An Optimist's Guide to Heartbreak (Heartsong #1)(42)

“What?” he finally asks, catching me ogling him.

I know I said I was staring, but I’m definitely ogling. Then I start to laugh. “Ogling,” I snicker.

“Ogling?”

I giggle even harder, lurching forward, unable to catch my breath. “Oh my God. That is such a funny word.” I’m wheezing when I lift back up with tears in my eyes. “Don’t you think?”

“I think you had too much Riesling.”

“No such thing,” I pout.

“There is, actually. Why did you have three glasses?” He twists toward me on the couch, and our knees brush together.

I feel overstimulated, so the gesture causes my heart to thump harder. Clearing my throat, I admit, “You make me nervous, so I thought it would help.”

His eyes narrow. “I still make you nervous? It’s been two months.”

“I know, but you just have this…thing about you.”

“Clarify.”

Inadvertently, I slide closer to him on the couch, noticing the way he resituates, stiffening slightly as the gap between us thins. When I drop my hand from my cheek, it plants itself atop his knee. Cal glances at my hand, then back up, shadows and embers coexisting in his eyes.

I’m feeling bold, thanks to the alcohol warming my blood. Normally, I’m too scared to even make eye contact with Cal, but now I’m actively touching him. He doesn’t move away, and neither do I. “Well, you’re sort of intense.”

The muscles in his cheeks twitch as he skims my face. “Okay.”

“And big.”

“Okay,” he parrots.

“And hard…hard to read, I guess.”

And just like that, a half-smile lifts. “So…my thing is intense, big, and hard. Got it,” he quips, swinging his gaze to my mouth for the tiniest second. “You’re not wrong.”

My brain registers his comment like its sludge trying to slither its way down a clogged drain. Then I start blinking wildly, my eyes popping. “Wait. Is this a penis thing?”

Cal lets out a burst of air that might be his version of a laugh, and ducks his head, shaking it back and forth.

“Is it?”

“Jesus, Lucy.”

“No, but is it?”

Raising his chin, that little smile still lives within the corners of his mouth; a miraculous thing, like lightning bugs in the dead of winter. But it soon fades, replaced by something heavier. Something that has the tingles returning tenfold.

Something that makes me nervous.

Cal lifts an arm, placing his palm over the back of my hand—the one that still cups his denim-clad knee. A calloused thumb grazes over my knuckles, triggering a shot of arousal to my core.

I suck in a breath, zoning in our clasped hands. I wouldn’t say I’m drunk, but I’m definitely buzzed, and the heat from our proximity could double as me being trapped inside a burning building.

No, maybe I am drunk. I’m drunk on the feel of his hand on mine.

“Lucy.”

His voice is all deep timbre again, the pull of it drawing my eyes to his.

And then…he’s actually pulling me.

In a blink, his hand is curled around my wrist, and I’m being rocketed into his lap like I weigh no more than a dandelion seed caught in the wind.

Oh my God.

I’m straddling him.

The wine daze has me nearly blacking out as my hands latch onto his shoulders for steadiness, so I don’t collapse across his chest.

I can’t look at him. I can’t look at—

“Look at me.”

A long finger tips my chin up until I have no other choice. I suck in a sharp breath. My nails dig into the tops of his shoulders, my chest heaving with the weight of something I don’t understand. Cal leans into me, and my eyelids flutter closed, lashes fanning across my cheekbones until I feel his lips caress the shell of my ear.

“You should be nervous around me, Lucy,” he rasps softly. Our pelvises are flush together, our heartbeats synchronized. “You’re so fucking beautiful, it hurts.”

I’m feathery, floaty, utterly weightless.

I’m sinking.

I’m nothing and everything, lost to what we were and what we could become.

I won’t let him kiss me, though—I won’t.

I can’t.

Kissing is a gateway to all the things that will destroy me—destroy him.

Jessica’s name tramples through my mind, haunting me, reminding me. She’s my own personal ghost. I bet her story started with a kiss, too.

His warm, full lips graze down the edge of my jawline until he whispers, “I’m not going to kiss you.”

Those words have my eyes popping back open with something that feels like disappointment. I know it’s ridiculous because he can’t kiss me, but the feeling is still raw and real.

I swallow.

“Not now,” he explains. “Not when there’s a chance you might forget how good it’s going to feel when my tongue is inside you.”

Holy crap.

I tremble in his lap and manage to croak out, “See? Intense.”

Half of his mouth lifts up. “Big,” he adds.

Something like a steel pipe teases the juncture between my thighs and a shiver crawls down my back. But I can’t seem to get that third, indecent adjective out. “Okay,” I murmur instead. My tongue slicks over my lips as I nod in slow-motion. Then I blurt, “The wine wants to know why you haven’t had sex in two years?”