Bring Down the Stars (Beautiful Hearts Duet #1)(41)

Grasping at relief…

My fingernails raked down his broad back and then clutched at him hard, as that ecstatic release found me.

Again and again, through all the hours of night, and one final time when I was nearly asleep, yet starving for more. I collapsed in the strong ring of his embrace, my body warm and heavy and breathing—

can breathe again

—in perfect cadence to his.





Autumn



The alarm on my phone went off at five a.m. Disoriented, I fumbled my hand on a nightstand that wasn’t mine, trying to shut it off.

“The agony,” Connor mumbled.

The beeping silenced, I rolled to face him. He lay on his stomach, face half-buried in his pillow, and everything we’d done that night came flooding back to me, bringing a flush of heat to my face.

“Sorry,” I whispered. “Go back to sleep.”

“I plan to.” One green eye peeked open and he gave me a lazy smile.

I bit my own smile with my front teeth. “Last night was really good.”

“Really good?” His arm snaked out and pulled me in tighter. “I can’t let you leave here with ‘really good.’”

I laughed and gave his chest a playful shove. “I have to work. And maybe I was understating it a little.”

He kissed me softly. “I’m glad you stayed.”

Oh God, the butterflies.

“Me too.” I ran my fingers through his hair. “I can’t stop smiling.”

He kissed me again. “I don’t want you to.”

“But I’ll be late for work.”

His eyes went to the window behind me, the blinds drawn. “It’s still dark out. You do this every morning?”

“Bakery life starts early.” I sat up, holding the sheet around me. “Do you mind if I make some coffee?”

Connor had already settled back into his pillow. “Nope. Make yourself at home.”

“Can I borrow one of your T-shirts to wear while I do?”

I wasn’t quite ready to put my dress back on; I wanted Connor’s arms around me. Wearing his shirt—something he wears close to his skin and catching the smell of his cologne, his laundry soap and the indescribable scent of him—was the next best thing.

“Dresser,” he said. “Second drawer.”

I slipped out of Connor’s bed naked and went to his dresser. I found a dark gray V-neck shirt in the drawer. It looked a tad too small for Connor, but still plenty large to cover me. I pulled it over my head and inhaled.

Wow.

A tingle of electricity danced over my skin. The residue of cologne under the laundry soap was different than Connor’s usual scent—sharper and more potent—and it went straight to my head. It woke up my blood cells better than coffee and I had to press my thighs together.

What in the world?

Padding toward the kitchen to get my muddled brain some coffee, I put the soft cotton of his shirt to my nose and inhaled again.

Wow again.

It was like taking a hit off of pure masculine pheromones, but somehow different from what I’d felt and sensed lying in Connor’s bed.

“Oh, stop.”

I vowed to quit with the weird thoughts and to bask in the newness of it all. If there was one truth I had after reading that poem, it was that Connor had many facets, and clearly I hadn’t discovered them all yet.

That prospect of discovery—one of my favorite parts of a new relationship—brought a slow smile over my lips as I came around the corner of the hall. The light was on, and I stopped short with a little yelp. “Oh.”

Weston stood at the dining room table, furiously cramming books and papers into his bag, as if he were stealing them. His head shot up at my little gasp and his gaze raked me up and down. Over my bare legs, my thighs and my small breasts. I immediately crossed my arms over them as if I were naked.

“Hi,” I stammered. “I didn’t know you were here. I mean, awake.”

Weston stared. His mouth parted and the tip of his tongue touched his upper lip. Then, like a man waking from a dream, his head gave a twitch and his entire expression went hard and sharp.

“What the hell are you wearing?”

I flinched and looked down. “One of Connor’s shirts?”

“That’s my shirt.” He stared a moment more, then tore his gaze from me to jerk at the zipper on his bag.

“Oh,” I said, my cheeks inexplicably burning, the heat racing through my veins to every part of my body. “It was in his drawer.”

“It’s mine,” he said.

“Sorry. I’ll take it off,” I said.

His head flicked back to me, eyes wide.

“Not now,” I said. “I mean, I was—”

“Forget it,” Weston said, standing straight and shouldering his bag. “The Drakes send a cleaning lady once a week. She does the laundry…mixes up our clothes sometimes.”

His gaze flicked up and down along my body, and I could have sworn I saw a flash of pain in the blue-green depths, before they turned icy again.

“I’m going. See you.”

A soft pain swelled in my chest at his refusal to be in the same room with me for longer than a minute. I tugged the hem of the shirt—Weston’s shirt—lower over my thighs.