Page 38 of The Billionaire's Commitment

“Yes?” I asked as I turned around.

“I have a question,” she began.

“Sure, what is it?”

“Um,” she said and looked down at her feet and ran her hands together.

I could see whatever she was going to ask me was making her nervous. I walked up to her and took her hands in mine, trying to reassure her. I lifted them up as I looked at her. “Whatever you need to ask, you can just ask it.”

“Why don’t you ever try and kiss me goodnight?” she asked.

I squeezed her hands and then looked away from her. My mind raced as I tried to find the right thing to say to her. Before I could, she asked, “Is it because you don’t want to? It’s okay if you don’t.”

Her words had me looking back at her. She had such a serious and worried expression on her face that my first reaction was to pull her into my arms and show her just how much I wanted to kiss her. I didn’t because of the worry I saw. I wanted to reassure her, not scare her off. This was the first indication that she had really given me that she wanted to change the nature of our relationship. I didn’t want to do anything to mess it up.

Slowly, I brought her hands to my mouth, and I kissed them. I smiled at her as I saw her take in a quick breath as her eyes held mine.

“I have wanted to kiss you from the moment you walked into the bar.”

“You have?”

“Yes. So very much,” I admitted.

“Then why haven’t you?”

“You said you wanted us to be friends. I understood that to be only friends. I respect you; I respect your decision, your boundaries. I wasn’t going to cross it, no matter how much I might have wanted to,” I said.

“Isn’t that the point of boundaries, to have them crossed?”

“Not unless both people want them to be. Do you?”

I brought her hands to my mouth again and kissed them. I gave her a slow smile, and as she smiled back. I could tell by her question what she wanted, what she was asking. I couldn’t believe this was actually happening. I wanted to be a patient man, and I thought I had been with Zoey. Seeing her smile at me, seeing her face and knowing that she wanted me to kiss her, that she had found the courage to tell me she did, meant everything.

As hard as the last couple of weeks had been not being able to hold and touch her the way I wanted, This moment, seeing her like this, made it all worth it.

“Yes, I think we should,” she said.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

Zoey gave me a slow smile that made my heart sing as she said, “Brody, why don’t you kiss me?”

Chapter 18

Zoey

One day I will look back and wonder what made me so bold, what it was that Brody did or didn’t do that made me say what I did. All I knew was that as I watched him walk away from me for yet another time, I didn’t want him to. It might have been the look he gave me right before he said goodnight, one that told me he wanted me to say more, do more. Or it could have been the look of sadness and disappointment I saw flash on his face before he turned away that had me saying what I did.

It didn’t matter, and I told myself I would think about it later and figure it out. All that mattered was Brody was putting my hands down and not because he was going to walk away from me but because he was putting his arms around me and pulling me to him. I almost couldn’t breathe. I was so excited about what was going to happen.

I had never wanted a man to kiss me as much as I wanted Brody to. I kept my eyes on his, and as he pulled me closer to him, I could tell he felt the same way. He smiled at me as our lips moved so they were inches apart. His arms tightened around me, and I closed my eyes as he pressed his lips to mine.

We didn’t move for a second. It was as if we both couldn’t believe we were kissing and wanted to savor the moment. My hands went around his waist and up his back, tightening my hold. As I did, my mouth opened, and Brody slid his tongue inside.

At the feel of his tongue moving around mine, I moaned, and he intensified the kiss. It went from soft and subtle to overpowering and all-encompassing in the blink of an eye. His arms tightened around me and his hand moved down my back but stopped just before it got to my ass and moved back up. I moaned, but this time in frustration. I wanted him to touch me, all of me, and I suddenly knew how I hoped and wanted the night to end.

We had only been seeing each other for a few weeks, and I wasn’t one to jump into bed with a man. It was all different because it was Brody, the boy I had known most of my life and the man I had gotten to know. The kiss, this kiss that I had been waiting for, made me see all that I had been missing by not being with him. I had wasted too much time as it was, and I didn’t want to waste anymore.

“Zoey.” Brody sighed as he broke the kiss. He dropped his head onto my forehead and let out a soft sigh.

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