Page 64 of Trip Me Up

I read my words to her. I’d written the first draft of that chapter years ago, when I was still in college. The words seemed immature, clumsy. Like I’d been back then. Nothing like Sam’s elegantly nubilous prose. I’d seen a tiny sliver of her tonight, but otherwise, Sam was like her book. Beautiful. Impenetrable.

After a while, Sam’s head came to rest against my shoulder, and then it was only natural for my arm to go around her and tuck her closer to me. I tried not to think about how her dad had probably held her just like this. Not while I smelled the rosemary in her hair and while I tried to keep my eyes on the page and not on the upper swells of her breasts where they disappeared into the fabric of her camisole, the shallow valley between, the pointed nipples the thin material didn’t hide.

“Why’d you stop?” She turned her face to mine and must have seen the unadulterated lust there. “Oh.”

I dropped the book onto the covers. “It didn’t work.”

She licked her lower lip. “What didn’t work?”

“Getting it out of my system. It’s still in my system.” Poetic, I know. But the blood had left my brain and pooled elsewhere.

“What’s in your system?”

“You.” I lowered my head. I wanted to crash my lips onto hers, take them, plunder them like my Viking forefathers. But I was a twenty-first-century man, and I had more restraint than that. Well, usually I did. I hesitated, an inch from her lips.

She stretched her long neck up and kissed me, her lips no longer soft but demanding, urgent. She took, and I gave. And gave and gave and gave until I was breathless. I broke the kiss and tucked her head under my chin, breathing like I’d just run up the nine flights of stairs to our floor.

She planted a kiss on my neck, and I shivered. Her lips curled against my skin. “How about now? Am I out of your system?”

Never. She’d never be out. Not as long as I could hold her in my imagination. I shook my head slowly, rubbing my nose into her silky hair.

“I think it’ll take more than a few kisses, don’t you?”

I nodded.

She pulled back far enough that she could look me in the eye. Her pupils had all but consumed the irises, but her expression was serious, almost fierce. “At the end of the tour, I’m going back to San Francisco. I’m finishing my degree, and then I’m going on to a postdoc position somewhere far away from everywhere. No more book tours, no more”—her breath hitched—“anything. You and I are done when the tour ends. Understand?”

She probably had to go back into her writing cave to produce another book, just like I had to return to the farm. She needed space for that.

My chest tightened. But she’d said more than that.You and I are done.That sounded permanent. As in, she didn’t want anything permanent with me. She wasn’t the first. That had been my dad. And then all the girls who thought it’d be fun to hang out with a farmboy-poet but then run at the first sign of fresh manure.

“Niall.” My name on her lips halted my racing thoughts. “I like you. A lot, okay? But we have different goals. We’re not going to work out long-term. But I’d like to enjoy you while I can.” She shifted, and the strap of her camisole slid down again, revealing the top of her breast.

Rational thought fled. “Yes,” I growled. Pushing her to her back, I kissed her shoulder where the strap had been and then trailed kisses along the upper curve of her breast. Nosing aside the fabric that barely covered her nipple, I licked it. Her skin tasted herbal, too. Earthy. Like the forest after a good rain. I sucked her nipple into my mouth and laved it.

She buried her hands in my hair and held me to her. “I’m glad we’re”—she moaned—“in agreement on the plan.”

I pulled up a little, stretching her nipple, and let it pop free. “The not-permanent plan.”

She squirmed. “That’s the one.”

I tugged down the other strap. “When I’m done, you’ll wish I was permanent.”

“Not a chance.”

But that was before I descended on her other nipple, swirling my tongue around it. My teeth. A tiny bite on the underside of her breast that made her suck in a breath. Then a harder bite right on her nipple.

She made an unintelligible sound that might’ve been my name, or maybe “never,” but she held my head, and I kept up the attention on her breast until she released me, her breath rasping.

I placed a gentle kiss right over her heaving sternum. “You sure about that? The nonpermanent thing?”

“Oh, big talk for a guy who thinks he hit a homerun but ended up with a double.” Her lips tilted up, playful.

“Ended up? I’m thinking about stealing third.” I tunneled a hand under the covers, over her pajama pants, but stopped at the waistband. I raised my eyebrows.

“Niall Flynn.” She fluttered her eyelashes. “I thought you were such a nice young man with your door opening and carrying my bags and protecting me on nighttime walks.”

“I don’t think you want nice.” I cupped her between her legs. Sure enough, the crotch was damp.

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