She reached down for her clothes, but he caught her forearm. “You think I’m trying to fuck with you for my own vindictive pleasure. Is that it?” She shrugged. “Let me explain this to you. Relationships end for me. They always end. Now couple that with the ridiculous notion of you and I being in any sort of relationship. I’m supposed to hate you. Or I’m supposed to forgive you. What I’m not supposed to do is be romantically involved with you. Is that the man you want fucking you? That’s two big fucking strikes against this little arrangement we have.”
“And here I thought you wanted to be open-minded.” She yanked her arm from him, and he growled in irritation. She ignored it, dressing quickly.
The swim felt amazing; putting clammy, sweaty, and sandy clothes on over wet skin was torture, but it gave her something to focus on rather than her irritation at him. Irritation just seemed to be the way of things for them. There was nothing he said that was actually unrealistic. She got it. A man didn’t fall in love with the woman responsible for killing his sister! Duh! But, if that was so definite, so set in stone . . . then what the fuck were they doing and why was she allowing it?
He took off up into the hillside, and she let her anger at him push her up the steep incline and the few miles back to his home. It was a miserable run back, and if she wasn’t so pissed, she wasn’t sure she’d have made it through. When she reached his steps, he was still ignoring her, and when he opened the door, he didn’t wait for her to pass through. She didn’t ask his permission to use his shower, and as she bounded up the stairs toward his bedroom, he cracked open a bottle of water and watched her from the kitchen.
She stood under cold water, letting it cool her overheated skin. It was likely stupid given how loose and stretched her muscles were, but she needed the shock to her system. When she finally got out, he was sitting on his bathroom counter waiting. He hopped down as she wrapped a towel around herself. He dropped his shorts just as he stepped into the large stall, and she left, collapsing on his bed. She had no idea if she was welcome to plop her overly round ass on his bed, but she didn’t care.
Sadly, her relaxation didn’t last, and moments after she heard him turn the shower off, muscle cramps seized her legs, and she ended up gripping her calves, crying like a fool at the agony. She tried not to call for him, but after a good minute of nothing but seized-up muscles that ran from her calves up, she gave up on stubbornness and yelled. She couldn’t even stand to get herself to him, and so she cried out for him.
It took him little less than a second to emerge with a towel wrapped around his waist, and he climbed onto his bed beside her. She barely got the words “muscle cramps” out of her mouth, and he grabbed her calves, pulling them out straight. He gripped her muscles tight, holding the pressure. It was painful, but it seemed to disrupt the seizures working through her legs. She was still crying, and there was no reining in the tears.
“Relax.” His voice was deep and soothing, and if only she could will her muscles to pay attention to his voice, she might survive this. “You have to relax.” He kept gripping her calves, squeezing painfully tight but massaging the tension until it finally started to release. She was gulping down breaths of air by the time the pain subsided, and her tears eventually stopped falling too. He leaned down to her, kissing her gently on the cheek. “You’re probably dehydrated. Stay here. I’ll get you some water.” He brushed her tears away and kissed her forehead before he stood and left the room.
She flexed and stretched her legs slowly, trying not to overdo it, and he returned a few minutes later with a large glass of water. He handed her the water, leaving her for a moment to snatch a pair of underwear out of his chest of drawers and slipping into them quickly. They were dark-gray briefs, and they hit low on his hips and bottom. She watched him return, wishing her body wouldn’t respond to him the way it did. She wasn’t sure her muscles could handle it any more than her nerves.
He sat, taking the water from her and downing some himself before setting it on the nightstand. He pulled one of her legs across his lap, and he slowly started kneading her muscles. He was gentle now, and he took his time, working his way up one leg and then the other. He didn’t stop at her knee, but he traveled up her thighs too. He squeezed and caressed, and her body betrayed her some more. She barely had the towel wrapped around her at this point after writhing around on his bed like a fool, but it didn’t mean she expected him to pull it away entirely when he finished with her first leg.
She was still gasping in shock at her sudden nakedness when he pushed her thighs apart and practically attacked her wet sex with his mouth. His tongue instantly thrust between the lips, and all she could manage to say was “Oh, God” five times in a row. That was, until the doorbell rang. He looked up at her, refusing to stop tormenting her with his tongue for a moment, but he eventually pulled back, her wetness coating his lower lip and chin.
“Pizza.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
She came down the stairs, walking slowly, just as he closed the door. Her long hair was soaking wet, and she had nothing but the towel wrapped around her body. He’d managed to grab a pair of shorts before he ran down to meet the delivery guy, but that didn’t mean he didn’t prefer her naked. He struggled to take his eyes off her now as much as he always had in the past, and there was no denying his attraction to her was just as strong.
She was quite exceptional—the way she moaned quietly, the way her silky wetness felt on his fingers, the way she smelled, her taste. It was all just as incredible as he’d always fantasized about, if not more so. His mind had always had limitations her body easily managed to supersede. One-sided foreplay was turning out to be far more satisfying than he ever imagined it could be. Typically, foreplay was quid pro quo for him. He was giving exactly what he expected to get in return, and what he did was as much about the payoff for him as anything else. Selfish to say the least, but then . . . he dated quite shallow and selfish women for just that purpose. With Bailey, he wanted to give and give and give, and the payoff was the incredible sounds she made when she was aroused, the sound she made when she was coming, and that incredible taste of her on his lips. He wanted more, there was no denying it, but he loved this enough to be patient.
He carried the pizza box to the living room and set it on the coffee table, and she grabbed a couple of paper plates from the pantry before settling in next to him. She hummed when he opened the box, and she saw her favorite. “Half normal pepperoni pizza for me, half weird-ass white sauce and onion for you. I will never understand your taste in pizza.”
She smiled, and he calmed. She was smiling again. “Onions are good for you.”
“Yes, they are. About the only healthy thing about this pizza. ’Course, they’ll give you onion breath from hell.”
“Thanks for giving me something to be self-conscious about.”
“Much like your lovely round ass?”
“Which is far jigglier than it used to be.”
He couldn’t stop the laughter that incited, and she looked at him sheepishly. He could literally see her regretting those words. She had an exceptional ass. Always had, and this version of her was certainly no more jiggly than it ought to be. Firm, tight, perky, and round was how he would describe it. “I assure you, there is nothing at all to be ashamed of in regards to your bottom. And jiggly is not the word I would use to describe it.” He watched her for a moment, stuffing a bite of pizza in his mouth. “Why do women assume their bodies aren’t supposed to change after high school? I mean, I remember you very clearly up to twenty-one, and you looked then as you did at seventeen and eighteen, but you were only barely finished growing. Once a woman, or a man for that matter, hits their early twenties, they’re going to change.”