Holder drops down on the bed and I lay beside him. He puts his arm around me and pulls me toward him, so I rest my head on his chest and begin reading.
I know he’s not doing it on purpose, but the entire time I’m reading I’m completely distracted by him. He’s looking down at me, watching my mouth as I read, twirling my hair between his fingertips. Every time I flip a page, I glance up at him and he’s got the same concentrated expression on his face each time. An expression so concentrated on my mouth, it tells me he’s not paying a damn bit of attention to a single word I’m reading. I close the book and bring it to my stomach. I don’t even think he notices I closed the book.
“Why’d you stop talking?” he says, never changing his expression or pulling his gaze from my mouth.
“Talking?” I ask curiously. “Holder, I’m reading. There’s a difference. And from the looks of it, you haven’t been paying a lick of attention.”
He looks me in the eyes and grins. “Oh, I’ve been paying attention,” he says. “To your mouth. Maybe not to the words coming out of it, but definitely to your mouth.”
He scoots me off of his chest and onto my back, then he slides down beside me and pulls me against him. Still, his expression hasn’t changed and he’s staring at me like he wants to eat me. I sort of wish he would.
He brings his fingers up to my lips and begins tracing them, slowly. It feels so incredible, I’m too scared to breathe for fear he might stop. I swear it’s as though his fingers have a direct line to every sensitive spot on my entire body.
“You have a nice mouth,” he says. “I can’t stop looking at it.”
“You should taste it. It’s quite lovely.”
He squeezes his eyes shut and groans, then leans in and presses his head into my neck. “Stop it, you evil wench.”
I laugh and shake my head. “No way. This is your stupid rule, why should I be the one to enforce it?”
“Because, you know I’m right. I can’t kiss you tonight because kissing leads to the next thing, which leads to the next thing, and at the rate we’re going we’ll be all out of firsts by next weekend. Don’t you want to drag our firsts out a little longer?” He pulls his head away from my neck and looks back down at me.
“Firsts?” I ask. “How many firsts are there?”
“There aren’t that many, which is why we need to drag them out. We’ve already passed too many since we met.”
I tilt my head sideways so I can look him straight on. “What firsts have we already passed?”
“The easy ones. First hug, first date, first fight, first time we slept together, although I wasn’t the one sleeping. Now we barely have any left. First kiss. First time to sleep together when we’re both actually awake. First marriage. First kid. We’re done after that. Our lives will become mundane and boring and I’ll have to divorce you and marry a wife who’s twenty years younger than me so I can have a lot more firsts and you’ll be stuck raising the kids.” He cups my cheek in his hand and smiles at me. “So you see, babe? I’m only doing this for your benefit. The longer I wait to kiss you, the longer it’ll be before I’m forced to leave you high and dry.”
I laugh. “Your logic terrifies me. I sort of don’t find you attractive anymore.”
He slides on top of me, holding up his weight on his hands. “You sort of don’t find me attractive? That can also mean you sort of do find me attractive.”
I shake my head. “I don’t find you attractive at all. You repulse me. In fact, you better not kiss me because I’m pretty sure I just threw up in my mouth.”
He laughs, then drops his weight onto one arm, still hovering over me. He lowers his mouth to the side of my head and presses his lips to my ear. “You’re a liar,” he whispers. “You’re a whole lot attracted to me and I’m about to prove it.”
I close my eyes and gasp the second his lips meet my neck. He kisses me lightly, right below the ear, and it feels like the whole room just turned into a tilt-a-whirl. He slowly moves his lips back to my ear and whispers, “Did you feel that?”
I shake my head no, but barely.
“You want me to do it again?”
I’m shaking my head no out of stubbornness, but I’m hoping he’s telepathic and can hear what I’m really screaming inside my head, because hell yes, I liked it. Hell yes, I want him to do it again.
He laughs when I shake my head no, so he brings his lips closer to my mouth. He kisses me on the cheek, then continues trailing soft pecks down to my ear, where he stops and whispers again. “How about that?”