Hothouse Flower (Addicted #4)(49)

He kisses my cheek, which almost restarts us all over again, but we restrain ourselves from attacking full force. “Not now,” he says. His eyes flicker to my canvas watch.

“I’m not tired,” I tell him. “If anything, I’m…” I can’t even say it.

“Wet?” He takes his hand off my ass and slips it down the front of my shorts. Holy shit. His fingers don’t go beneath my panties. He cups my heat, his eyes never leaving mine. “You’re not nearly soaked enough for me, sweetheart.”

Ahh. I breathe heavily and I wrap my arms around his neck. Take me there. Right when I think he’s going to brush my panties to the side and slip his fingers into me, he retracts his hand from my shorts.

“Why stop?” I frown. “Is it because we’re in a stairwell?”

His hard gaze soaks in all of me. “Calloway, I’d f*ck you in every corner of every hallway and then do it over again for good measure.”

My jaw unhinges.

“And I’d be more likely to f*ck you in a stairwell than on a bed.”

“Why?”

He combs his fingers through my hair and holds the back of my head. “It’s more f*cking fun.” He kisses me strongly again, my whole body pulling towards him. My hips roll into his pelvis. He turns his head from me and grips my waist hard. “Fuck,” he groans. His eyes fall to the way we’re pressed together, his cock rubbing along a throbbing place of mine.

“How big are you?” I ask with heavy breath. I can feel him through his jeans. I know he’s big. I know he’s hard. I know he’s everything that I want.

“You’re not finding out today.”

I stick out my bottom lip.

“Don’t flash those green doe eyes at me.”

“They don’t melt your heart of stone?” I banter.

“Stone can’t f*cking melt,” he retorts. “It just grows hot.”

“Are you hot now?”

His brows rise. “What do you think?”

I smile again. “So…” And then my lips slowly downturn as I realize something. He never answered me about his “girlfriend”—not really. “Are you going back to that girl when we return to Philly?” Is this some Paris hookup while we’re both away from our families?

He glares. “Fuck no.”

“Would you be upset if I dated the model from the other night again?”

His reaction says it all. He sets me on my feet with firm hands, and he clenches the railing on either side of me. Anger laces his dark eyes. “Do you want to date the other model?” His words sound stilted like he tried pretty hard not to swear.

“Wow, you managed to say that without cursing.”

“You’re killing me.”

I poke his chest with my finger. “You crushed my heart when you told me to go sleep with another guy.”

“I didn’t f*cking—” He growls in frustration and runs his hand through his hair. I love, love when he does that, even when he’s upset. It lights my core on fire. “I never wanted you to screw someone else! For f*ck’s sake, it broke my heart telling you to even pursue another guy.” He glances at his jacket pocket and groans with more irritation. He takes out his vibrating phone and ignores the call, putting it back. “Look at me,” he says.

My eyes meet his. He cages me back against the railing. “I can’t watch you flirt with another f*cking guy.”

I shouldn’t bring it up again, but I do. “I watched you go down on another girl.” Pain wells inside me again, my stomach tightening at the image. “You kissed her knee. You looked at her like she was beautiful—”

He covers my mouth with his large hand. “Fucking stop.” He breathes heavily, a guy that runs marathons, a guy that scales mountains in minutes. “I never slept with her, but I can’t take back what you saw. I wish to God I f*cking could.”

He never slept with her. This almost brings tears to my eyes. I see how much this moment is tearing him up, and the torture that I feel reflects equally in his rigid posture and cinched brows.

He keeps his hand over my mouth. “I’ve ignored a lot of bad shit in my life, but I don’t want to ignore this one good thing anymore. It’s too painful.” He stares at me deeply, my chest rising with something pure and warm. “I kissed you tonight because I want your lips to only touch mine. From now until forever. That’s the f*cking truth.” He drops his hand.

My heart can’t stop slamming into my chest. From now until forever. I skim my hands down his arms. He doesn’t withdraw. He’s serious. He wants to be together, no more dating other people. “What about your brother?” I ask the million dollar question, the crux. “And my mom…my dad?” They’re the biggest roadblocks.

“It’s up to you,” he says. “We can tell them, or we can do this in private and wait until the age gap isn’t a big deal to them anymore.”

“When will that be?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know. Maybe when you’re twenty.”

A year and a half. I think I can wait that long. If we tell everyone now, I see my mom tearing him away from me. I see too many headaches and more heartbreaks. I just want something good. Something right without anything abysmal attached. So I say, “I don’t want to tell anyone.”