Lovely Trigger(31)

She gave me a dirty look, and I shoved my hands in my pockets, my cock twitching restlessly.

“I’m so not taking you there. No way in hell.”

I tried not to let my grin grow too big. “I saw an all-night diner on my way here, maybe five minutes away.”

She gave her narrow eyed agreement to let me take her there.

We stared at each other across a tiny table and ordered cheeseburgers. The table was so narrow that our legs would have touched if I hadn’t spread mine wide, letting hers rest between.

It was surreal, just to get to stare at each other under bright, unforgiving lights.

Of course, Danika didn’t need forgiving lights. She was perfection, even under the harshest of conditions. So beautiful that my chest was aching enough that my hand had been rubbing at it for a solid minute before I caught myself and lowered it. And the entire time, I just kept drinking in the sight of her.

There were so many shocking, drastic changes and painful, wrenching similarities between the girl and the woman. The girl had been playful, fresh-faced, and beautiful as a freshly bloomed flower. The woman was quiet and elegant, and so heart-wrenchingly exquisite I would have given up another piece of my soul just to keep looking at her.

I couldn’t believe she’d let me have her again. Even as I clearly recalled the encounter, how she’d let me inside of her, bare; let me come in her, skin on skin; let me empty myself deep inside of her, I almost felt as though I’d dreamed the whole thing.

That was all we did for the longest time, just stared at each other. I was hesitant to be the first to start talking. The faster we talked, the sooner this was over, and I was content to drag this out until dawn.

“Does this place even have good burgers?” she finally asked. “Because I’m warning you right now, I’m not wasting calories on a bad one.”

I smiled fondly at her. “What, you think I’ll get upset with you if you don’t eat the food you order? Who do I look like, Ike Turner?”

She stifled a laugh, and then refused to look at me for a while, not talking either, just staring down at her hands in her lap while I marveled at how even the curve of her brow was just lovely.

Very slowly, I closed my legs until my knees touched each of hers. I reached under the table, cupping her clenched hands in my grasping ones.

Her chest shuddered as she took in a very deep breath. “So what are we doing here? Tell me how you see this playing out.”

I wasn’t sure which version to give her, but I didn’t think I should start with the brutal truth. I sugarcoated the hell out of it, going into pure survival mode. “I think we should become friendly again. I come say hi to you at work, we grab a bite to eat, and make each other laugh, etcetera, and so on.”

“And the rest. What happened at the ranch, back at the gallery. What’s your solution for that?”

To do it every chance we get, day or night, until we pass out, or hell, f*cking keel over and die.

I had a very vivid but too short vision of her sprawled out naked on this very table, taking every inch of my cock, no, not just taking, begging for it. I figured my chances of f*cking her again this very night were slim to none, but a guy could dream.

I smiled pleasantly. “Ball’s in your court. You want platonic, I can do that.”

“I think that would be for the best.”

I tried to keep my expression neutral. “Okay. I think it’s pretty obvious; I’ll take what I can get.”

“Want to hear my theory on that insanity back there?”

I sighed. I knew I wouldn’t like whatever she had come up with, but I humored her, “Yeah, shoot.”

“I think it’s some survival instinct kicking in, some biological, physical drive that kicks in when we’re near each other, because we never got real closure, so our bodies want to cling to each other, because we’re worried we’ll never get the chance again. You can’t cut someone out of your life like that and not have closure. We need closure.”

I wanted to quote my therapist to her. He always said closure was a myth, or at least what people had turned it into was, but I stayed silent, because I wanted her to cling to this theory of hers.

This theory was my ally. It clearly had her changing her tune after all these years.

I mean, I hated the theory, and I thought it was complete bullshit, but I was in no position to dispute it. If I could have said what I wanted and not scare her off, I would have pointed out that it’d always been like that between us, there had always been the drive to touch, to feel each other in every way one human could touch another, inside, outside, body, soul.

But I couldn’t say what I wanted to say. Not yet.

Step one: Get back into her life again.

Everything else was secondary. The rest would come with time, God willing.

“Maybe we should set up some ground rules, like only go out with a third wheel, some type of chaperone.”

My smile felt like it wanted to crack my face. I really, really didn’t like that idea. “Whatever you think is best.”

She sighed, as though conflicted about it. “We’re two mature adults. We shouldn’t have to resort to a babysitter.”

Here, here.

“We’ll keep our hands to ourselves. It’s just that simple.”

The f*ck it is, I thought, giving her my blandest smile. I wasn’t optimistic enough to think I’d get to f*ck her again anytime soon, but I spent a lot of time plotting out how I could get her to let me eat her *. She became very receptive after I went down on her for a few minutes, I recalled.