Dirty Little Secrets (Dirty Little #1)(35)

“You’re beautiful, and I want you. I think that much is fairly obvious.” He gestures at his groin, and I can’t help but laugh. “Just…I’ll feel better if we wait a day or two. Can you do that for me?”

Caleb pulls me in, snuggling me against his chest. “Yeah,” I say, trying to hide my disappointment. “I can do that.”

“I’ll make it worth the wait.” His voice is all low and seductive, and it’s really not fair.


“Don’t tease me if you’re not going to follow through.”

“Fair enough,” Caleb says, and I can hear his smile in his voice. He shifts our bodies so that we’re both lying on our sides. His legs settle behind mine, and he wraps his arm around my waist and pulls me back against him, cuddling my head beneath his chin.

“We can do other things, you know,” he says, planting a kiss on my neck.

“Don’t tease me.” I sound irritated as I swat at his arm, and I am. I’m so irritated with him for not having sex with me, that it makes me even more irritated that he thinks he can just kiss me like that without the promise of something more.

“I’m sorry.” He twines our fingers together, and says, “Tell me something about you.”

“That’s one way to derail things,” I reply, laughing.

He gives me a squeeze. “C’mon. Tell me.”

“Like what?”

“Like…something I don’t know.”

Oh, there’s so much he doesn’t know about me, and if I tell him any of the most recent big developments in my life, he’s going to push me out of his strong, warm arms. He’s going to ask me to leave his bed, his apartment, and his life. He’s clearly feeling a little sentimental today, after making me dinner and sharing the story about his mother with me. It makes me want to share some of the things I hold dear with him, although I think that’s a conversation that I’m going to have to ease my way into.

Maybe I should start small, and see where this goes from there.

“When I was a kid, I had a pet rabbit named Piglet.”

Caleb laughs, making my hair flutter across my cheek. “Sounds appropriate.”

“I’ve never been appropriate,” I say, pressing my ass against him. He growls against my ear as a warning, but that’s what he gets for teasing me. “What else?”

“Anything you want to tell me.”

I grin, because I know him well enough to know that he’s definitely after something, but is unsure about outright asking the question. Just to assure him that I’m not feeling defensive or anything, I give his arm a little squeeze before I say, “You should go ahead and ask me what you’d like to know. I know you’re doing a little fishing here.”

He lets out a small sigh, and I’m not quite sure what that means. It takes a few moments before he finally speaks.

“You told me that your parents are dead, back when you were in the hospital. It was right after you woke up, so I’m not sure if you remember.”

“I remember,” I say.

“I was hoping you’d bring it up at some point, and I didn’t want to pry, but I’ve been thinking about it ever since.”

I can certainly understand why, after finding out this afternoon that his parents are dead, too. It’s only natural that he’d be curious, and I respect the fact that he didn’t want to pry, much like I don’t want to. I also appreciate that he asked me instead of going looking for the information. It’s certainly out there. Well, it’s out there for my father, at least.

“You don’t have to tell me about it if you don’t want to,” he says, nuzzling against my hair. “I know I’m bringing it up out of nowhere.”

“Not nowhere,” I assure him. “I figured you’d ask me about it at some point, and to be honest, if you’d waited for me to bring it up myself, I’m…well, I don’t know how long that would’ve taken.”

“It can take as long as you need it to,” he says, and I believe him.

I know that he’s curious—he wouldn’t have asked me about this if he wasn’t—but there isn’t a doubt in my mind that if I tell him that I’d rather not talk about this tonight, that it would be okay. I’m not ready to tell him everything; I’m especially wary of telling him about my father. It’s almost impossible to tell that story without getting into why I’m here now, so I’m going to offer up a compromise.

“Can I just…Is it okay if I just talk about my mother?” I ask hesitantly.

Caleb kisses my head. “Of course. You don’t-”

“I want to,” I tell him.

“Okay.”

“I look a lot like her,” I begin, as Caleb’s fingertips begin a soothing circuit up and down my forearm. “She had a fearlessness about her that just…it isn’t part of my make up. Sadly, I don’t remember a whole lot about her. She died when I was very young.” I don’t want to get into how she died; sometimes I can still hear the screeching of the tires on the hot asphalt, and the sickening crunch of twisting metal as the truck broadsided our car. “Most of what I remember about her are like…these memories dangling on strings that are just out of my reach. Sometimes I’m able to grab them before they float away, but sometimes they disappear. Like, I have clear memories of her having cheese and crackers waiting for me as a snack when I came home from school.