Confessions from the Quilting Circle - Maisey Yates Page 0,118
because you had that feeling that life is short. I felt that way after my dad died. I did stupid stuff. I don’t want to be a stupid thing you do.”
“That’s not why,” she said, shaking her head. “I want to.”
Because life was short, and love helped make you, even if it had pain. She’d watched that play out in her mother, her grandmother and her aunt.
“Emma...” She was pretty sure he was going to argue with her. And, honestly, she didn’t want to beg the guy to sleep with her. But if he was just trying to protect her...
“If you don’t want to, that’s...well, it’s not okay. It’s kind of devastating. But if you don’t want to, then we won’t,” she said. “But if you’re trying to protect me...please don’t, Luke. Don’t protect me from you. Don’t protect me from life. I’m not a kid. I need to make some of my own choices. I don’t need another person trying to protect me when I already know that life doesn’t come with a guarantee. I want you. I’m here now, and so are you. Let’s make something with that.”
She found herself being hauled up against him then, and he kissed her, fiercely, holding nothing back. “It was never a question of wanting you,” he said. “But it matters to me. It matters to me to be the first one. It matters to me that you’re younger than I am. And I don’t want to take advantage of you.”
“Well, that’s part of why I like you so much, so even if I find that annoying, I can’t be mad about it.”
“You could be,” he said.
He picked her up, and she squeaked. “Where we going?”
“To my house,” he said.
It turned out they didn’t have to go far. His house was a camper, parked out behind the shop.
“Why did you never mention this?” she asked as she stepped inside the small space.
“I live here because I choose to,” he said. “I’m saving money. For different things that I want to do with the business. And...since I live by myself, and I’m almost never home. Mostly I just need a place to crash.”
There was a tiny kitchen, and a room she assumed was a bathroom stall.
“I shower in the shop,” he said.
“Oh,” she said.
The thought of him showering was exciting. She was a little disappointed she wouldn’t be able to shower with him, actually. But, clearly he didn’t have the facility for that. And it was something that would have to wait.
“What?” he asked.
“Oh, I was just... I was thinking about you showering,” she said, smiling slightly.
His brow shot up. “Really?”
“Yeah. I kind of like that.”
“I didn’t realize you were such a bad girl, Emma.”
He said it with humor, and it made her feel a zip of excitement.
“Just for you,” she said.
But then he started kissing her again, and she couldn’t think of words anymore. It didn’t matter. And nothing seemed all that funny, anyway. The lightness that had taken them from the garage to this point, and into the small platform bed in the camper, faded. Was replaced with intensity. Kissing that she knew didn’t have to stop. Touching that could keep going on. And anytime she felt nerves threatened to overtake her, she just looked at him. At his face. In his eyes.
It was like a dance she didn’t know the steps to, but her partner did, and he knew how to lead. He was slow, methodical. Gentle when he needed to be. And after a while she just got caught up in it. In the motion, in the moment. In her feelings.
But they were so much deeper, so much more than she had anticipated. She had thought she understood the connection between them, but she hadn’t. She had thought she’d known what her feelings were, and that she had somehow reached the depth of them, and that was why she was ready to be with him.
But when they were skin to skin, and when he slowly eased his body in hers, she fought against tears. Not because it hurt, but because she hadn’t known.
Pleasure, brighter and hotter than she’d expected, burned away the emotion for a moment, but when it was finished, and he held her, she began to shiver, because she didn’t have the ability to contain all of the feelings that rioted through her body. She thought she would break apart with them. How could she leave him?