Finding Eva (Highland Creek Series) (32 page)

E
va dragged herself toward her house, exhausted from the first week of school. She needed a margarita night with her friend, but Gwen had told her she was going on a date with Nick. He was moving back in tomorrow, and although Eva didn’t agree with Gwen’s decision, she was determined to support her through it. One of the weird side effects that Eva didn’t anticipate about Gwen getting back with Nick was that her best friend was suddenly extremely busy with her husband, leaving Eva with a new feeling of loneliness that she didn’t have before. Eva was happy for Gwen, how could she not be, but she was sad for herself. She missed Aaron, and it didn’t seem to go away no matter how much time went by. If anything, it seemed to be getting worse, and she didn’t know how much longer she was going to last before she broke down and called him.

“What the fuck?!” she screamed and grabbed her chest in fright at the sight of Aaron sitting on her couch. “Are you fucking crazy?! Who does that! And how in the hell did you get in here?!” So scared she didn’t think her heart rate would ever get down, she forgot she was mad at him.

“Gwen.” He smiled as he got up, as though that answered everything. She was going to kill her ex-best friend, which was the only thing she was going to call the girl who gave him a key to her house.

“What the hell is with you about having keys to my house?” she asked sarcastically, knowing that she would find this incredibly creepy if she didn’t miss him so much.

“I’m sorry,” he said, moving forward in a way that a panther strikes their prey, “but you wouldn’t take my calls, and I feel like you couldn’t ignore me if I was just sitting on your couch.”

He stopped in front of her and kissed her, slowly working his lips over hers before he used his tongue to coax her into parting her lips. She found herself caught up, missing this beautiful man, and the familiar weight of him. He moved closer, seeking her heat, and she greedily gave him everything and more. She had to physically stop herself from climbing up his leg and humping him like a dog in heat, so in tune she with this man and his needs. He reached between them to pull up her shirt, his fingers dancing along her stomach, before she moved back. As much as she wanted to lose herself in him, she knew they needed to talk. There was no resolution, and sex was never their problem.

“We can’t do this…” she pushed away from him “…we have resolved nothing.”

“I know,” he said before he ran his fingers in his hair with frustration. “We haven’t resolved anything because you didn’t give me an option before. You are going to give me the option now. You can either fight me on this or you can just sit and listen, but either way you will hear me out. I am not leaving until we have an honest conversation.”

She fell on the couch in a huff, crossing her arms over her chest, as she tried not to pout about the way he was trying to run stuff. But then she looked at him and saw the pain that lurked in those brown eyes and knew that she needed to give him a chance to explain before she wrote him off completely. She missed him, and sometime in the last couple of days she realized that she’d get in contact with him. No time like the present, but she couldn’t let him off that easy. Who just showed up at someone’s house?

“I don’t know if I want to talk to you. You broke into my house, and you broke my heart before I left.”

“Are you happy?” he asked with a straight face.

She didn’t respond right away, and briefly considered lying, but knew she was done for when her eyes welled up and she looked down before whispering, “No.”

He knelt down in front of her, gripping her knees as he tipped her chin up so he could look in her eyes.

“I’m not happy either. You leaving gutted me, and I have walked around like a zombie the past few weeks. All I am asking for is five minutes.” As he spoke he wiped away her tears, trying to stop the flow with his fingers before he gave up and kissed the trail of tears down her face. “Five minutes, babe,” he whispered in her ear before she nodded yes.

He leaned back and smiled softly before he took a place on the couch beside her. He slid her legs toward him so she was looking at him, moving a piece of her hair behind her ear before he leaned back and rubbed his hands down his pants nervously. He definitely wasn’t acting like someone who wanted her gone, so she clung to that before he began speaking.

“I got a call earlier this week from Gwen. I was curious and floored. I hadn’t spoken to you in weeks, and all I wanted was to speak to you. When she asked me if I still loved you I told her yes, then she told me what was going on.” He was moving his hands, and she held one in hers and played with his fingers while he talked.

“I am going to say this one time, and one time only. If you ever decide to just up and leave without talking to me about why you want to go, especially if I am the reason, I am going to spank you.” She looked at him sharply, not knowing if he was serious, feeling the heat flare between her legs when he winked at her. She shook her head at his gall, knowing he wasn’t serious, before he continued.

“That conversation that you overheard between me and my sister about the problems of making a summer fling into a long term relationship was about her.” She narrowed her eyes, and he nodded at her before saying, “You, my beautiful, nosy girl, came in at the wrong time. We were arguing about her asshole of a boyfriend, and I told her he only sees her as a summer fling, and she didn’t believe me. Little did I know my girlfriend overheard it and thought it applied to her situation. This is not the first time you have overheard a conversation that you thought was about you and reacted badly. Remember the day in my office?”

Eva turned red, remembering the day she flipped out, knowing that he had a point. This was definitely a habit that she needed to break.

“I had no idea you heard us or I would have talked to you about it, but you should have told me what you were feeling.”

She squirmed, feeling the pressure as all the things he told her ran through her head. Eva didn’t know what to believe. After all this time, hating him she wasn’t quite ready to believe him. “Your sister wasn’t having a summer fling. She told me that she had known him for months,” she argued.

“They have known each other for a while, but they didn’t start dating until this summer. I told her that he only saw her as a summer fling, because he did. Asshole broke up with her about a week before school started, told her that he didn’t want to be attached during the school year. Fine by me. Who wants someone on court-ordered probation to be dating their baby sister?”

“I don’t know what to say. I have spent almost a month mad at you, thinking something, this is a little unbelievable.”

“Call my sister if you don’t believe me. Looking back, it makes sense, because after I came back you were kind of distant. I thought it was because your parents were there and you weren’t going to get birthday sex, but now I know it was because you heard us. I’m sorry, baby, I never meant to hurt you.”

She smiled sadly, realizing her mistake. “I’m sorry that I didn’t talk to you about it.”

“You should be.” He sounded irritated. Not that she could blame him. She did just kind of leave without telling him.

“I wasn’t thinking straight! That morning I was on top of the world, and that night I heard you telling your sister you don’t get serious with a summer fling. I couldn’t talk to you about it; I couldn’t bear to have you say that I was nothing more than some summer sex for you. Not after everything,” she finished quietly. His face softened and he pulled her close before kissing the top of her head. “And then I saw you the next day with kissing Marcia. I thought you were moving on.”

“I didn’t kiss her, she kissed me. We were on a business lunch and I was telling her I would no longer take her case. She kissed me on the way out to see what I would do, which was nothing.”

“So where does this leave us?” Eva asked the question she was dying to know since he told her that he wasn’t talking about her.

“What do you mean?”

“I live here now. I signed on for another school year and I can’t leave in the middle of it. I haven’t sold the house, but I live two hours away from you.”

“I want you. That is where it ends and begins for me. When you were gone I was like a shell of my former self. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, and all I did was work and miss you. I don’t want to go back to that if I don’t have to.”

“But the distance—”

He cut her off with his finger on her lip. “We were going to do a long-distance relationship before. Let’s just do this now, get to know each other, make sure this is what we really want.”

“I was going to move.” She didn’t mean to blurt that out, but all his promises of a long-distance relationship made her want to tell him. That way he knew that she was serious about them as well.

“Huh?”

“I just feel like I should put that out there, since we are getting everything in the open. I was planning to tell you that night that I was thinking about moving to Highland Creek, and then all that shit happened.”

He cringed as he thought about the implications of what she was saying. “I’m sorry you went through that, babe.” He pulled her close, kissing her softly on the lips before pulling back to stare at her. “Can we start over?”

She smiled, hopeful for the first time in weeks. “I hope not.” She laughed when his face fell. “I don’t want to have to wait for make-up sex.”

He laughed, thinking about all the problems they had before having sex the first time. “Whatever you say,” he said, leaning over and capturing her lips, consuming her like it was all he ever wanted. He reached down and lifted her, removing his lips to say, “Bedroom?”

“Second door on the left.” She grabbed his head and pulled his lips back to his, eager to get down to business. He threw her on the bed, laughing as she bounced before laying his body on top of her. Here was the playful lover she had missed these past weeks. She reached up and stroked his face, “Missed you, babe.”

“Missed you too. And now…” he kissed his way down her stomach “…I am going to get reacquainted with my favorite parts.”

He sucked on her nipples, one then the other, biting them slightly in a way that caused her to gasp and rear up. He refocused his attention toward her clit, parting her legs and taking a long, slow lick up her slit. She went crazy, her head moving from side to side, before grabbing her breasts, kneading them in her frantic search for release. She moved her hips, wanting him desperately to go deeper, while he continued to shallowly lick her.

“Come … on …” She couldn’t stand it; he was killing her.

She searched for anything that would give her a grip, trying to move her legs to find purchase on the mattress. He anticipated her move and jerked her legs open, content to torture her slowly. He sucked on her clit like a vacuum, and she knew she was going to blow. He stuck one finger inside, then another, and moved them out in a slow and steady pace. She moved closer, screaming his name in release after he pressed his thumb into her clit. She slid boneless into the mattress, reaching up as he moved over her body to kiss her deeply. She tasted herself on him, finding it strangely erotic when she felt him nudging his dick at her slit. He moved slowly, coating it with her juices before he slid to the hilt.

“Feels so good.” He continued to push in and out. “Never leave me again.”

“Never,” she agreed. She would promise him anything as long as he kept moving.

He moved faster, as ready to reach his release as she was. “So close,” he said, kissing her again before he reached between them to stimulate her clit. She came again, his fingers her undoing, and she felt him shoot his release into her. She swore she blacked out, her release that intense, before she felt him fall onto her. She stroked his back, having missed the weight of him after being without him. He lifted his head, kissing her deeply.

“Sleep,” he told her, “we’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

There was something about waking up to Aaron that always made Eva smile. She looked to the amazing man sleeping in her bed, not quite believing he was here after all the shit that happened between them a few weeks ago. She stretched leisurely, the sheet riding down, and smiled when she felt the hand grip her breast and rub lazily. She smiled at Aaron, who was wide awake and suddenly focused on her breast.

“Hey, babe,” he said, leaning over to kiss her.

“Hey.” She suddenly felt shy, not knowing what to say after last night.

“What is it?” He sensed that something was up; he always knew when something was going on with her.

“I am just wondering where we go from here, if what we said last night is really going to happen.”

“Well…” he traced his finger along her stomach “…I really want us to make it work. I know you have school, and I would not want you to let that go, but I would like both of us to be living in the same place within the year.”

“You do?” He nodded his head, excited because she seemed to be receptive to the idea.

“I want you forever, I told you that. This is something that hasn’t changed. And since you said last night you were going to move, I figured it would be after this school year.”