Changing Everything (Forgiving Lies #2.5)(25)

I hadn’t thought of it that way, and based on the look Eli was giving me, my expression was saying just that.

“So as long as you don’t try to take blame, I’ll . . . try to stop apologizing,” he promised, and I narrowed my eyes at him. He shook his head slowly when he knew I was getting ready to argue that too. “That’s the best you’re getting, Paisley. I’ve had to watch you cry numerous times because of me. I’ve beat guys up over you for a lot less than that.”

“Guys as in plural?”

“Yeah.” He breathed the word like that shouldn’t be news. It was.

“Do I want to—”

“No.”

I bit back a smile and rolled my eyes. “Got it.”

Pushing me off his lap, he kissed me forcefully as he climbed off the bed. “I’m gonna lock up, and I’m not letting you leave. So change, because I’m exhausted and I want you in my arms.”

My heart took off and his face lit up in reaction to the cheesiest smile that was covering my own. I’d slept in a bed with him hundreds of times, but everything was different now, and he’d just told me he wanted me in his arms. And he’d been kissing me. Not fake brushes of his lips against the side of my neck for girls to see, but actual kisses that I’d only dreamt of. That’s it. I had to be dreaming.

I’m going to wake up and all of this will be some sick joke.

“It’s real, Pay.”

I looked up to where he was standing in the doorway, and my eyebrows drew together.

“You look like you’re starting to freak out, and I’m thinking the same thing. That’s why I’m falling asleep with you in my arms tonight. Because I need to feel you and be able to touch you to know that this isn’t all going to be gone in the morning.”

My lips parted and I blinked slowly at him. “I don’t know if I should be in awe, or kinda creeped out that you can read my mind now.”

He shrugged and turned to walk down the hall, his voice trailing behind him. “Or you just said it out loud.”

My expression fell even though he couldn’t see me anymore. Jerk.

Scrambling quickly off the bed, I pulled my pants and shirt off, and folded them in a pile next to Eli’s dresser. Grabbing one of his shirts out of the drawers, I started to put it on, and at the last second, took my bra off. It’s not like I needed the bra that much, but I still usually wore one if I knew I’d be sleeping with him.

Slipping the shirt over my head, I let it fall over my body and pulled my hair out of the collar.

You always look like such a lost little girl when you’re in my clothes.

I froze on my way back to his bed when I remembered the words he’d told me a few months ago, and looked down at where his shirt hung almost to my knees. I didn’t want to look like a little girl, and I wanted to wear his shirt. I always wore them when we slept together . . . never mind the fact that I didn’t have anything else to wear.

Grabbing the bottom of his shirt, I pulled together the loose material and tied it all in a knot against the side of my thigh. By the time I straightened, his shirt looked a lot more like the shirt-dress Kristen had made me wear than one of Eli’s baggy shirts I always drowned in. It sat just under my butt and tight against my thighs, and from the way Eli stopped walking and his eyes widened as they took me in, I knew that “lost little girl” wasn’t anywhere in his vocabulary right now.

Keeping his eyes on me, he pulled his shirt over his head and let it fall to the floor as his hands went to the button on his dark tan cargo shorts. My mind knew I should have turned away, that I wasn’t supposed to watch Eli when he changed—but that’d been before.

My lips felt dry when he stood from taking off his shorts, and I couldn’t stop myself from finally looking at his wide, muscular build in nothing but a tight pair of dark boxer briefs as he walked toward me. A smirk played on his lips as he moved past me, and I turned to watch the muscles in his back move as he bent to prop up all the pillows.

“Are you—” I cleared my throat. “Are you not putting on shorts?”

He looked over his shoulder, that same smirk still taunting me. “Are you going to fix my shirt?”

“No.”

“If I’m going to be tortured by the sight of you like that, Paisley, I’m not helping you by putting anything else on.”

“But I’m covered! Well, half of me is.”

“No one ever said you had to be.” He pulled back the comforter and slid into the bed, messing with the pillows as he tried to get comfortable sitting up against them.

I just stood there staring at him with my jaw dropped.

“Bed, Paisley.”

His words moved straight to my stomach and curled in the most amazing way. It didn’t matter that I’d seen him in a bed hundreds of times like he was then; looking at him like this with those words was something right from one of my fantasies. And while I wanted to live out those fantasies so bad, I also kind of wanted to draw out this whole torturing him. He’d tortured me for years; it was an exhilarating feeling knowing I was finally getting my chance.

I walked over to the bed and crawled on, but instead of getting on my side and curling up against him, I climbed onto his lap. Trying to ignore the way his eyes heated so I wouldn’t go right into fantasy mode, I reached back for the comforter and pulled it over my shoulders as I rested myself against his chest with my cheek pressed to his shoulder.