Unwittingly, he’s hit the bullseye on why I hesitate to sign the paperwork. To take the leap across the chasm. Because this facet of Aiden’s personality, this responsibility he feels to inspire happiness in everyone, reminds me of something I think about and regret every day. My parents tried to make me happy and I rebelled anyway. I’m a different version of the same bad guy in the story he’s telling and he doesn’t even realize it. Will he? What then?
I swallow down that worry and refocus. “Sometimes people just aren’t in a place to receive happiness, you know? And it’s nothing you’re doing wrong. It’s just that they don’t want to feel it. Or they don’t recognize happiness when it’s handed to them, so they take a foreign feeling and turn it into something that makes them comfortable. They wouldn’t know themselves if they stopped obsessing over their own shortcomings or their past mistakes…and just let you in. They don’t know how. But it can’t be your job to teach them, okay? You get to take advantage of your own happiness. You’re allowed to keep it if they don’t want it.”
Something is butting up against my shoulder and it takes me a second to realize it’s his heart. Shifting a little, I press my palm there to experience the thrum up close, my gaze drifting up to meet his. And I’m so screwed. I’m so incredibly screwed because he’s looking at me like I’ve just unlocked the secrets of the universe, instead of issuing a roundabout warning about myself—and then he’s kissing me like we have thirty seconds until civilization falls. This is how he chooses to spend it. With his fingers plowing into my hair, his lips coming down hard on mine. Pressing my mouth wide so he can ride the ridges of our tongues together, his groan cracking in the middle and turning into a growl.
It’s like someone tossed a match into a puddle of kerosene.
One second, I’m almost lulled by his story and the next, my libido is dancing furiously in a top hat and clogs. I twist my butt in his lap and feel the bulge rise, gasping when his hands rake down out of my hair to unzip my jacket in one long zing, his hand delving inside to play with my breasts. Yes, play with them. He doesn’t honk them like an old-fashioned bicycle horn or turn them like a doorknob. He brushes his fingertips over my nipples, teasing them into little peaks, then he squeezes the full mounds gently, in turn, grazing his teeth down my jawline as he does it, before returning to my stiff nipples and stroking them, firmer this time, through my sweater dress. “Oh no,” I whisper, my breath catching, one hand curled in his collar, apparently. No idea when that happened. “Oh no. What are you going to do to me?”
This is a question I’m asking on more than one level.
Thankfully he only picks up on the most obvious one.
“Tell me what you want done, sweetheart. I’ll bring you inside and do it,” he rasps, raking his open mouth up the most sensitive portion of my neck. “As many times as you want.”
“That’s too many options. That’s a diner menu. I need like…a-a price fix.”
What an utterly ridiculous thing to say. And yet he nods like I’m a normal person speaking in perfect English. “Let’s start at the beginning.” Searching my eyes, he bathes my mouth in an unsteady exhale. “Are we getting each other off?”
I nod. And I keep on nodding.
Nod nod nod.
His eyes close briefly and I think he might whisper a quick prayer. “I can use my fingers,” he says hoarsely, toying with the hem of my skirt. “My tongue. We can keep our clothes on and I’ll just rock us into it, make you come in those little tights.” That big chest of his starts to rise and fall faster. “Or I can fuck you good and rough. You decide, Stella.”
Wow. Okay.
I’m squirming now in his lap, my body so restless for fulfilment, the tiny muscles between my legs are almost painfully taut. Pulsing. I’ve never been given power like this. I’m being given control and ironically, it makes me feel safe enough to let it go. “I want you. Any of those ways. Yes to everything.” His hand is already sliding up my leg, beneath my skirt, where he rubs two knuckles against the juncture of my thighs. “Ohhhh, right there. Please. But I don’t want to plan, Aiden. I want to just do whatever feels right. Okay?”
Looking me in the eyes, he cups me between the legs. Through the soft wool of my tights. His big palm conforms to the protrusion of my sex and he kneads me there, a muscle popping continuously in his jaw. “If you want to stop, Stella, you tell me. You feel like we’re doing something wrong or the fact that I’m your boss makes you feel pressure—”