Officially Over It - Lani Lynn Vale Page 0,26

and then punched him straight where I’d been looking.

I broke it, too.

And now, whenever I was lying, I stared at his nose.

He knew it.

I knew it.

My parents and his knew it.

It was a really bad habit that I couldn’t stop myself from doing.

Like right now.

I was staring at his nose.

“You’re staring at my nose like that one time when we were kids and you punched me in it even though you said that you were fine. That you weren’t mad,” he countered, moving in until his mouth was dragging along the length of my jaw.

I groaned.

“I’m not altogether thinking straight,” I admitted. “Having you this close is making my brain not function.”

Was it okay to admit that he did this to me? Would he use it against me if he knew that I wanted him as badly as I did?

Because right now, I was really slick between my legs.

Like, embarrassing, going to need a new pair of underwear, kind of slick.

Just having him touching me was enough to make my thoughts scatter and my knees go weak.

“Welcome to my world,” he growled. “I’ve wanted this since I was old enough to see that you were a girl.”

That’d been a… while.

I’d developed early.

In fact, when I was ten, I had my period. By the time I was eleven, I’d had boobs, and Nathan had upped his game and put a ban on playing with me because I had boobs.

From that point on, he’d kept himself as far away from me as he could unless our parents had forced us to play together and ‘be nice.’

“You sure had a funny way of showing it,” I told him. “You were really mean.”

“I was mean?” he asked, pulling back only far enough that he could bite down on the skin above my collarbone. “You were mean. I couldn’t even talk to you without you flipping me off.”

He had a point.

But that was a defense mechanism at its finest.

His big, rough hands skimmed up the length of my hips, his fingers hooking into the sweatshirt that I’d stolen when he’d left abruptly earlier in the day.

“That’s my sweatshirt,” he said as he skimmed his fingers up until he got to bare skin.

I felt my nipples stiffen at his words and wondered if he knew about the other clothes that I’d stolen from him.

A sweatshirt in high school, and a t-shirt or two in college.

Okay, I knew exactly how many t-shirts that I’d stolen, and it sure the hell wasn’t just two.

It was four. In college anyway.

Every time we’d stayed in the same place—which was a lot since we had family vacations together with my family and his—I stole something of his.

Now I had a box in my closet that was all things Nathan.

A plastic ring that he’d gotten me when we were young. Before he’d decided that I was a girl.

A leather bracelet that I still wore to this day that I’d taken from him the summer we’d turned eighteen.

A silver necklace that he’d gotten me when I’d graduated college.

The ring box that fit the ring that I no longer had.

“My ring,” I moaned. “Fuck. I’m going to need that.”

I hated myself.

I’d wanted to wear that ring since I’d gotten it, and never had.

Now I never would.

“I’ll buy you a new one,” he murmured. “One more practical for you to wear to work and be slipping gloves on and off every single day.”

I felt my insides warm at knowing that he knew me as well as he did.

But still, I wanted my old ring.

Except, I forgot everything about the ring in the next moment.

Just as quickly as I’d had the ring on my mind, it was gone in a poof of smoke as Nathan’s fingers closed around my hips and he dragged me forward.

I honestly wasn’t sure what happened.

One second, I was thinking about a piece of jewelry, and the next Nathan was picking me up, I was wrapping my legs around his waist, and he was carrying me to the bed.

I’d been in there before.

I’d snooped my ass off the last time I was at his place alone. I mean, he told me to stay put, so I did.

But not without doing some digging while he was gone.

One, I stole another t-shirt.

Two, I went through his bedside drawer: he had lube in there, a Penthouse magazine, a box of tissues and some Chapstick.

Three, I went through his medicine cabinet.

No condoms.

None.

Which brought up my next stupid comment.

“I don’t have any condoms,” I blurted out. “And