“So far, so good,” I say.
A smile flirts with the corners of his mouth. He settles the palm of his hand against my neck and traces below my ear. “I like you, Evie,” he breathes, and the humid air in the greenhouse turns thicker, warmer. His gaze softens on mine and everything in his eyes looks a lot more than like. My heart pounds in my chest and I know whatever he feels, I feel it, too. “I like you a lot. I want to see where this goes.”
“See where this goes,” I repeat back to him slowly, focused on the fingers of his other hand toying with the hem of my dress. He could be reciting the Star-Spangled Banner and I’d probably still have the same stupefied look on my face. He strokes my legs again, thumb curling under the edge of my skirt. I put on a dress before we left the house this morning. I liked the way Beckett swallowed hard when I walked into the kitchen, how his eyes lingered on where the hem brushed my thighs.
He gathers the fabric in his fist and rolls the material up once. I shiver.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “Does that work for you?”
“It’s a good start.” I want more from him than that. See where this goes sounds a little ambivalent for the big feelings bursting the seams of my chest, but it’ll do for now. He flips the skirt of my dress up again, another inch of skin visible. “I like you too, for the record.”
I more than like him.
“I’m glad we talked about this,” he tells the tops of my knees, a heavy swallow in the strong column of his throat. He leans forward and nudges under my jaw. I obediently lift my chin and he presses a soft kiss right over my pulse point. He likes that small concession, a rough breath exhaled over my skin, fingers dragging along the outside of my thighs. I stop his hands at the place where my underwear rises over my hips, my hands curling around his wrists.
“I’m going to want to talk about this more.”
“Alright.”
“Lots of conversations.”
His hands flex at my waist, fingers slipping under the band of my underwear. He twists the material and tugs. “As many as you want, honey.”
“Beckett,” I drag my lips across his forehead. I’m taller than him like this, propped up on the table, his big body occupying all the space between my spread legs. “The walls are made out of glass.”
He nods and tucks another kiss under my ear. Drags his teeth down my throat and gives me a sharp, biting kiss just above my collarbone. “They are.”
“Someone might—” I cut off on a gasp when his meandering path takes a sharp turn, his mouth wet and warm over my breast through the fabric of my dress. He bites once at my nipple and my hands release his wrists to find his hair instead, threading through the thick strands. I jerk his head back roughly and he makes a soft pleading sound in the back of his throat.
Oh, boy.
“Someone might see,” I manage. “We should go inside.”
I already know how I want him when we get there. Fast. Hard. Against the dresser in his bedroom. Bent over the edge of his bed. Maybe the couch, too. I fist my hand in his hair and guide him until I can catch his lips with mine. I let him know everything I’m thinking with my mouth against his and he groans something desperate into my bottom lip. When he pulls away, his hands are clenching at my legs, head already shaking.
“No one will see,” he tells me, voice rusted over with need. “It’s just us here—you and me. I want you just like this.”
His gaze slants to the side and he curls his hand under my jaw, guiding my face to follow until I’m looking at our reflections again.
“Can I have you like this?”
I see it then, exactly what he wants. Beckett pressing me into the table with my dress rucked up around my hips, the long line of my legs a streak of copper in the window. I can’t see anything beyond the glass now. Just the two of us, globe lights glowing above our heads like fireflies. The one in the corner flickers on, off, and then on again.
“I want you to watch,” he tells me.
And then he drops to his knees.
It’s strange, watching him in the glass. Everything is a little bit off. I feel his breath against my knee before I see him brush a kiss there. Feel the calloused pads of his fingers before I see him drag my underwear down my legs, wrap them around his fist and put them in his pocket. I watch myself spread my legs wider before I’ve even realized I’ve done it, his head disappearing between my thighs, only the top of his hair visible in our reflection.
“I like this,” I breathe out, surprised by the heat surging through my veins. He makes a sound against my inner thigh and his hands squeeze tight, inked fingers flexing. One palm guides my leg up and over his shoulder, my thigh pressed tight to his ear.
He watches my face as he puts his mouth against me, his eyes drifting closed in agonized relief with his first slow kiss. I watch him in our reflection as he rolls his tongue against me, a steady pulse that has me scrambling for purchase against the tabletop. A long, thorough drag. A gentle hum of satisfaction.
The watering can goes clattering to the ground. His garden shears, too. The lavender is spared but only because my hands find the low shelf at my back, Beckett’s grip steadying my hips. I look away from our reflection, more interested in the reality of it instead. His head bowed over me, one arm banded low over my stomach to hold me in place. The other disappearing below us, the clink of his belt against the cement floor letting me know exactly what he’s doing.
It pulls and pulls and pulls—this feeling—low in my belly where his forearm rests against me, my hips desperately rolling up and into him. Chasing that beautiful feeling that I only ever get with Beckett. His hands and his lips and his deep grumbling groan of relief against me when I gasp his name and arch up, my release stealing the breath from my lungs.
He drags his mouth back and forth against the inside of my thigh, the prick of his beard making my legs jump. He rests his forehead there briefly. “More?” His hand slips low over my belly and his thumb curls down where I’m wet and sensitive. Another jump in my hips that has him grinning into my leg. He taps there once and I almost slip right off the table to the floor. He’ll have to collect my pieces in a basket and cart me back into the house.
While the idea of Beckett giving me another orgasm on this table with his hands and his mouth is tempting, I want something better. I shake my head and use the hand still in his hair to urge him up. It’s a wonder he has any strands left at this point. I rub my fingers against his scalp and he makes that rumbling sound again, deep in his chest. Like a cat in the sunshine.
“Can I have you like this?” I ask, curling my legs at his hips, the heel of my foot at the small of his back. I want to look at him, watch the way his whole face relaxes as he slips inside me. Relief and desire and … something else, too. Something that pounds in my chest to the same beat as his. He palms at my thigh, hand flexing, and swallows hard as he gazes down at me.
“You can have me anyway you want me, honey.” His hand cups the side of my face, cradling my cheek. “You know that.”
He drags his thumb over my bottom lip and I pull it into my mouth. He makes another deep sound, a heavy exhale of breath.
I slip my hands under his shirt and scratch my nails up his chest, back down again when his body falls deeper into mine. I curl my hands in the material of his jeans and push them down over his hips, the button and fly already undone, the band of his briefs pulled low. The thought of him touching himself as he touched and tasted me, it sends heat flooding through my body. A pluck of arousal in all the right places.