How to Fail at Flirting(56)

Jake swept a piece of hair away and brushed his lips along the top of my shoulder. “Never. Do I need to add convincing you to my to-do list?”

“What’s on it already?”

When he pulled at the zipper on my dress, the delicate fabric fell to the floor in a gentle swoosh. “Getting you out of this dress, for one. Check.” He cupped my breasts, reverently, as if testing their weight, and his thumbs swiped over my nipples in languid circles.

“Discover if you’re wearing any of your fancy underwear.”

“I was. You pulled them off.”

“That was on my list, too.” His voice was gravelly as he massaged my breasts, moving to roll each nipple and generating a cluster of sparks inside me. “Check.”

I squirmed under his touch as he kissed lower down the side of my neck and back up my jaw. “You can’t be ready to go again, already,” I said with a low groan.

“Not yet, but I can take care of you.” He pulled me a few steps away from the window to the edge of the bed, where we fell back against the comforter and he wrapped me in his arms. “Getting you in my bed has been on my list for a long time.”

“Check.” I ran my fingers through his hair, and he sighed at my touch.

“I can’t stop touching you,” he said as I gazed at him. “And I don’t want to stop. Feeling you, being with you . . . it’s like a drug.”

“I’m okay with you staying off the wagon,” I teased, letting my fingertips graze along his jawline and over his ears. “I think you’ve ruined me for any other man.”

“Good.” He smiled, but his intense stare didn’t ease into humor. “You know, you’re constantly on my mind. I get so damn excited from a simple text.” He paused, looking into my eyes. “Nay, I’m not seeing anyone else.”

I swallowed. “I’m not, either.”

His gaze roamed over my face, looking for something. “I’m . . .” he started and stopped again.

“What?” I asked, softly.

“Do you remember back in Chicago when you wanted to know if I had any fears besides heights?”

“Sure.”

“Well, I am scared of other things. I’m scared that I’m going to screw it up or you’ll do something like Gretchen did, but I’m crazy about you,” he murmured into the dark.

His words were moving, vulnerable, open, and perfect. My heart thrummed. In the deepest parts of me, I wanted to confess I might be falling in love with him. “I’m crazy about you, too, Jake.” My pulse quickened at the thought, and I veered the conversation to a playful place, unprepared to jump all the way in. “And not just because you give me multiple, mind-blowing orgasms.”

He pulled me flush against him. “That helps, though?”

“It doesn’t hurt. Were you writing a thesis on the female anatomy for all those years you weren’t getting laid in college?”

His chest rumbled against me with his low laugh. “No, but what a missed opportunity. I . . .”

I pictured him hunched over tables in a dusty library, working through the perfect combination of steps. “What? Is there really a story here?” I was getting good at playful and flirtatious, and that ground felt steady, much steadier than wading into the pool of feelings.

“My family does a gift exchange thing at Christmas and we draw names. It started with normal presents, but the goal for years has been to be as funny and inappropriate as possible.” He shrugged. “When I was nineteen or twenty, my brother-in-law bought me a pop-up picture book titled How to Please a Woman.”

I clasped my hand over my mouth to cover the laugh. “You’re kidding me.”

“I was mortified. It was quite . . . detailed, and I opened the gift in front of my entire family.”

I admired the easy smile that crossed his face as he shrugged.

“But . . . I committed a few pages to memory. Is that weird?”

“Completely. Do you still have the book? I’m very curious.”

His laugh echoed off the walls and he squeezed me. “God, Naya, I lo—” Jake stopped himself, then paused for a brief moment, but my face was pressed to his neck and I couldn’t see his eyes. I didn’t want to believe he was about to say he loved me—didn’t want to hope. “I regifted it the next year, and it’s been making the rounds since then, almost like a traveling trophy.”

“Your family is so weird—it’s amazing, but remind me to send your brother-in-law a thank-you card,” I said.

“You can thank him yourself one day,” he said as I dropped my head to his chest, my arm draped over his stomach.

One day. This was another reference to us being together in the future, and not knowing how to define and categorize this relationship made me anxious. If this was something that lasted, what would that mean for the cuts at Thurmond? There were no guarantees my job would be safe, and I wondered how that could work.

I shook away the questions in my head, and we lay in comfortable silence, hands linked over his stomach. His chest rose and fell, the hair tickling the sides of my palm. I’d gotten used to hearing his heartbeat when we lay like this. Even through the medicinal haze of our trip to Cincinnati, I remembered how comfortable the steady beat had made me feel. I looked up at him. “You never told me. When we were in Cincinnati, did you enjoy the movies?”