“I was…not anymore.” He leaned back in and kissed me again, humming as he pressed his lips against mine. It did not slip my notice that he hadn’t answered my question, but I didn’t care enough about the answer to stop kissing him, especially when his mouth finally opened, and I tasted sweet and mint and his breath mixed with mine.
His tongue slid against mine, and my hand beneath his shirt came back to life, curling around his side, pulling closer until my pelvis pressed into his hip. The kiss was leisurely and divine, but too slow, slow, slow.
I wanted more. I wanted our bodies flush, I wanted our lips crushed together, not softly teasing. I didn’t want to lose the contact with his skin, but I wanted to take control. My other hand was trapped beneath me, propping me up on my side. So I slipped my hand out of his shirt, and placed it on his face instead. I pulled him closer, trying to change the pace.
He allowed it for a moment, our lips moving faster, breath escaping as our heads tilted and our mouths battled. And God, it was good. I kept pulling, not satisfied, not close enough, until he angled up and rolled onto his side to face me. A sigh of success escaped me, then he took the hand I had on his face, and pulled it away, away, until it was trapped behind me, held there, pressed into my lower back by his hand.
Then again, he leaned back, changing the pace, brushing against my lips, slowly, softly. It was maddening. I tried leaning into him, but he held strong, pinning me back, taking his time. I groaned in frustration.
And he smiled.
“What is it, love?”
Any number of words could have come out of my mouth, some of them incoherent, most of them not very nice. Luckily, the ones I managed were exactly what I meant.
“Too slow,” I whined.
I was actually whining.
“I told you I could do slow,” He said.
“You jerk.” That was actually one of the nicer words going through my head. He didn’t even have the decency to be worried. He just laughed. I squirmed, trying to pull my arm free, and he appeased me with a kiss, this one a little harder, a little more satisfying than the last. And just when I was forgetting why I’d been so frustrated before, he pulled back again.
It was absurd, but I actually felt like I might cry. His lips trailed along my jaw to that spot below my ear that made every taut muscle in my body go limp.
“I wasn’t trying to be smart,” he whispered. “I’m trying to give you what you want. It’s hard when I let myself go, when I kiss you how I want to. Because all I can think about then is how your skin tastes, and how much I want to taste it again.” His mouth burned against my neck. His teeth grazed against me, and on impulse, my hips surged forward, just barely making contact with him. He groaned in response, his whispers turning gruff, losing their softness. “I remember the weight of your breast in my hand, and the way you reacted to my fingers inside you.” I bit my lip against the whimper building in my throat. I wanted his hands on me. I wanted our clothes off. “I think about having your body beneath me. I think about being inside you. I think about it, and it consumes me. And going slow is the very last thing to cross my mind.”
I lost it. I couldn’t hold in the whimper, and I felt like I was going to fall apart from his words alone.
“So, I have to kiss you slowly. Unless you’ve changed your mind. Have you? Changed your mind?”
YES! Please, oh God, yes.
This was like torture.
But reason unfurled in the back of my mind, taking over, keeping me grounded. What if we tried to have sex and I chickened out again and I ruined everything?
“No, I haven’t changed my mind,” I said. Then added, “You jerk,” because that was torture, and by the smile on his face, he knew it.
“Hmmm… then slow it is.”
Chapter Nineteen
I was still a little angry with Garrick when I left that night, but when he walked me to my door, and asked what I was doing the next day, I wasn’t angry enough to blow him off. Cade wasn’t speaking to me, and I hadn’t heard from Kelsey, so I told him I was free, and we made plans for dinner at my place.
I slept in until noon, my bed too comfortable for me to pry myself out of it. Then I distracted myself with an extra long shower, followed by homework, then a book. When I checked the clock, it was still only 3 P.M.
I grabbed my computer, and searched, “Philadelphia Theatre.”
I found a theatre alliance website that gave info on a bunch of theatres in the city, as well as job postings and auditions. I clicked through, seeing what shows were currently running where, reading job descriptions, and bookmarking a few pages.