Carson shoved both his hands down into the pockets of his jeans. “I’m kinda starving, and whatever you’ve got in there smells fantastic.”
“Oh yeah.” He laughed, tousling my hair. “Vinnie promised to cook for my birthday, so he’s been slaving over a hot stove for, like, five hours, and whenever he cooks everybody shows up, so… what can I get you?”
The smile Carson gave Kurt lit his face, and you understood why he was on the covers of so many magazines. He was simply breathtaking. I loved the jeans and the white sneakers, the pale-blue V-neck sweater vest with the striped button-down long-sleeved shirt underneath. He looked good, collegiate, and I noticed, as I had not earlier, that his shoulders were really broad and his forearms were roped with veins. He had the shirtsleeves rolled up, and when he took the steps, sliding by me, without thinking I reached up and grabbed hold of his wrist.
“You okay?” he asked me softly.
I let go, mortified at my action.
“Oh man, he’s so drunk. I’m gonna hafta let him sleep it off in my bed tonight,” Kurt informed him.
I focused on the chain-link fence six feet or so in front of me and tried to breathe.
“Drunk, huh?” Carson replied, and I felt his fingers sink into my hair, massage my scalp for a moment before he took hold and tipped my head back just a little. “You don’t need to sleep here. I’ll take you home, all right?”
I nodded.
“Okay,” he sighed as I closed my eyes and let my head fall back into his palm so that he was cradling it.
After a second, he scratched gently and let go, and I leaned back against the doorframe. I heard him and Kurt talking behind me, and then several people came up the stairs to go in the house. The longer Carson stood in the kitchen, the more people came in, until I had to get up or get trampled. I walked around the side of the house toward the front yard and found a spot on the edge of the porch. Sitting there on the railing in the dark, I could breathe again.
What the hell was he doing there?
It was nice outside, quiet in the front as it was not in the living room or in the backyard. I had almost dozed off when I heard something above me on the roof, and when I looked up, I saw long, muscular denim-covered legs before someone dropped past me to the ground below, into the grass. The smile I got when I looked down was brilliant.
“What are you doing?” I groused at Carson, looking up to where he had been. “You could have killed yourself doing that.”
“Jumping off a porch roof to the ground?”
“Yes.”
“In what alternate reality do I hurt myself dropping ten feet onto grass?”
“You could have rolled your ankle.”
“If I had the athletic prowess of say… you… then, yeah, I might’ve.”
I growled at him, leaned over to give him a piece of my mind, but lost my balance instead and fell down onto him.
He caught me easily, hands under my armpits, holding me for what seemed like long beats of time before setting me on the ground.
“I rest my case.”
“I—”
“You cook really well,” he cut me off, leaning forward so I had to walk backward to bump against the side of the house. “I loved everything I ate.”
“Why are you here?”
He reached out and cupped my chin in his hand, his thumb sliding over my bottom lip. “You promised you were gonna see me tonight.”
“Yeah, but I—”
“And I get why you had to bail. Matt told me. And you didn’t have my number, so it’s not like you could’ve called or—”
“So you tracked me down just so you could get laid?”
“That’s what I thought,” he said, stepping closer so I had to tip my head all the way back to hold his gaze in the darkness. “But now I’m not so sure.”
“You don’t want to fuck me?”
He swallowed hard. “Could I just kiss you first?”
My hands slid up his chest, and I felt the wild hammering under my right palm that was over his hard left pectoral. “I make you a little nervous.” I smiled at him.
“Way more than a little,” he admitted, taking a breath before he bent close, his lips hovering over mine. “I’ve never been kissed like you did earlier today.”
And I realized as my arms locked behind his neck and I pulled him down that I actually had him under my spell. Me. I did. The rush of it, the knowledge, brought a deep, throaty moan from my chest.
He must have liked the sound, because I was crushed against him, his hand knotted in my hair, his lips slanted down over mine, and I was devoured.
I opened for him, and his tongue met mine, reacquainting himself with my taste, my heat, and every other part of my mouth. There were soft whimpers and whines as he ground the hard bulge in his jeans against my groin. When my hands tugged and pulled, getting under his vest and shirt to the hot skin, he jerked under my palms and tore his mouth from mine.