Page 56 of Regal Feather
“You want that?”
“No pressure,” he reiterated.
I stifled another sound that belonged in a porn studio and not in a room where I was supposed to have a talk about expectations and boundaries and a bunch of other big words I couldn’t quite think of right now.
“I mean, yeah, but, uh, why?”
Shit.
My heart raced. Santos stilled where he’d been beginning to trail his hand down my side. Someone smarter than me wouldn’t be fighting him when he was offering me my dream on a silver platter.
I knew better, though. It was important to put everything out in the open, to make sure this wouldn’t be something else I’d beat myself up over because I made a mountain out of a grain of sand.
“What do you mean, why?” Santos frowned. “You’re my person.”
He said it, just like that.
“You are, too, I just mean…” I glanced down. It made me a coward, but I couldn’t talk when he was looking at me likethat. He didn’t hide anything. He never really had, not in the ways that mattered. It shouldn’t take me by surprise, but it still did, my stomach fluttering with so many nerves. I couldn’t say the wrong thing. I couldn’t not say the right thing because the words got trapped somewhere at the back of my throat. “What’s changed?”
“You mean between us being in school, and then me being in the Air Force, and now?”
“So, it was just a matter of time?”
Santos propped himself up on his elbow. I gulped as his figure hovered over me. “I think so, yeah.”
I nibbled on my lip. Was that what I wanted to hear, that he and I had always been a done deal, and it was only a matter of timing, and living near each other?
“So we’re going to…date?”
It couldn’t be this simple, could it? It had never been. Maybe it said more about my lack of experience with actual relationships, but this felt almost too easy. Too anticlimactic. It also had an undercurrent of feeling right attached to it. A simple levity, a joy that sparked at the idea, that had me wanting to curl up impossibly close to him and hand him the reins. Hand him everything.
But those were dangerous thoughts to have.
“Does that mean I have to treat you right?”
I snorted. Some might have called it a giggle, but today was already turning into a rollercoaster of emotions. I wasn’t going to add more questioning to it right this minute.
“You already do.”
“You think so?” He hummed. “What if I flipped you on your stomach right now?”
There was humor in his voice. Humor, while he asked the kind of question that would have me flushed and whimpering in front of anyone else.
“Go ahead,” I challenged.
I held no doubts that he would do it. I just wanted to keep this lightness, this spell that he had placed on us that meant I could look at this without overthinking every single motion.
“I hadn’t finished.” Santos huffed. I laughed. I laughed. Literally all the people I considered an OTP at Plumas talked about laughing during sex or during scenes. I’d even witnessed it a few times. It had never happened to me. I hadn’t thought it was possible. Couldn’t picture it ever being in the cards. I was too strung up, too shy, too fidgety, too in my head for it. His gaze softened as he watched me. My heart constricted as he cleared his throat, that humor still there, but now laced with something else. Something that looked a lot like lust. “What if I flipped you on your stomach, right now, and I fucked your pussy while your clit is all trapped? No warning, not a lot of prep. Would I still be treating you right?”
I was nodding frantically before he’d finished talking. I also moved so I was on top of him, my hands on his chest.
“You have to promise that you’ll tell me, if…if I get too intense, or too anything, or if I’m pushing you, or…”
“Can I kiss you, Ever?”
Could we make it a rule that me whimpering meant a yes?
He must’ve caught on, because he crouched up—without using his hands, might I add. It didn’t make me swoon or anything ridiculous like that—and ghosted his lips over mine. He didn’t just assault my mouth or go for anything with tongue. It was just a touch. A touch that had me shivering for more, following him when he leaned back down like it hadn’t been a feat to pull that move.
