Page 80 of Beneath Your Beautiful
On today’s menu, we had a quinoa salad with chicken, pistachios, dried cranberries, and mint. And a green salad with tons of raw veggies and a mustard vinaigrette dressing. Yesterday we had couscous with roasted vegetables. The day before was a wild rice salad with salmon. The day before that was a Greek salad.
Ava rolled her eyes as he unpacked the salads. “I knew the cookies were a one-off,” she grumbled.
“Next time I’ll bake brownies and we can eat them all,” I told her.
She high-fived me. “Now we’re talking a language I understand.”
We sat on the ground with our backs leaning against the wall and ate our salads al fresco which had become our little routine. Ava turned her nose up at the salads, but she hung out and talked while Killian fielded bar-related phone calls and I stuffed my face because I loved his salads.
“Pick you up at four,” Killian said, giving me a chaste kiss goodbye. Anything more started a fire inside me, and I needed to focus on painting my wall. Not to mention I needed to conserve my energy for work tonight. The sun and heat and Killian turned me into a limp noodle.
After they left, I climbed back up the scaffold and got back to work. While I painted, I tried to remember a time when I was this happy, and I couldn’t. Unless I went all the way back to childhood, but that was an entirely different kind of happiness. My life was so good now it was scary.
Any feelings I’d harbored for Luke had vanished. I’d finally spoken to him on the phone and he’d tried to explain his side of the story. While he’d talked, I’d waited for the hurt to dig its claws in. When it didn’t, I’d smiled into the phone, grateful that I’d put it behind me and had moved on.
Now I was painting a wall in Williamsburg, had a bartending job I loved, cool friends and best of all, I had Killian. Hard to believe that we’d ever done that push-and-pull because now we were all in.
* * *
I was lying naked on the chopping block island in Killian’s kitchen, my hair fanning out around me like a mermaid washed up on the beach, my legs draped over his bare shoulders. My body was his banquet to feast at and I was Lady Bountiful.
A David Guetta remix was playing on his sound system, the ceiling fan spinning above me. A cool breeze blew across my skin, and a delicious shiver ran through my body. I wasn’t cold, though. I was a raging inferno.
His tongue circled the rim of my belly button and dipped inside. Around and around. Heat pooled between my legs. My muscles clenched, and a low moan escaped my lips. His tongue glided up my belly, slow and torturous. The stubble on his jaw grated against my skin, making all the neurons in my body fire on all cylinders. His tongue circled my nipple, flicked over it. Glided over the swell of my breast and moved on to the next one where he continued to torture me.
My back arched, and I was moaning, writhing. He’s working me into a frenzy. It wasn’t enough. It was too much.
“You need to stop,” I whimpered.
“You want me to stop?” he asked, lifting his head to look at me.
“Yes. I mean, no. I want…more than you’re giving me.”
He chuckled. “So greedy and impatient.”
He was trying to kill me, I was sure of it. His tongue glided up my inner thigh. Inching its way up to where I wanted it. My body was quaking, my palms sweaty. He stopped short of the mark and started on the other leg. The tip of his tongue found my clit and flicked over it once. My body spasmed. He did it again. And again. Two fingers slid inside me, curling, reaching, rubbing against the spot he didn’t need a map to find. I was all nerve endings and slick heat. Throbbing, pulsing, aching need.
“I. Want. You,” I gritted out.
Taking himself in his hand, he rubbed the tip between my slick folds.
I lifted my head to watch him. His eyes were on my face, his lips slightly parted as he guided himself inside me. Slowly. Slowly. I closed my eyes and all thoughts evaporated as he moved in and out filling me up. Again. And again. He pushed deep inside me.
“Oh…God.” I yelled hoarsely.
My body exploded, my muscles clenching around him, convulsions rocking my body. As if from somewhere far away, I heard his ragged breathing. His hands tightened on my hips, fingers digging into my flesh, as he came. He pressed a kiss on my belly, the stubble on his jaw brushing my skin, before he pulled out of me.
My legs felt like rubber as he lowered me to the ground, and I got dressed in my tank top and underwear.
He took my hand and led me upstairs to his bedroom. Unlike me, he hadn’t bothered to put on clothes. I got a good look at his perfect ass, firm, and round, and deserving of a photo plastered on the Brooklyn Bridge. On billboards across the country. It was that good. My gaze traveled upwards to the dimples on his lower back and to the phoenix tattoo.
“How are you going to make your salads on that island now?” I asked.
“Tomorrow’s salads will be extra salty.”
“Oh God,” I said, laughing.
We took turns in the bathroom and met up in his bed. I hadn’t seen Connor’s bedroom, but Killian’s was small, with two windows facing the backyard. His room was clean but basic, with a queen-sized bed, a dresser, and bedside tables. I lay back on his forest green sheets and looked at my painting on the wall. I’d stretched the canvas onto a wooden frame and he’d hung it across from his bed, so it would be the last thing he saw before he went to sleep and the first thing he saw when he woke up.
