Proposing to Preston (The Winslow Brothers, #2)(31)
Chapter 8
After four weeks of whirlwind rehearsals, opening night finally arrived, and Elise stretched languorously in Preston’s bed. She didn’t have to be up for hours, but she was too excited to go back to sleep.
Last night, the dress rehearsal had gone past midnight and Preston, who waited up for her every night, was asleep in an easy chair with his Kindle on his chest when she finally got home.
She’d stared at him, at his tousled dark hair, stubbled jaw, and pillowed lips. His coal black eyelashes were impossibly long, resting on the tan skin just under his eyes, and his long legs, clad in old, comfortable jeans were stretched out on the ottoman before him. Elise had knelt down beside him, looking at his face in repose, unable to stop the fierce surge of love that made her breath catch.
For a week she’d lived with him.
It had been—without any shadow of doubt—the happiest week of her life.
Last Saturday night he’d picked her up at the fountain and brought her “home,” stopping at a Chinese place on his block to pick up dinner. He had cleared out two drawers for her and half his closet, moving a lot of his things to the guest room so that she wouldn’t have to walk down the hall to get dressed in the morning. Her suitcase had been packed with care and the rest of her things were neatly organized in three moving boxes at the foot of his bed. His thoughtfulness and care staggered her, and when they’d started making out on the couch after dinner, it had been even harder to stop than it had been the night before.
Preston had slipped his hands under her shirt, resting them on the skin of her back, and she’d known that he was asking permission to keep them there. In response, she’d kissed him harder, and his hands had skated up to her bra, his fingers resting on the clasp. When she’d slid her tongue deliberately against his, sinking her fingers into his hair, he’d unsnapped it, letting his hands glide softly around to her breasts. As he cupped her virgin flesh gently, lightly, her erect nipples had strained against his palms. She’d gasped when his fingers grasped the sensitive points, rolling them between his thumb and forefinger, making darts of sharp pleasure shoot unerringly to her sex, which clenched and tightened. She writhed, pushing against him, wanting more and beginning to understand for the first time in her life the profound pleasure that a man could give a woman.
But as she was whimpering and practically begging for more, her mother’s face had flashed suddenly in her mind, and she’d frozen, pulling away from him. He’d held her eyes, drawing his hands away from her breasts, refastening her bra and smoothing her shirt back down, before kissing her lightly on the lips and putting his arm around her shoulders. They didn’t talk about it. They didn’t need to. She’d pulled away and just as he’d promised her, he respected her wishes immediately and without exception.
Since then, they’d made out several more times—on Sunday afternoon and evening, and again on Tuesday when she’d gotten home from work and fallen into his arms on the couch—but he hadn’t reached for her breasts again. Although her body ached for his touch, Elise still struggled with the matter of propriety. She was living—however temporarily—with a man she wasn’t engaged or married to. Even though they weren’t having sex, she was sharing parts of her body with him, and she needed a little time to reconcile her inbred modesty with her growing desire.
She trusted Preston. She was definitely falling in love with Preston. But Preston wasn’t her fiancé or husband, and the girl inside of Elise who’d been raised by strict Mennonite parents had trouble marrying her present decisions with her careful upbringing. She wanted to give herself to Preston and every day her body yearned for his a little more…but she just wasn’t ready yet.
That said, her feelings for him, the growing love she felt for him, multiplied daily as he showed her how much he cared for her in small and touching ways. She found her favorite seltzer flavors lined up like soldiers in the refrigerator, and an old sweatshirt she’d left on the couch folded carefully and left in the hallway outside her bedroom door. He taped sweet notes to the apartment door for her to find as she left for rehearsal every morning, and he picked her up at the fountain almost every evening after work to bring her home.
After a lifetime of feeling like a misfit, she finally felt like she belonged somewhere. Aside from giving her a place to stay, Preston was the first person in her life who’d accepted her for exactly who she was without reservation. He took the multiple dichotomies of who she was in stride, making her feel like less of an oddball and more confident in herself. After all, if a man such as Preston Winslow could see the quirky combination that was Elise Klassan and want her in his life, it made her feel like anything was possible.
The only other place she’d ever felt that level of acceptance was on the stage, in the synergy between the audience and performer. It was part of the reason she’d become so fixated on becoming an actress: because strangers with wondrous smiles looked up at her with respect, acceptance and admiration. It didn’t matter that she was a farm girl who’d been raised in a strict and obscure religion because she became Juliette or Ophelia or Roxanne or Mattie Silver. And through that brief transformation, she belonged. Now she felt that she belonged somewhere else, too: with Preston Winslow.
She glanced at the alarm clock on Preston’s bedside table and sighed. Her call today wasn’t until two o’clock and the performance was at eight o’clock tonight. It was only six a.m., but she was so excited for Opening Night, she didn’t know how to go back to sleep.