“You don’t have to ask, Rubes,” he said in a chiding tone. “Like I’d ever tell you I don’t want to see you.”
How did he do this to me? How? Swallowing the knot in my throat, I finally opened the door wide and stepped inside, closing and locking the door behind me. Aaron’s eyes stayed on my face the entire time, obviously aware that I’d just gotten out of the shower from how wet my hair was, up in a knot at the top of my head. I smiled at him as I walked over to his bed, sitting on the edge of the corner closest to him.
“Good shower?” he asked, getting to his feet with a clean shirt and boxers in hand.
I nodded, trying my best to ignore the butterflies in my stomach going crazy at what the hell I was going to say.
Something must have been apparent on my face because Aaron made a goofy expression. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” I croaked out.
He raised an eyebrow.
“Nothing is wrong.”
His eyebrow still didn’t go anywhere.
“Aaron.”
“Ruby.”
“Aaron, for real.”
“Ruby, for real.”
I groaned and fell back on his bed with a sigh, staring up at the ceiling like it would give me magical steel balls I’d been missing my entire life. The mattress dipped and I didn’t need to see Aaron’s face to know he was right beside me… moving closer to my hip from the way the bed moved and from the heat hitting my skin.
His hand landed on the hand I had resting on my stomach, and he made a little sound. “Tell me what’s up.”
Did I want to look him in the eye as I said what I wanted to say? No. Not really.
Should I?
That answer to that was an unfortunate yes.
Sliding my elbows up over the comforter I’d just realized had been neatly made at some point, I propped myself up and let out the deep breath I hadn’t noticed I’d been holding. I’d brushed my teeth and rinsed out my mouth while I’d been in the bathroom, so there was that at least. Those brown eyes were on me and intent, and his mouth twisted just enough for that dimple of his to pop.
Now or never, Ruby. It was game time.
Swallowing the grapefruit in my throat, I pretty much whispered, “Can I sleep with you tonight?”
Brown eyes blinked.
Now or never, I repeated to myself. The world was for the strong.
So I kept going. “And by sleep, I mean later-later, if you know what I mean.”
He knew what I meant. He always knew what I meant.
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” I rushed out, feeling my imaginary tiny, balls rolling away and hiding.
Pink and red crept up from the collar of Aaron’s T-shirt, going up, up, up as he sat there on his heels, looking at me like he couldn’t believe what I’d just said. I couldn’t either. Slipping my hand out of his grasp, I raised both my fists to my eyes and let out a moan. “We can just pretend I didn’t say that too. That’s an option. That’s probably our best option. You know what? Let’s do that. Deal?”
His chuckle wasn’t immediate. It took a few seconds for it to rumble out of him, all content like a big cat. At the same time, the mattress sank and shook even more. His body heat reached me from my toes to my hair. My hands were moved away from my face gently, and when I felt the bed dip right beside my head, I opened one eye to find Aaron leaning over me, his dimple all out, basically ready to demolish my life.
And he was smiling even though his neck was pink and he looked like he was torn between several different emotions I couldn’t exactly pinpoint.
It was my turn to blink. “What are you smiling at?”
He laughed. Loud. “Someone’s in a mood.”
I closed my eyes and groaned. “So, how about that bonfire?”
Aaron laughed again, the entire length of his body stretched beside mine, and I found myself peeking at him again. The hand he was holding to prop himself up moved, shifting over to cup my cheek as he kept on grinning, those brown eyes bouncing from one of mine to the next. “Ruby girl, we’re not pretending that didn’t happen.”
“What?”
“That. What you said.”
Keeping my face neutral, I let my eyes completely open and shrugged under his stare. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
His chuckling made me smile even though I didn’t want to. “You fried my brain there for a sec,” he explained calmly, smiling down at me like I was the most entertaining thing in the world. Or the dumbest. “You can’t say that to me and expect me to be able to think afterward.”
“I shouldn’t have put you on the spot like that,” I tried backpedaling with an apology. “We don’t have to—”
Aaron kissed me. Not a peck. He went in there. His mouth molding to mine, his tongue lapping at my upper lip for all of a second before I let him in. And just like that, we were making out with him hovering over me. He kissed me and kissed me, going deeper with each movement of his tongue. From one side to the next, kissing and kissing me.
The truth of the matter was: I had no idea what I was doing. What I was supposed to do. I’d kissed other guys before, but it had never been with us lying down. Most notably though, it had never been with Aaron. With someone I was crazy about. Someone I couldn’t stop thinking about. Someone who made me feel alive and special and like I could take on anything.
He knew I was pretty inexperienced. I knew he wasn’t. But I wanted him to remember this. Whatever happened.
Hopefully exactly what I’d wanted to happen.
Because that’s what I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about. I’d waited my entire life to have sex once. And now… well, now I didn’t want to wait around. That one time hadn’t been awesome or legendary. It had hurt and been awkward, and it had been rushed.
And it hadn’t meant a single freaking thing.
And Hunter hadn’t kissed me anywhere near the way Aaron was. Like he was taking my life force every time his mouth scraped mine, like he couldn’t stop kissing me. Like he couldn’t get enough.
It was with that thought that I wrapped my arms around him. One hand went to the back of his head and the other went to the small of his back, slipping beneath the hem of his shirt to touch all that smooth, warm skin. He was everything. Everything.
“Jesus, I love your lips,” he whispered, suddenly pulling his mouth away with a gasp. His face was only an inch or two above my own, his chest brushing mine with every breath. Those brown eyes bounced all over my face for a moment before he lowered his mouth again, peppering closed-mouth kisses along my jaw, one, two, three, then down the column of my neck, stopping on the second kiss, giving it a hard suck that had me tipping my head back for more, more, more. Aaron groaned into my skin, his body shifting around until the elbow beside my head moved and a hand slipped under the hem of my shirt, that big palm covering most of the skin on my stomach.
Aaron moved that beautiful mouth across my throat, his lips lingering over the middle of it, alternating between kisses and that suction that had me holding back a whimper each time. The fingers on my stomach moved slowly in a circle, teasing and touching, never going too high up.
All I could do was tilt my head up to catch Aaron’s mouth in another kiss.
I’m not sure exactly who started taking whose clothes off first, whether it was me who pulled his T-shirt over his head or if he did it to my tank top beforehand. All I knew was that in a matter of seconds, we were both in some stage of sitting shirtless. Aaron’s eyes grazed over my chest, his breathing so much harsher than I would have expected.
“I came ready,” I croaked out, gesturing toward my bra-less chest, trying to lighten the mood.
It was like he didn’t hear me, he was staring at me so intently.