Secondary Colors (14 page)

“I don’t want anything between us either.” It’s exactly what I wanted, yet an ache tightens my chest when it comes from his mouth. I need to leave.

“Good.” I try to sound as if I could care less, but it comes out snippy. I turn and step away from the table, ready to drown in self-pity when he rises from his chair, grabs my wrist, and pulls me into him. It’s so quick I’m rendered dumb.

“I meant, I don’t want
anything
between us.”

He brings his mouth onto mine with the same frenetic kiss as that night. His hands clasp to the indent of my waist, his strong fingers digging until the skin burns. Fighting to break from me, his lips stiffen, and his hands strain the hem of my shirt. He steals his lips away, pressing his forehead into mine with a deep breath. His hands remain on my hips, gripping on for dear life.

He caresses his lips against mine. “Come to bed with me.”

“To do what?”

“Anything you want,” he kisses me again, as if his lips have been apart from mine far too long, “just come to bed with me.”

I want to go to his bed. My body wants me to go to his bed, more than I’m used to, more than I’m comfortable with. He makes me need things, things he can give me. That’s exactly why I shouldn’t.

“I—”

“Anyone home?” Meredith calls from the hallway, the front door shutting behind her.

“It’s not a good idea,” I say hesitantly, my feet trying to take a step back, his hands on my waist keeping me in place.

“It’s a terrible fucking idea,” he agrees. “Say yes anyway.”

“Hello?” she calls again, her voice becoming louder, clearer, closer. I make another attempt to step away from him before she catches us in an intimate embrace, but his hands remain resolute. “Evie baby, you home?”

Crap.

“It doesn’t define anything.” He reaches up to my face with one hand, touching my cheek with a gentle stroke. “Be mine tonight.”

“Evie?” she calls again, nearing the kitchen.

My resolve dissolves, and I nod in agreement, my eyes cast down at his chest.

“Come to my room at midnight,” he whispers, “once your mother’s gone to sleep.”

Satisfied, he pulls away. And just in time, too. The screen door opens with a shrill whine, and my mother appears.

“Oh, you’re out here,” she says, looking back and forth between the two of us. “Didn’t you hear me calling you?”

Holt clears our plates and whisks them inside.

“Sorry, Mama,” I apologize. “We were finishing up dinner when you came in.”

She stops me with a hand on my upper arm when I attempt to pass. “You seem to be getting along really well,” she observes.

A blush washing over my face, I smile swiftly and continue into the house.

The neon blue zeros taunt me.

I struggle with my options. Stay in bed and pretend I don’t want to be up there with him. Or—

I roll out of bed.             

By 12:02, I’m standing in front of the closed attic door, his door, with my fingers floating around the knob.

I shouldn’t do this.

Why am I doing this?

What
am
I doing?

Stop being a wuss.

My fingers wind around the metal doorknob, hesitating to turn it. I attempt to locate where my balls went when the door opens and jolts me forward. I fall into Holt and grip my hands to his shoulders to keep myself from crumbling to his feet. His arm around my waist ensures that, too. Our mouths merge like a proton to an electron, a negative and positive charge attracting to each other by chemistry and instinct. They remain linked as he picks me up and climbs the stairs. On the final step, something cold and wet tickles my calves. I giggle against Holt’s mouth. We glimpse down at Max, staring up at us with his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth.

“Are you trying to ruin my game?” he asks the panting black Lab, setting me down but keeping his arms clasped around me. Max shoves his snout between Holt’s and my legs, separating them.

“I guess so,” I reply with a laugh.

“Go lay on your bed, Max.”

Even though he’s not happy about it, he does as commanded, his big sad eyes moping back at Holt every shuffled step of the way. He circles the floor repeatedly before plopping down in his spot with a huff.

“Aww. How can you say no to that face?”

He runs his hands down my back. “It’s easy when I haven’t had a woman in my bed in years.”

I stifle a chuckle, amused by his playfulness. I thought he didn’t know how to joke. Without sarcasm, anyway.

When it vanishes from his eyes, he lifts me up and lays us on the bed, our lips welded.

“Holt—” I whimper into his mouth.

“Let me have you, a touch, a kiss, a taste. I’ll take as much as you’re willing to give, but please don’t deny me of you.”

His eyes plead, but it isn’t pushy. I see the want in them. I feel the want in me.

“Touch me, Holt.”

He buries his face in my neck, massaging my breast over my nightgown with a rough hand. My body responds to him, reaching for his touch, squirming when he kisses me right, begging for more of him. A kiss becomes a desperate dance of our lips. A touch becomes a greedy frenzy of hands. An insatiable hunger overcomes us for more than a taste could satisfy. Articles of clothing disappear in a frenetic flurry of hands and mouths, each part exposed thoroughly kissed and attended to. All that’s left between us is the thin material of my panties and his boxers.

I’m thankful the only light comes from across the room. I’m unaccustomed to showing my body to a man.

His fingers dip beneath the band, grazing the dusting of pubic hair, pushing it low on my hips, stopping shy of too far.

Like my first night in his bed, a bolt of lightning strikes. But it isn’t outside, it’s within me, a storm of arousal rolling over my body. I squirm under him. My skin actually aches. My need is maddening. I’ve never felt such a strong urge to sleep with a man.

Tilting my face to his until they’re within a breath of each other, his reddish-gold eyes search mine intensely. At this proximity, I’m able to really study them, noting how beautifully detailed the irises truly are, a mingling of smudged amber and ruby. I could never paint anything as incredible and deep as his eyes. I wouldn’t be able to do them justice. They’re fiery puddles of autumn in New Hampshire, when the leaves set the forest on fire.

Holding my gaze, he brushes his lips against mine and whispers, “You’re so beautiful, Evie, I forget to function.”

I moan into his open mouth and pull him into me, my fingertips touching the uneven skin of the scar on his back. When I move them across it, he jumps off me.

“What’s wrong?” I pant, leveraging my upper body up on my elbows.

“It’s nothing.” He paces at the foot of the bed, rubbing his hands over his face. “Maybe we’re moving this along faster than I’m comfortable with.”

I’d never say I knew this man. I don’t. Not really. I know he’s lying, though. Perhaps there is honesty in his statement. Perhaps he’s right.

“Is it because of your scar?” I sit up. “It doesn’t bother me if you’re worried it does.”

He peers down at me.

“It bothers me.”

I crawl to the brass footboard and kneel, taking his hand in mine.

“Would you like to tell me how you got it?”

His face drops with—shame?

“No.”

Well, that’s that.

“I should leave,” I state, dropping his hand and gathering my nightgown from the floor. I clutch it to my naked torso, trying to hide my body and my humiliation. I haul ass for the stairs. My toes touch the first step when his work-worn hand clasps my shoulder. I stop mid-step and glimpse at it, saddened. It makes me feel safe, wanted, needed.

His silence weighs down on the air.

I’m thankful for my long, thick hair. I lose myself in it. I’d give anything to hide from this moment. His hand disappears under the mess of brown toppling down my back and breasts, pushing it off my neck and over my other shoulder.

A whimper seeps between my lips when his mouth closes over the curve of my neck.

“Stay with me tonight.” His warm breath tickles my skin.

“We already tried that.”

“No sex,” he whispers, his fingers running along my arms. “I enjoy when you sleep beside me.”

“Alright.”

He takes my hand and leads me back to his welcoming bed, the sheets crumpled and warm from our almost lovemaking. I start to put my nightgown back on, but he stops me.

“Let me feel your body against mine.”

I drop it on the floor, climbing in under the sheets he holds back for me. He covers us and draws me into him, his arms winding around me like morning glory.

The next morning, I sit out on the back porch swing with a cup of lemon tea, admiring the temperate weather and thinking about last night with Holt.

“Evie,” my mother says softly, apprehension on her face.

“What’s up?”

She sits beside me on the swing.

“We need to discuss whatever’s going on with you and Holt.”

Damn.

“What do you think is going on between him and me, exactly?”

“That’s what I’m here to find out.”

I’d love to figure it out myself.

Our encounter in the attic didn’t lend to my confusion about what’s evolving between him and me.

“We’re friends,” I answer, because it’s the truth. That much I’m sure of. In the month I’ve been back, we’ve developed a bond. “Aren’t you happy we’ve been getting along? I thought that’s what you wanted.”

“It is. I am. But you need to understand something before you allow anything to happen.”
Too late.
She sips on her lemonade, likely to give herself a pause to figure out the right words before speaking again. “Holt is a nice young man. But—he’s troubled.”

“Troubled, how?”

“He’s sad.”

I’m familiar with it. I saw it when our eyes connected that first time and every time since.

“Why do you think he’s like that?”

“I honestly couldn’t say.” She considers my question, staring out into the backyard. “He never volunteered to tell me, and I thought it would overstep a boundary if I asked. But something happened to that poor boy that caused him to live like a nomad. He’s running from something or someone. I guess that’s why I took him in, because I felt for him. Maybe he’ll feel comfortable enough to tell you eventually. He seems to have taken a liking to you recently.”

“Yeah, we’ve been getting along.”

Really well.

“That’s what concerns me,” she says, as if she hears my inner thoughts.

“You wanted me to make friends with him.”

“I don’t want you getting too attached to him either, Evie. It’s just—he probably isn’t planning on sticking around too much longer. When he leaves, I don’t want to see you get your heart broken again. You already have such little faith in men. I would hate for this to ruin you completely.”

“Mom, when have I ever gotten too attached to anyone?” She laughs. “Besides, you seem to be forgetting, I’m not planning on sticking around much longer either.”