:I’llpunch Gus if he sings.” Wiggling closer, she kisses my cheek. “To protect your honor.”
“Okay, deal.” I chuckle. “Buuuut”—feeling my dick start to get the wrong idea, I shift my hips back—“you’re gonna have to get less naked in a hurry, unless you want us to be late.”
Raising a coy brow, she drags her fingers down my chest to the waistband of my underwear. “Can’t you be my cardio?”
“Oh, don’t you fucking tempt me,” I murmur against her temple, then tear myself away, climbing out of the bed to grab my shorts. “Come on. We can grab breakfast after. Maybe the deli?”
She sits up quickly, her hair a fluffy, messy halo.
“Oh,thatgot your attention?” I smirk.
She squints as if she’s weighing the pros and cons. “And I get to watch you work out in your…”—she gestures at my lower half—“little shorts?”
I’m just pulling on said shorts, but I slow to inspect them. “What do you mean, mylittle shorts? They’re normal shorts.”
“I dunno. That’s, what, a five-inch inseam at most?” She lets out a long exhale, openly ogling me, then crawls over the bed to slide her palms up my thighs.
“You like my slutty little shorts, huh?” I lift her chin.
“Mm-hmm.” She nods, then presses a kiss to my stomach, her lips warming my skin through my T-shirt.
“See? Knew you were a big perv.”
She grins up at me, then slips her fingers under the hem of my shorts, sliding them up a bit. Tracing her thumb over the tattoo on my left thigh, she sinks down on the bed to inspect it closer. The entire design is about the size of her palm—a detailed honeybee, surrounded by wildflowers. “Why do you have a bee tattoo?”
“’Cause my head’s full o’ bees?” I draw back, dodging the subject. “Now c’mon. We gotta go.” I curl back down to kiss her, then force myself to tear away and wink. “Go get those slutty little yoga pants on.”
Amusement dances in her eyes, but there’s something morelacing her expression: a kind ofcut-the-craplook I’m all too familiar with. She doesn’t move from her perch.
Honesty.
“Okay, fine.” I step toward her again and brush a frizzy curl back from her forehead. I attempt to tuck it behind her ear, then frown when it springs back. “It’s for my mom. She was big into gardening. Loved the bees.”
“It’s beautiful,” she says quietly. “I assume you’ve got one for your dad as well?”
I contort my left arm so she can see the simple semicolon on the back of my triceps—one of many in my hodgepodge of a collection. “He was a high school English teacher. But it also means… y’know, I could’ve stopped, but I didn’t. Didn’t give up.” When she’s silent for a beat too long, I add, “Anyway, congratulations, now you know my secret; I’m a huge dork with a punctuation tattoo for my dead dad. Can we get going now?”
