All the Feels (Spoiler Alert #2)(75)

22


“ANYWAY, I LOVE A GOOD SEX POLLEN STORY.” ALEX GRINNED at her, totally unashamed. “They’re usually filthy as fuck.”

He was pacing the room to keep warm as Lauren checked under the bed and in the covers for more stray items he’d managed to misplace during the chilliest, hottest, most amazing night of her life.

They’d made out for hours, entwined and breathless, their hands roaming over arms and legs and backs and occasionally asses. He’d kept his promise, though. They’d kissed and kissed and kissed and fallen asleep cuddling, but nothing more. He hadn’t even copped a feel of her breasts, although she’d allow that tonight. Demand that tonight.

She intended to demand a lot more too.

If he still wanted her. Which, from all signs, he appeared to.

When she straightened from one last inspection of the blankets, he was right in front of her.

“Hot as fuck,” he repeated. “Much like you.”

Bending low, he kissed her lingeringly, sweet and soft and slow. From corner to corner, he sipped at her mouth. Explored, as if he hadn’t traversed the same territory repeatedly the night before, as if her lips were endlessly fascinating, endlessly alluring to him.

Her skin bloomed with heat under his attention, despite the cold. Her whole body sensitive and tingling, she wound her arms around his neck and melted against him.

When he lifted his head minutes later, he clapped a hand to his neck, stretched his back, and groaned. “Shit, Wren. Why are you literally the size of a fucking squirrel? Did you choose not to grow out of sheer, stubborn maliciousness? Because honestly, I wouldn’t put it past you.”

Instead of dignifying such naked provocation with a response, she pulled free and went to check the bathroom one last time. Along the way, she glanced out the room’s window and smiled.

“It’s lovely here,” she said, staring at the ocean in the distance.

Within two strides, he was standing next to her, shoulder to shoulder.

He trailed his knuckles down her cheek. “It is.”

She considered herself a logical person. Rational.

Still. Maybe there was something special about this room. About this small town and its worn-down, clean, unpretentious B and B with its malfunctioning air conditioner.

Not sex pollen. But … something.

Under other circumstances, without that overactive AC, she didn’t think she’d ever have kissed him. But she’d hurt him by wondering whether he might have used her as just a warm body on a cold, lonely night, and she’d been desperate to assuage his distress. Desperate enough to show him how she felt and how much she wanted him. Desperate enough to yank him close and kiss him the way she’d been imagining for weeks.

She needed time to think, time to work through what had happened. But overnight, she’d reached a tentative conclusion: Somehow, at some point, her work in the ER had consumed her so completely that—except with Sionna—she no longer considered herself anything but a therapist and a daughter. Not a potential romantic partner, a sexual being, or even an interesting person.

No wonder she’d burned out. No wonder the thought of going back to the ER still caused a ripple of nausea in her belly. No wonder she’d doubted her appeal to Alex and interpreted all his attention, his inability to keep his hands off her, as friendly rather than romantic.

She’d do better in the future, because they both deserved it.

She didn’t doubt his desire for her anymore, and she wasn’t denying hers for him.

He was still standing beside her, still gazing down at her with uncharacteristic solemnity and in uncharacteristic silence, and she claimed his hand in both of hers. Raised it to her lips. Kissed his cold knuckles.

His mouth curved into a smile with no sharp edges. “What was that for?”

“Because I like you.” She kept her voice matter-of-fact, since it was a fact. A basic truth. “Because I’m so happy we’re going on this trip together. Because I want to hear what your first-favorite fanfic trope is. Please tell me it’s not sex pollen.”

He beamed at her, and she smiled back.

“I love soulmate AUs.” Turning her wrist over in his grasp, he traced something along her forearm with a gentle, shiver-inducing finger. “My favorites are soul mark ones, where your soulmate’s first words to you appear somewhere on your body, like a tattoo, in their handwriting.”

One of his bookmarked fics had that premise, and despite all her natural skepticism, she too had found the sheer romanticism of the idea seductive. Soulmates. Inseverable bonds. True pairings, designated such by powers beyond human command.

Too bad those didn’t exist in real life.

“I read your bookmarked soulmate fic recently. I liked it.” Gently tugging her hand free from his, she turned away and used the hotel-provided notepad to write a quick thank-you to the poor housekeeper who’d have to clean the chilly room, then placed the note beside the generous tip Alex had already left on the nightstand. “All right, I’m ready to go now.”

He grabbed both their bags. “Finally. Shit, you’re like if a tortoise took downers.”

“One of us scattered his belongings everywhere, and I needed time to locate everything,” she said as she opened the door. “I won’t say who, but his name starts with an A, ends with an X, and rhymes with Schmalex.”