“Hey,” he said softly. “Hey, I hope I didn’t . . .”
She shook her head. They weren’t sad tears, not really, although there was a dull ache in her chest when she thought about her mom. It was enough of a bittersweet edge to prevent them from being completely happy tears, even though she was awed by how much work Asa had obviously put into this, how much thought and time. They were complicated tears, but in a good way. In a grateful way.
“I love it,” she said, standing on tiptoes and wrapping her arms around his neck to bring his body close to hers. “I love it,” she repeated in between kisses. “I love it. I love you—”
She couldn’t believe she’d just blurted it out like that. And from the way he stilled under her touch, she couldn’t even hope that maybe he hadn’t heard. The last thing she wanted was to stop to have a conversation about what she’d said and what it might mean, especially when she’d barely thought through all the ramifications herself. And she really, really didn’t want to hear him say something gentle about how he liked her a lot but he wasn’t quite there yet.
So instead she kissed him harder, and hoped it said everything she wanted to without words.
Chapter
Twenty-Four
She loved him? She loved him.
Asa knew he hadn’t imagined her saying it, but maybe she’d been caught up in the moment, carried away by expressing her feelings about the present. In the seconds after those words still hung in the room, she’d certainly made it clear that she had no intention of elaborating on them further. They’d barely come up for air.
“Take this off,” she said, pushing impatiently at the hem of his shirt.
He had it over his head in a single fluid motion. “You telling me what to do?”
There was a mischievous tilt to her mouth, but something shy around her eyes. “Is that a problem?”
“No problem here.”
“Good,” she said. He was only wearing the gym shorts he wore around the house, and the light brush of her fingertips under the waistband shot straight to his dick. “Now these.”
It wasn’t long before he was completely naked, even as she was still fully dressed in the casual long-sleeved shirt and leggings she’d worn to come over. He leaned in, partially because he wanted to speak directly into her ear, and partially because he enjoyed the way her self-control cracked the closer he got, the way she trembled at his breath on her cheek.
“You might want to lock the door,” he said. “To preserve my modesty.”
A brief, embarrassed streak of color shot across her cheeks—whether because she was remembering the last time they’d gotten caught out, or because she felt bad she hadn’t considered it happening again, he didn’t know. But she turned the lock in the doorknob and switched off the brighter overhead light until the room was lit only by his desk lamp. By the time she was leaning against the door, she seemed to have gotten over that momentary lapse.
He didn’t know that he was over it yet. He didn’t know if he’d be able to explain it to her, the effect she had on him. One of the first things he’d noticed about Lauren was that, despite how guarded she could be, her emotions really played across her face. And even in moments like this one, he found it so appealing, so fucking hot, the way he could see her vacillate between vulnerability one minute, taking control and getting off on the power the next. Even in the last week, she’d opened up so much with him, and the sex was mind-blowing but it wasn’t even about the sex. It was about the way he sensed her trusting him.
Loving him.
She stepped forward, reaching for him, but he gently encircled her wrists to keep her hands at her sides.
“I love you, too,” he said. “I just wanted to clear that up.”
Her dark eyes searched his. “Really?”
“Is that so hard to believe?”
“Well, it is hard . . .”
Asa felt his eyebrows shoot up into his hairline as she pressed her pelvis into his. “Lauren Fox, was that a dirty joke?”
She dropped her forehead to his chest, the exhale of her breath a warm pulse on his bare skin. “I’m nervous,” she whispered. “I joke when I get nervous.”
He released her wrists to cradle her cheeks, tilting her face up. If he thought about it too much, he could get intimidated, too—about what this meant for them, about where they would go from here—but all that disappeared when he looked into the deep brown of her eyes.
“Don’t be nervous,” he said, pressing a soft kiss to the corner of her mouth, then catching her lower lip between his teeth. “This is the easy part.”