his hands on either side of me, leaning down to kiss his way across my thighs. When he pressed a kiss to my center, my hips jerked against my will, my lips parting, and he smiled with his lips still against my mound.
He slipped his tongue out and licked me, and I let out a yelp. He jerked away, laughing, but pressed a finger to his lips to shush me. I nodded, already aching for more of his tongue.
But we couldn’t get caught.
I wanted to remember this sweet night forever. For good reasons, not reasons of deep and permanent embarrassment and traumatizing of the grandfather.
He went to work, his eyes still on me. His tongue glided over my clit, through my folds, and when his tongue stroked inside me, the sensation was so amazing that my back arched and I grabbed his shoulders so hard my fingernails pressed into the hard muscles of his shoulders. But he didn’t seem to mind. Despite my best efforts to dent him with my death grip as sensation rippled through my body, he kept going, his mouth working on my clit, his tongue thrusting rhythmically against my g-spot.
I bit my lip. “Jesus, Dylan, you are my favorite person in the universe…”
He smiled with his mouth still against my clit, his big hands holding my thighs still as I began to writhe with the power of my orgasm. My fingernails scraped over his skin as I bit my lip, trying to keep from crying out his name. My heels kicked into the metal side of the washing machine, and the sound seemed to echo through the room.
Then I sagged back, on my elbows against the dials. The washing machine let out a loud buzz as it finished its cycle, but I wasn’t sure it was any louder than I had been.
He pressed a kiss to the inside of my thigh, then rose to his feet. “Want to go get dressed?” he asked. “I’m going to sneak home for my own clothes and then we can bring these back.”
“Sounds like a plan.” I still sounded breathless.
My knees were weak as I climbed the stairs to my room. I could have sworn my childhood teddy bear looked at me reproachfully from on top of my dresser as I pulled on jeans and a t-shirt.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I whispered. “Sex like that would even bring you to life.”
I met him on the back porch with the freshly-washed clothes soaking my arm, and the two of us snuck back to hang them back on the line.
Then he walked me back to my house.
“Kissing you goodnight seems…small…after everything else we’ve done,” he said, a smile lingering on his lips as we faced each other on the porch.
“Kiss me anyway,” I said. His kisses would never seem small to me.
He pressed a tender kiss to my lips.
“What does this mean?” I whispered as he was crossing the porch. It was as if I was coming out of a dream.
I didn’t think I spoke loudly enough for him to hear. We should have that conversation, but truthfully, I didn’t want to. I didn’t want anything to break the beautiful haze I was in.
He turned back, with something uncertain in his eyes but that usual confident smile on his lips.
“It means whatever you want it to,” he told me. “I’m in for anything. When it comes to you, I always have been. Always will be.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, but Dylan had always been able to read me so well. He didn’t wait. He walked away then, jogging down the porch steps, and he never looked back as he headed down the street.
I sagged against the front door.
Could something so beautiful really last?
20
I worried the shop would feel weird the next day, but when I walked into the bays where Silver Springs’s own radio station blared from the speakers, the sunshine came through the open doors, and the guys teased me, I felt…at home.
Dylan went back to acting like he was just my friend, which was perfect. Archer was quiet, but it was that comfortable silence of his, like we were old friends who didn’t have to say anything.
He wasn’t rushing me. None of them were.
For some reason, that made me think of that Cloak of Inevitability that Lupine had teased me about.
And then the bells above the door jangled, and Juniper walked in while I was at the reception desk that morning.
“Good morning,” I called, waving