Her gaze shifts past me. “Thinking.”
“About what?” I drop her hair and run my fingertip along the contour of her bottom lip. She has fantastic lips. I haven’t had them on mine in more than two weeks. I want to fix that right now.
“About how I’m not sure what you want from me.”
I drop my hand and hold onto the armrests instead. “You still think I’m trying to play you?”
“You’re always talking the talk.”
“You think so, eh? Well, why don’t we look at the facts?” I drop that bit of Canadian in there to make her smile. She does, but it’s gone almost as quickly as it appears.
“There you go again! You’re doing it right now.”
“Doing what?”
“Saying eh, being all cute.”
“You think I’m cute?”
She pushes at my chest with her toe. Annoyed. “You have the biggest ego in the world.”
I grab her ankle and run my hand up the outside of her calf. Her legs are amazing—long, toned, and sun-kissed. I want my hands and my mouth on every last inch of skin, starting at her ankle and ending at her mouth.
“Your brother has the biggest ego,” I tell her. “It’s at least ten times the size of mine.”
“He does not.”
“Fine. My ego is bigger. Let’s get back to the facts. How long have I been calling you?”
“Since you came to Toronto.”
“How many times have I come to Guelph to see you?”
“This is the third.”
“How many times have I tried to get in your pants?”
Sunny taps her lip with her finger. “You mean for sex?”
I release her leg and hold onto the arms of the chair again. My knees hurt from kneeling for so long, but I’m making a point, one I hope is going to win a lot of favors. “Yeah, I mean for sex.”
She looks down, her eyes on my chin rather than my face. “Never.”
“That’s right. Never. So you tell me, Sunny. What do you think I’m here for?”
She peeks up, her expression sweet like those maple candies I steal from my sister all the time. “Just me?”
“Not just you. You. I’m here because I want to be with you, and no other reason.”
This is way different than placating a bunny. I’ve only ever dealt with this once before, way back at the beginning of college when crushes crushed a kid. This is different; the feelings feel a lot more real now. It’s about more than how hard she makes me.
“Come on, Sunny Sunshine. You know how much I like you. I’m trying hard not to screw it up.”
She exhales slowly, finally letting her guard down. She parts her legs and they slide along either side of me. It gives me the access I’ve been waiting for since I walked in her door. I’m not an idiot, though. I don’t move into the space.
Instead, I run my hand up the outside of her bare calf again. Stopping behind her knee, I stroke with my thumb before I reverse the movement, kneading all the way to her ankle. Sunny’s a big fan of the leg massage, and I’m damn good at it. On the way back up, I follow her shin bone with my thumbs. All her muscles are tight. Sitting back on my heels, I get a glimpse of pale blue cotton through the small gap between her shorts and her inner thigh.
Panties are panties: frilly, frilless, plain, fancy, lacy, cotton, satin. By the time I usually get to look at them, they’re about to come off. But for some reason, I want to know what style Sunny’s wearing. Will they be regular bikini briefs? Boy shorts? Cheekies? I want her to parade around in them, and then I want to get her naked and keep her that way for hours. But first I need to get her excited enough to want that. And I need to make her forget how frequently I mess shit up.
I continue rubbing up and down the back of her calf until she starts to sigh and shift. Her head drops against the back of the chair, and her eyes flutter shut. Her toes curl against my forearm, and her lips part, which tells me she likes what I’m doing.