Page 50 of Ours to Lose
Good.Nervous was fine if it came from excitement, but her leading from a place of “should” instead of “want” was my one dealbreaker.
“I want to,” she ended up saying, “but I’m nervous about it right now.”
“Then we’ll do it another time,” I said easily. “Let’s let tonight be about you.”
Her expression softened as her nails scraped lightly at the nape of my neck, drawing tingles all along my skin. She leaned in for another kiss.
Our tongues met, and her hips grew restless before she breathed against my lips, “I can keep going?”
I shifted my hands under her skirt so it bunched completely at her waist, revealing a flash of light purple underneath. Her soaked panties. I could smell her arousal from here, a musky sweetness that went straight to my head and drove me out of my mind.
She sat on my lap, a garden nymph in my hold, her dress rucked up and nothing but trust in her eyes. My heart cradled that trust as its prized possession.
I urged her hips forward and back in consent. “Take what feels good, Aubrey. You set the pace.”
She licked her lips and watched me with heavy lids as she rode away on her pleasure.
I was the luckiest bastard in the world to be the one to see it.
Chapter Twelve
Aubrey
I staredat the dandelion greens that mocked me from the plate as their bitter aftertaste continued to burn off the walls of my mouth. In less than forty-eight hours, I’d managed to go from the ultimate sex high to the worst creative funk of my life.
Menu planning for the catering competition was off to a great start.
I was beginning to wonder if it was possible to have the groove fuckedoutof you instead of the other way around because the two orgasms I’d had two nights ago were clearly doing nothing for me now. This was my third new dish concept that had turned out practically inedible.
Then again, Gabe and I hadn’t hadsexsex, so maybe there was fine print somewhere that stipulated my mystical inspiration wasn’t allowed to strike until the dick that made me come did it insideme. As if that was the most likely way for a woman to orgasm.
In truth, the orgasms weren’t the problem. Everything about my evening with Gabe had been perfect—from our flirting at the restaurant to him not only considering but also agreeing to my outlandish proposal. Then the way he’d kissed my lips swollen and hiked my skirt over my waist so I could grind myself to bliss.
Already, Gabe had given me the best sexual encounter of my life, and we hadn’t even taken our clothes off.
My body still rang at the fact that he’d said yes. And took it seriously enough to haverules.Including that I be the one to set the pace. Just the idea of asking for what I wanted and telling him what I didn’t sparked embers in my belly instead of stiffness down my spine. And as long as we stayed honest with each other, I trusted there would be no hard feelings in the end.
No, the arrangement with Gabe wasn’t the problem.
The problem was yesterday’s interview that showed thirty minutes late without any attempt at letting me know. She hadn’t even given an excuse—no “my alarm didn’t go off” or “my car didn’t start.” Just meandered in like this was the principal’s office and she’d rather be smoking a joint behind the bleachers. Then she asked if she could skip chopping the onions I asked her to prep because “the skin gives her the creeps.”
In other words, I’d worked this morning’s corporate brunch alone.
Then I came back to the silence of the prep kitchen and cooked three dishes in a row that made me question whether I’d actually attended culinary school or had hallucinated the whole thing.
Ihatedhow quiet it was in here. Not even the rumble of the walk-in fridge was loud enough to count as white noise. Every chop of my knife on the cutting board and tap of my spoon against the pan ricocheted around the room like an echo chamber designed to drive me insane.
I felt like I was being watched, my every move scrutinized. Like everyone was silently waiting on the sidelines to witness me pull this off or fail trying.
Earlier, I’d played Zach’s heavy-metal playlist to drown out the silence, but it had overwhelmed the small kitchen in a way it never had at Ardena with Zach and Luis laughing in the background and Jase’s stoic presence by my side.
Alone in this kitchen, everything I cooked tasted flat. Sterile. Less like what I’d grown up knowing food to be from the love my grandma poured into hers and more like something I imagined would come out of one of those futuristic microwaves in sci-fi shows that materialized food from thin air.
Being here any longer tonight wouldn’t help that feeling. I needed to be around people. My people.
I tossed the dandelion greens into the compost bin and cleaned the rest of the kitchen, then walked the four minutes to Ardena.
It wasn’t even seven, and the bar was standing room only with people waiting for a table. I weaved my way through the crowd to the side closest to the kitchen.
