Frayed (Connections, #4)(96)

I’m in the kitchen slicing lemons with two glasses of sparkling water in front of me. I drop them in the glass and smile at him. “You didn’t have to knock.”

“I wasn’t sure if your brother was still here.”

“Nope, he’s gone.”

He takes the bags and walks back out to close the door.

Did he forget something? There’s another knock on the door. Now I’m curious. I walk over and open the door just a smidge. “Yes?”

He raises the bags. “Delivery, ma’am.” He grins.

My smile grows wide and I throw open the door. “Come in. You can set the bags on the counter, but I’m not sure I have any money to pay you.”

“Ma’am, I don’t take cash anyway.”

“Oh, good, because after we eat I know just how to pay you back.”

“After?” he questions.

“Yes, sorry, but I’m starving.”

He laughs. “Me too.” He crosses to the kitchen and deposits the bags on the table.

I can’t restrain myself and I throw my arms his neck.

He pushes my wet hair to the side and kisses my neck while I press the weight of my body against him. “You smell so good,” he says.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come back.”

He takes my face in his hands as he reassures me, “Nothing would keep me away from you, even your brother camped outside the door.”

I lick the lemon juice from my fingers while giggling. “He wasn’t that bad.”

He takes my hand and sucks one of my fingers still sticky with lemon juice. “No, he wasn’t,” he agrees, moving to the next one. “If I was looking to get my balls served on a platter, he’d be just the guy I’d go to.”

The laughter is uncontrollable and I start hiccupping from the hysteria. Once I’ve calmed I tell him, “I called everyone else while you were gone, so we should be visitor free.”

“By everyone else I assume you mean your other brother, the one who isn’t going to be even a fraction as unimpressed as his older brother.”

“What did you get us to eat?” I ask, pressing against him in an attempt to change the otherwise awkward subject. And then before he can answer I lift my arms and snake them around his head. “Kiss me.”

He finds my mouth and kisses me deeply before pulling away and walking over to the table, where he set the bags. He takes a round container out. “Spaghetti and meatballs.” He takes out another. “Chicken Parmesan.” And then another. “Rigatoni.”

“Yum, but are you feeding an army?”

“I just wanted to make sure you were well fed.”

I look up and catch his glance. His face looks perfectly content and I feel the same way.





CHAPTER 31


Start of Something

Ben

I have been with many women over the past three years, but I have never spent any real length of time in their places—enough time to f*ck and move on and that’s been all. So to say lying on the couch with S’belle and flipping through television channels after we’ve both stuffed ourselves with pasta, garlic knots, and salad feels unfamiliar would be telling the truth. But in a sense there is something familiar about it, in terms of the only relationship I’ve really ever had in my life, the one with Dahlia.

It isn’t that I don’t know how to be in a relationship, because obviously I do. I had been in one, the same one, for ten years. And I think for the majority of those years we were both happy together. But after that I have never wanted to seek out another relationship. It takes a lot of giving, and I think I have already proven to myself I am a taker. So why when I look at S’belle lying in front of me do I feel that at last I have something to give?

The sound of the rain outside is calming even though my thoughts are swirling around my mind. I reach for the book on the coffee table, noticing that the bookmark is gone but the book itself still has a place on the table.

“Did you finish this?” I ask her.

She turns around. “I did.”

“What did you think?”

She smirks. “That I’ll stick to romance novels.”

I gently bump the book on her head. “No, really, what did you think?”

Now she giggles.

My heart pounds a little faster whenever I hear that sound.

She sits up, waving her hand in front of her face until she settles. “Sorry, sometimes I’m just so witty.”

I withhold my own smirk at how f*cking cute she is.

“Okay, okay, so . . .” She takes a deep breath. “Here goes. At first I kept resisting the context, which made me dislike the book.”

I raise an eyebrow. “I did mention this is my favorite book. Didn’t I?”

She pouts her lips. “Let me finish.”

I blink at her. “I just had a vision of you as a teacher.”

She bends down and kisses me. Running her tongue along the inside of my lip and then catching it with her teeth. “I can be your teacher—later.”

I’m sure my eyes widen in delight.

“Now let me finish.”

Excitement starts to build within me because she’s turning me on. “Please do.”

“Okay, so once I surrendered myself to the time frame and fictional virtuosities, the story finally captured my heart. I could picture a circus of events as everything came to life in my mind.”