“Els, how are you really?” Adam asked softly, tentatively.
Instead of answering right away, I turned around and slowly made my way toward his comfy sofa, listening to him follow behind me. I settled on the couch and Adam sat down close to me, relaxing his arm along the back of it. Finally, I met his gaze and shrugged. “I’m an idiot.”
Adam’s eyebrows puckered and his mouth got tight. “You’re not an idiot.”
“I’m an idiot,” I insisted. “I’m stupid and na?ve and… humiliated.”
He slid closer to me, his fingers touching my wrist gently in comfort. “You have nothing to be humiliated about. He’s a prick who played you. He’s the idiot. He’s the stupid fuck who’s going to look back and realize that for five months he was the luckiest bastard on this planet to be with you. He’ll regret this, baby.”
Baby.
For a moment I forgot how to breathe. Adam had never called me “baby” before. There was something somehow intimate about the endearment. I liked it. I liked it a helluva lot.
I smiled at him. “You always know the exact right thing to say.”
“Because I only ever tell the truth. You’re one of a kind, Els. Any guy would be lucky to have you.”
I gazed into his eyes feeling his words like a caress across my body and as I stared his gaze flickered over me again, surreptitiously checking me out before he took another sip of wine. It occurred to me that perhaps all Adam needed was a push. Yes, I was Braden’s wee sister, but I was also Ellie, the girl he apparently thought the world of and admitted he thought was beautiful. Blame it on the wine or the fact that he’d stood up for me once again, I wanted him and had decided impulsively that I was tired of hiding the fact.
I let Adam make me feel better as we finished off our glasses of wine. An hour had passed before I knew it and I had kicked off my Uggs and curled up on his sofa, sitting close to him.
His arm still rested along the back of the sofa and every time I laughed I touched his bicep or squeezed his knee. I was an affectionate person, tactile and open, but it was more than that, and Adam knew it. I could see it in his eyes as we chatted and I hoped my plan was working.
You would think hurt and betrayal would make me shy away from opening myself up and laying it all out there but I just didn’t have it in me to close myself off. It wasn’t who I was, and I definitely didn’t want to be that way with Adam.
As the hour drifted into two, I became more determined than ever that tonight things were going to change between me and Adam. I was sick of dating guys I couldn’t seem to fall in love with, and even sicker of being duped by them.
Adam was in the middle of telling me about the Skype chat he’d had with his mum a week ago and his parent’s plans to return to the UK for a few weeks in April, when I stretched my arms up, pretending to need to crack my back. The movement pulled the hemline of my top up, baring my flat stomach, and it also pushed my breasts out. When I brought my head back down and relaxed, Adam had stopped talking and I could see a muscle ticking in his jaw.
“Ellie, what the fuck are you doing?” he asked hoarsely, his voice quiet.
Although my face burned with the possibility of rejection I shrugged nonchalantly.
“Stretching.”
His gaze drifted down my body and I watched his own tense. “You know what I’m talking about. The touching, the flirting, the stretching…”
Heart pounding I shifted closer to him on the couch until my knees touched his outer thigh. I licked my lips, nervous but completely turned on just by the mere thought of him touching me back. “I think you know,” I whispered.
Our eyes met… and clung. The air thickened between us. Adam swallowed hard. “Ellie,”
he breathed.
Holding his gaze I reached a trembling hand out and placed it on his thigh and slowly I moved it up, caressing him. It had almost reached the heat of his crotch where to my utter satisfaction and delight I watched his erection strain against his zipper, when his strong hand grabbed mine tightly.
I’d barely let out a surprised gasp when he tugged on my wrist, yanking me against him. I collapsed on him and he used my momentary disorientation to his advantage— he gripped the nape of my neck and slammed my mouth hungrily down on his.
I melted against him. Just melted.
My fingers sank into his hair, and I rearranged my legs so I was straddling his lap. My body sank into his. My mouth sank into his.
It was everything and more than I’d always imagined.
My skin burned and my nerve endings sparked and I was tingling all over. Adam tasted of wine and heat and… home. I moaned into his mouth and Adam’s arms tightened around my waist, somehow drawing me even closer, the kiss changing from passionate to dirty in a nanosecond. It was suddenly biting and wet, our tongues tangling and licking and learning every inch of one another’s mouths.