Window Shopping(40)

Aiden winks at me. “You’re not wrong.”

“I bet the local girl scouts were beside themselves.”

“There were some toilet papering incidents. A few surly eyes. But eventually we carved out territories to make it fair.”

I’m back to wanting to crawl into his lap. Maybe tuck my head under his chin and press an ear to his throat, so I can hear the timbre of his voice right at the source. Settle down, Stella. “Okay, so you’re taking the honey industry by storm…”

“And a few years after I graduated from State, Hank and Edna are able to pay off their mortgage and buy a second vacation home down near the Gulf.”

In the midst of this story, Aiden unhooks my seatbelt and pulls me into his lap sideways, dropping his chin onto the crown of my head. I let it happen in a daze. Is he…a mind reader? I don’t have time to pursue that line of thought, because he’s speaking again and the burr of his voice is vibrating down the side of my neck, making each and every one of my nerve endings sing an aria. Oh this. This is way too perfect. I’m melting like hot butter on a plate.

“Around that time, Vivant was getting ready to declare bankruptcy. I’d never had a close relationship with my father or grandparents, apart from yearly visits and phone calls. But they needed my help. I came to New York thinking I would buy into the family business…” He shakes his head, messing up my bangs in the process. “I don’t know, maybe I was a young idiot who wanted to be a hero. To be the kind of son they wouldn’t ever consider sending away. In hindsight, I made our relationships worse. Now they resent me for coming in and turning the ship around. And I don’t know any other way but to try and make them happy.”

Unwittingly, he’s hit the bullseye on why I hesitate to sign the paperwork. To take the leap across the chasm. Because this facet of Aiden’s personality, this responsibility he feels to inspire happiness in everyone, reminds me of something I think about and regret every day. My parents tried to make me happy and I rebelled anyway. I’m a different version of the same bad guy in the story he’s telling and he doesn’t even realize it. Will he? What then?

I swallow down that worry and refocus. “Sometimes people just aren’t in a place to receive happiness, you know? And it’s nothing you’re doing wrong. It’s just that they don’t want to feel it. Or they don’t recognize happiness when it’s handed to them, so they take a foreign feeling and turn it into something that makes them comfortable. They wouldn’t know themselves if they stopped obsessing over their own shortcomings or their past mistakes…and just let you in. They don’t know how. But it can’t be your job to teach them, okay? You get to take advantage of your own happiness. You’re allowed to keep it if they don’t want it.”

Something is butting up against my shoulder and it takes me a second to realize it’s his heart. Shifting a little, I press my palm there to experience the thrum up close, my gaze drifting up to meet his. And I’m so screwed. I’m so incredibly screwed because he’s looking at me like I’ve just unlocked the secrets of the universe, instead of issuing a roundabout warning about myself—and then he’s kissing me like we have thirty seconds until civilization falls. This is how he chooses to spend it. With his fingers plowing into my hair, his lips coming down hard on mine. Pressing my mouth wide so he can ride the ridges of our tongues together, his groan cracking in the middle and turning into a growl.

It’s like someone tossed a match into a puddle of kerosene.

One second, I’m almost lulled by his story and the next, my libido is dancing furiously in a top hat and clogs. I twist my butt in his lap and feel the bulge rise, gasping when his hands rake down out of my hair to unzip my jacket in one long zing, his hand delving inside to play with my breasts. Yes, play with them. He doesn’t honk them like an old-fashioned bicycle horn or turn them like a doorknob. He brushes his fingertips over my nipples, teasing them into little peaks, then he squeezes the full mounds gently, in turn, grazing his teeth down my jawline as he does it, before returning to my stiff nipples and stroking them, firmer this time, through my sweater dress. “Oh no,” I whisper, my breath catching, one hand curled in his collar, apparently. No idea when that happened. “Oh no. What are you going to do to me?”

This is a question I’m asking on more than one level.

Thankfully he only picks up on the most obvious one.

“Tell me what you want done, sweetheart. I’ll bring you inside and do it,” he rasps, raking his open mouth up the most sensitive portion of my neck. “As many times as you want.”

“That’s too many options. That’s a diner menu. I need like…a-a price fix.”

What an utterly ridiculous thing to say. And yet he nods like I’m a normal person speaking in perfect English. “Let’s start at the beginning.” Searching my eyes, he bathes my mouth in an unsteady exhale. “Are we getting each other off?”

I nod. And I keep on nodding.

Nod nod nod.

His eyes close briefly and I think he might whisper a quick prayer. “I can use my fingers,” he says hoarsely, toying with the hem of my skirt. “My tongue. We can keep our clothes on and I’ll just rock us into it, make you come in those little tights.” That big chest of his starts to rise and fall faster. “Or I can fuck you good and rough. You decide, Stella.”