Page 123 of Betting on You

I swallowed, unable to tear my gaze from his. Had he worded it that way on purpose? Was it possible that Charlie actuallydidhave feelings for me? Every time we’d shared a “moment,” he’d followed it up with something that let me know he wasn’t into me.

But… was there a chance hewas? I managed to breathe out the word “Yeah?”

He reached out a hand and toyed with my hoodie string, and I swear to God I felt it in the center of my chest. His eyes stayed on that string when he said, “Yeah.”

My heart was in serious jeopardy of pounding out of my chest.

I said, “I thought it was just me.”

“It’s not,” he said, and his dark eyes moved to my lips.

I held my breath as he lowered his head, as the air in the blanket fort got thick and heavy with anticipation. I watched his longlashes as his eyes closed and his mouth landed on mine. I sighed as his Charlie-ness enveloped me and I raised my hands to his face, my fingers memorizing the warmth and softness of his skin.

He made a noise as my fingertips moved on his cheeks, reminding me of his kissing feedback in Colorado.I like feeling your hands on me when I kiss you.Talk about a heady awareness.

The pillow was soft under my head as his body hovered along the length of mine, leaning over me, and it felt like his mouth remembered everything and picked up right where we’d left off on the pullout bed in Breckenridge.

His lips were warm, his mouth still sweet from the ice cream as he kissed me. It was slow and deep, catch and release, his tongue and teeth delivering kisses bit by bit, taste by taste.

I could hear the shake in his breath—it matched my own—as his hand released my hoodie string and braced itself on the floor.

The movement brought our bodies closer, put him more directly above me, and I liked it. There was something about the feeling of Charlie stretched out over me that hinted of things to come, things that thrilled me at the very same time they made me nervous.

I moved my hands, wrapping them around his shoulders, which brought his hand closer to me, so he was braced directly above me on his arms. He lifted his mouth off mine, and I opened my eyes, and Charlie lookedhot, a lock of his hair hanging over his brow as his dark eyes blazed down at me.

The moment hovered, as if someone had saidOn your mark, get set, and then his mouth came back to mine, busier and moreinsistent. I ran my hands over his back as he kissed me, memorizing the muscular ridges of his shoulder blades with sliding fingertips.

Our mouths got hotter, our breathing more labored, as my hands trailed down to his lower back. I didn’t know how a lower back could feel sexy—intimate—when he was still wearing a shirt, but it felt full-on sexual as I ran my hands over the spot where he probably had those lower-back dimples.

I was basically panting as he bent his arms, dropping to what was essentially a plank—a plank that brought our bodies flush together. I could hear my erratic breathing—it sounded loud to me in the blanket fort—as I felt all of him against all of me.

I might’ve made a noise, and then he moved his mouth down to my neck, burying his head in the side of my collar. I felt his teeth and tongue on my throat, which made me rear up against him in shock, shock that brought our bodies back together with an electric current.

And then—

“We should stop,” he whispered, his breath hot in my ear, his teeth on my earlobe.

My eyes were heavy as I forced them open, and he looked like pure temptation as he stared down at me with brown eyes gleaming underneath disheveled hair, hair messed by my grasping fingers. I sighed out the word “What?”

His warm breath was on my collarbone as he said, “Last night was kind of emotional, and I don’t want it to feel like I’m taking advantage of that.”

“But you’re not,” I said, memorizing the feel of his body pressingmine into the floor, of our bodies together leaving an invisible imprint in the soft down of Charlie’s floor bed. “This is separate.”

“I cannot believe I’m saying this,” he said, his voice deep and scratchy, “but I think it’s best if we both get some sleep and revisit this another time with more level heads.”

He kissed me sweetly, dropping a peck on my lips that felt like an intimate promise, and I nodded. “You’re right.”

“God, I love when you say that,” he teased, grinning down at me.

“You just love me in general,” I teased back, lifting a finger to trace the curve of his hard jaw.

“Sure I do,” he said, but his grin slid away and he swallowed hard. “We should sleep now, Glasses. Reality comes in a few hours.”

“Yeah,” I said, a little uneasy with what I saw in his face, but then he dropped another kiss onto my mouth and moved so his arms were wrapped around me, my back to his front, and I told myself it was just sleepiness I’d seen. “G’night, Charlie.”

I felt his breath on the back of my neck when he said, “G’night, Bailey.”

CHAPTER FORTY-FOURCharlie

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