Page 73 of Mixed Signals
He leverages himself up until his back is pressed to my couch and I stay sprawled across the cushions, my dress rucked around my middle, my arm flung above my head. Caleb’s eyes travel a meandering path down my body, lingering on the curve of my breasts.
He blows out a deep breath, eyes hooded and heavy. Appreciation. Something softer, too.
I grin.
“Ten out of ten,” I tell him, feeling off about assigning this a number on a scale. But I need to remember where the both of us stand, the foundation on which we’re building. It won’t do me any good to have the rug pulled out from beneath me at the end of this thing. Despite how incredible that just was. I ease out a breath and card my fingers through my sweaty hair. “Seven gold stars and a partridge in a pear tree.”
He smiles, eyes crinkling at the corners. “Right back at you.”
Caleb sits on my couch with his legs spread wide, one hand resting low on his belly, the other on the two inches of space between us. His gaze lingers everywhere my hands touch. The slope of my shoulders and the smooth expanse of my arms. The hollow between my breasts and the soft skin of my belly.
It’s a simple thing, to have someone watch me piece myself back together. Simple and beautifully, wonderfully intimate.
Another first for me tonight.
His hand skims around my ankle and he drums his fingers against my calf. He drags his palm up to the underside of my knee and back down again as I twist my arms back through the straps of my dress. A tap, tap, tap all the way back down.
“What?” I ask as I struggle with a stubborn, twisted strap.
Caleb’s hand lifts from my knee and he finds the stubborn material, thumb dragging across my collarbone as he straightens it. He traces his palm lightly across my shoulders to the center of my chest. He rests his hand there until I’m sure he can feel the pounding of my heart beneath.
“Nothing,” he says, his voice impossibly deep. “Just like looking at you.”
I smile to myself and smooth my skirt back down over my thighs. I catch his hand with mine and twist our fingers together, snuggling into his side until we’re wrapped together. We sit there on my blue couch and listen to the sounds of my house settling around us. The creak of hardwood and the crickets calling to one another through the open window above the sink. I don’t think I’ve ever been so still with someone before. So content to justbe.
I tilt my head and drop a kiss against Caleb’s knuckles. He makes a pleased sound, low in his throat, and tips his head to look at me.
“Do you still have that pie?” he asks, his voice hopeful.
I laugh. “Yeah.” I lean forward and kiss the curve of his smile. I feel like I’m floating. Like I’m in the middle of the pond that’s on the very edge of the Lovelight grounds, staring up at the sun beams twisting through the trees. My lips trail down the sharp line of his jaw to his chin. I nuzzle into his chest and wrap both of my arms around him. “I still have some pie.”
SEVENTEEN
CALEB
“We should really—god,Caleb—”Layla pants my name into my mouth, her teeth against my bottom lip and both of her flour-dusted hands clenched tight in my hair. I’m going to look like I dunked my head in a mixing bowl when I walk out of here. But I can’t gather any of my usual control. I haven’t been able to keep my hands to myself, really, since two nights ago on Layla’s couch. Every time I close my eyes, I see that orange dress twisted around her middle. Bare skin and my hands pressing hers into the couch. I keep hearing the little sounds she made in the back of her throat as she moved on my lap and chased her pleasure.
If I thought the feeling of wanting her might fade with my first taste of her, I’m an idiot. It’s only gotten worse.
Especially since she’s wearing the apron with the strawberries today. There’s something about the pop of red against her creamy skin, the strings looped twice around her waist and tied in a neat bow in the front. I want to undo them with my teeth.
Not to mention her cherry red lipstick and gold hoop earrings. The bright blue scarf with little yellow bananas twisted through her short hair. I walked in through the door and she glanced up from a tray of tiny vanilla crème brûlées, her smile cracking wide open at the sight of me. I had to stop for a moment and breathe deep through my nose. Rub the heel of my hand against the center of my chest and try to put everything back where it belongs.
I attempted to behave myself. I sat on my stool and pretended to drink my cup of coffee but I really just watched the curve of her body as she bent low over the countertop. I watched as she mixed and stirred and rolled out fresh dough for cinnamon rolls, ignoring the low pull in my gut when she pulled out a jar of cinnamon sugar. I couldn’t help my faint moan when she stirred a bowl of melted butter, her brush painting the dough in wide stripes.
It was the buttercream icing that finally did it for me, though. One second she was pulling a bowl out of the fridge and the next she was holding out her hand in my direction, a perfect, pristine dollop of cream balanced on the pad of her finger. I sucked it into my mouth, her eyelashes fluttered, and then we were reaching for one other, mixing bowls and a display plate in the shape of a cupcake clattering to the floor.
“We should stop,” she says, right before she drags her teeth up my neck and guides my mouth back to hers with her hand on my jaw, leaving more flour prints. I press her harder into the fridge and tighten my grip on her thighs.
“We should,” I agree. I nudge my nose against her chin until she tilts her head back, until I can suck at her pulse point and taste the dusting of sugar on her skin. Her hips jump against mine and I am about four seconds from tucking my hands under this apron and finding out what sort of underwear Layla Dupree wears when she is in the kitchen.
I’ve always been meticulous with my control. Perfectly polite, always exactly what is expected of me. But Layla makes me feel unhinged. Untethered, unfocused, undone. I drag one of my palms up her leg and back down again, the hem of her dress brushing against my knuckles.
Her breath hitches and she tugs hard on my hair. Something slow and hot unfurls at the base of my spine, my breath shorter than it was a second ago. Her smile shifts into something delighted and surprised and she pulls again, angling my head back, her mouth on my Adam's apple. Her eyes right on me.
My whole body goes boneless against hers.
She laughs, a husky sound right below my ear. “I need to get back to work.”
