Page 68 of Mixed Signals
“Okay?” she asks just a little too innocently.
“Fine.”
I’m fine. Totally fine. I just can’t stop thinking about the way her breath slipped out of her when I had my knuckles against her neck. I can’t stop picturing the soft swell of her breast and how she arched into me, chasing my touch without even realizing it.
She’s so damn responsive. And the fact that no one has ever taken the time to reward her for that is a crime.
“Caleb?”
I shake my head. Distracted again. “Yeah?”
Her smile waivers, her eyes unsure. “I asked if you wanted dessert?”
I follow the line of her dress strap against her shoulder with my eyes. It’s thin, a dusty orange that makes her skin glow. She was wearing a cropped button-up wrapped overtop of it before dinner, tied in a bow above her waist. She slipped it off slowly while she poured our wine, the material gliding over her shoulders to the bend of her elbows. It whispered against her skin when she tugged it off and draped it over a chair.
My hands had itched with the desire to do it for myself. I wanted to unwrap her like a present.
“You’re drifting again.”
“Sorry.” I rub my hand across my forehead. “I know I am.”
“Do you want any dessert?”
I shake my head and her face falls. “But I have Boston cream pie in the fridge.”
It says something about how badly I want her that I don’t even flinch. I push my chair back from the table. “Come here for a sec.”
She doesn’t move from her seat on the opposite end of the table. Her bottom lip is stained a deep red from the wine. “Why?”
“Because I want to kiss you,” I tell her. Might as well be honest. I want to lick the wine from her lips and circle my hands around her waist. The only dessert I’m interested in having tonight is Layla, in any variation she’s willing to serve up.
She blinks at me, owlish and slow. Her grin strikes quick though, like a bolt of heat lightning reaching its fingers out across the sky. She watches me for a second, and then she pushes her chair back.
“You could have told me that earlier,” she quips. Earlier, I assume she means, when I had her plastered against her kitchen sink.
I pat my thigh and her eyebrow quirks. “Well, I’m telling you now.”
She takes her time coming around the table to me, her hazel eyes blazing in the light of the setting sun. Warm golds and burnished reds light her up like she’s a dancing flame, twisting closer and closer. I’ve never wanted to be burned so badly in my life.
Her fingertips skim my knee. The top of my thigh. She stills right in front of me and stands in the narrow space between my parted legs. I tip my head back and watch her.
“Caleb Alvarez, who knew you were so bossy.” Her smile says that’s not necessarily a bad thing. “It’s gonna be like that, huh?”
I nod, my hands reaching for her hips. I help her settle on my lap, sitting sideways against my thighs. The curve of her ass is a delicious weight against me, her mouth hovering right over mine. I place a kiss under her chin. Another where her shoulder meets her neck.
“It’s gonna be like that,” I whisper, and then I kiss her.
I thought it might be different, kissing Layla for the second time. It’s why I held off all week, still high off the adrenaline of our first. I thought our second might be more subdued—calm—the both of us settling into our respective roles.
Maybe the second time, I wouldn’t feel so out of control.
But I’m an idiot, apparently.
Because the second I press my mouth to Layla’s, I’m a goner. Everything drifts away until it’s only me and her and panting breaths, our bodies creating delicious friction as her hands twist in my hair. She shifts in my lap and I grunt into her mouth, my tongue sliding hot and wet and slow against hers. She tastes so sweet. Like wine-soaked strawberries. Like the slices of oranges at the bottom of my glass she kept sneaking when she thought I wasn’t looking.
I curl my hand around the bare skin of her ankle and grip her leg, adjusting it against my lap until her foot is pressed against the arm of the chair and my palm is tracing secrets up her calf. She jolts in my hold when my thumb smooths behind her knee. A huff of a laugh travels from her mouth into mine. That tastes sweet, too. Like champagne bubbles and the best goddamn buttercream icing I’ve ever had in my life.
I slip my hand higher and she tips her knees open slightly. I pause, my fingers curled possessively around her thigh.
