Do You Take This Man (53)

“That thing today . . .”

I stiffened. “Yeah.”

She settled her hands against my chest and tipped her chin up. “Do you want to talk about it?” She bit her lip in a way I knew meant she didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to hear the sob story I wasn’t eager to share. She slid her fingertips through my hair, and my body warmed, despite the mental and physical exhaustion.

“Can we not talk?”

She kissed my throat, sliding a hand under my shirt and along my stomach. “We could not talk.”

She finished unbuttoning my shirt, her fingers dexterously moving over the buttons with laser focus. Her silence in that room came back to me, and I wondered about things some more. “RJ?”

She pushed my shirt off my shoulders, the graze of her palms like a balm.

I missed the heat when she pulled them away, but didn’t mind when she tugged her own shirt over her head, and I was rapt as she reached back to unhook her bra, the move awkward and sexy. I finally pulled my senses back. “RJ?”

“Yeah?” She shrugged away her bra, standing in front of me with her perfect breasts begging for my touch, my mouth, but my eyes kept drifting to hers. “What?”

“Thank you for coming over.”

She took my hands and guided them to her pebbled nipples. She let out a sigh at my touch. “Let’s not talk.”





Chapter 29


    RJ



“WOW.” I COLLAPSED onto the bed, Lear’s chest heaving against my back. “That was good.”

His breathing was heavy when his arm wrapped around my waist. “Good is underselling, don’t you think?” He spoke into my skin, his breaths puffing against my shoulder.

“Be happy with your A minus.”

Lear rolled me to my back in one fluid motion, pinning my arms over my head. “I don’t get A minuses, and we both submitted assignments.”

I pulled my arm free from his grasp and traced his jawline with my fingertip. “Peer review. The minus makes you work harder next time.”

Lear’s hair was sweaty, and some longer curls framed his face. “You’re . . .” He propped himself on an elbow next to me, letting his forearm rest over my stomach again, the weight familiar and comforting.

I let my head loll to the side and studied the stubble on his chin. It was so rare to relax like this after sex, to have time to notice things like the scar under his chin or the small chip in his front tooth. “Difficult? Hard to please?”

He shook his head while his fingers grazed my waist, swirling an invisible pattern on my skin. “Pleasing you is fun. You’re hard to read.”

“I like to think I’m an open book.” The hairs on his forearm tickled my palm until I reached the smooth expanse of his biceps.

“Unless you don’t want to share something.”

“Like I said, smarter than you look.”

Lear seemed tired. The lines of his face were still as handsome and chiseled as ever, but he looked like he could sleep for days. I turned from his face and glanced at the ceiling. I didn’t need to concern myself with Lear’s sleep schedule. Worrying about that led to caring too much and the inevitable moment when I realized I cared more than he did. “What about me are you trying to read? I know you know it was good for me.”

“Twice, I believe.” His palm flattened against my belly, and he stroked up to my ribs and then back to my hips in slow movements. “What bothered you earlier in the bridal suite?”

I thought about his question and the soft way he’d asked it, like he was requesting the information versus assuming he should have it.

His slow sweeps continued, as if warming me and protecting me at the same time. “It’s okay if you don’t want to share. I just wanted to ask . . . you know, in case you wanted to talk about it.”

“It’s not a big deal.” I focused on the path of his palm over my skin and not the way my heart rate ticked up. It shouldn’t be a big deal. Like I always did, I tamped down those emotions that might get in my way. If something could make me feel like that, it could hold me back. “My dad left my mom and me when I was in high school. She got really sick, and he took off. My best friend, Michael, he . . .” The sentence caught in my throat before I thought about saying the words. I hadn’t talked about Michael in years. I wondered if he was the last man I’d truly counted on to be there for me. “Um, he ghosted me shortly after. Said I was too sad.”

I expected him to say “I’m sorry,” or some other platitude. Years ago, I had decided I could be with Case when I told him about my dad leaving us and he asked immediately about child support. If I’d brought up my old friend Michael, he would have rolled his eyes, so I’d kept it quiet. His questions were simple to answer, factual. He didn’t ask how any of it made me feel, and I never shared. Lear didn’t say anything but kept moving his hand in that long arc. I didn’t like the silence. “So, people peacing out just . . . gets to me sometimes.”

Stroke. Stroke. Stroke.

“You don’t tell people that often, do you? Things that get to you.”

“I tell you that you annoy me all the time.”

He smiled but didn’t laugh or otherwise respond, giving me time to steer the conversation.