Page 42 of Watching Ames

I stared at him for a moment, reality trickling back in slowly and then all at once, the overwhelming emotions forcing me to close my eyes for a moment. It was one thing to come here under duress, another to agree to stay here while I waited for my locks to get changed. And while I had fallen back into our friendship headfirst without regret, it was something entirely different to fall into a relationship with him. Giving him my pride and my attention was unavoidable at this point; my body was something I could hold onto. Or so I thought. One look and my self-control was on the floor.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, the rational voice inside my head tried to remind me as I kept my eyes on Alex’s lips, red and swollen from our kisses. But as I kept staring at him, trying to conjure up the slightest shred of regret or shame at our kiss, the only thought that ran through my mind was that what I should really be protecting is my heart, because I wasn’t sure anyone would be able to break it as thoroughly as the man standing in front of me.

Chapter21

Him

She stoodin front of me, flushed and breathing hard, lips and mouth raw from where my scruff had marked her skin. My cock hardened even further at the sight, loving the idea that I’d marked her. That she’d wear my scent on her skin for however long it lasted. It took every shred of control I had to keep from taking her mouth again, forcing her lips apart with my tongue and tasting every bit of her over and over again. But when I glanced up from her lips, I saw the guarded look in her eyes, the one that told me she wasn’t quite ready to accept us, that her brain had succeeded again in talking her out of falling fully for me.

“That’s twice now you’ve given me that look after I’ve kissed you. Next time, Ames, I’m going to make you beg for it. So when I kiss you, you can’t try to take it back or talk yourself into regretting it.”

Her unsure face turned into one of surprise, and her cheeks darkened further with lust, though I couldn’t tell if it was because I read the words written across her face so easily or because of the dark promise in my words.

This girl was fucking made for me. She was everything I never imagined I would find, meeting every challenge without backing down. Her stubborn look when she confronted me about the cats was my kryptonite, causing me to lose control in an instant. But even though she had kissed me back with equal intensity, her chest still rising and falling with the effort, those eyes still held the last bit of doubt, my teeth clenching as I watched her breathing slow and her shoulders stiffen like a cornered animal.

She liked the darker side of me, this I knew without an ounce of doubt, but she wasn’t quite ready for that part of me. She accepted the stalking and my friendship, but for some reason becoming mine was just outside of my reach. But I was a patient man. I had waited for months before coming out of the shadows, and I could wait a little longer until she gave me every inch of herself.

So I pulled back on the incessant need that pounded through my veins whenever she was near, instead reverting back to the friend she preferred. I reached out and brushed her hair back from where it had fallen in her face during our kiss, pulling my lips in a semblance of a smile that only she and a few others could pull out of me, her body relaxing at the familiar gesture even before I pulled her earlobe with my fingers.

“Let’s see what you bought for the house.”

Chapter22

Her

Alex kepthis promise the rest of the week. He didn’t try to kiss me a single time, even though I caught the desire in his eyes at random times. Once when he caught me playing with the kittens, laughing as they attacked my bare feet with their small claws. Another when he came home from work to find me in the garden with Wren, both of us sweaty and covered in dirt. A few times in the mornings, when I would wake up wrapped in his arms, his eyes on my lips as if he were debating breaking his promise. But most often, I would catch him looking at me as if he were planning ways to make me beg when I argued with him.

The first time was just a few hours after our kiss, after we had finished unloading the car and putting everything I bought into their proper places. I had pulled the keys out of my pocket, holding them out for Alex to take back now that I was done using his car.

“You keep them,” he waved the keys off with one hand as he broke down the last of the boxes, tucking them under an arm as he took them out to the recycling.

I followed behind him, fingers still partially outstretched with the keys dangling between them. “What do you mean, keep them?”

“I mean keep them. The car is yours.”

I froze in the doorway to the garage, watching Alex’s muscles bunch under his dress shirt as he threw the cardboard into the bin. I tried to keep a steady voice as I chastised him, “Alex, you can’t just give me your car.”

At that, he turned around, cocking his head in the stubborn way I’d become familiar with the past couple of months.

“It’s not my car. I bought it for you, right after you asked me for it.”

“I didn’t ask you to buy me a car, Alex,” I scoffed, hands migrating to my hips as I settled in for a fight.

His eyes followed the motion, the same lust I had seen earlier in the afternoon returning in full force, but he kept his distance as he casually leaned against his car. “When you fell asleep, after Bex left and you were caught in the rain, you said you loved my car, and if you ever had the money to buy a new one, you’d buy one just like mine. I just figured the bigger one would be easier with your work, to make room for larger orders without worrying about trunk space. I can get you the smaller one if you’d prefer that.”

“I can’t just take a car as a gift.”

“You need a way to get to work,” he countered, voice calm as he tried to rationalize a way to convince me to take the car. “Besides, I won’t return it. So either you’ll use it, or it’ll sit here in the garage until it falls into disrepair.”

The argument followed us from the garage to the living room to the kitchen as we made dinner. As our debate became more heated, so did I, cheeks flushing as we continued arguing the same points over the car. Alex never wavered from his cool, even tone, though his eyes continued to track my terse movements, darkening occasionally when I would stomp my foot or stab a finger into his chest to make a point.

I eventually had to concede when the lust in his eyes had me trembling, worse than ever since I knew firsthand what could come from that look. Agreeing to use the car through the end of my stay with him, I excused myself to take an ice cold shower before returning back downstairs for dinner. I was relieved to find his demeanor back to the friendly attitude I could handle more easily than the dark one that threw all my rational thought out the window.

But even if he kept his lips to himself, Alex was never far from me. He still touched me whenever he could, resting his arm on the back of my chair or pressing his palm against the small of my back as we walked. Occasionally he would hold my hand, especially if we were with Dev and Wren. At first, I thought it was a strange sort of claiming, but I quickly realized that being with his friends was the only time he let his guard down and relaxed enough to touch me so casually.

After the kiss on Monday, the rest of the week followed the routine we had fallen into before the Peter incident. Tuesday morning Alex drove me to work, stopping first byIronwoodso we could grab coffee and pastries. I had to avoid the questioning stares from Adam and Delon, who watched Alex’s hand on my waist with barely-contained glee, their excitement echoed by June when Alex walked me inside the studio a short drive later.

I all but ran to the back when Alex brushed his lips across my forehead, much to the delight of June, who called out an open invitation for Alex to sit in on any class in the future as he headed out the door. June knew me well enough to avoid any type of emotional conversation about my relationship status, but as I set up my stations for my first class, I felt her arms wrap around me from behind in a gentle hug as she whispered in a sweetly smug tone, “I told you I liked him.”

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