Page 54 of Quietly Falling
“Are you trying to date me, Bodhi Maxwell?” Her smile is coy and I feel my cheeks heat.
“Is that what you want? I’ve never done the formal thing.”
“In that case,” she says, wriggling against me and pressing a hard kiss to my lips, “yes. I want all the firsts.”
“You’ll have to be patient,” I lament. “No doubt I’ll mess up on how to do things.”
“Exclusive things,” she fires back, narrowing her eyes, and I chuff out a laugh.
“You have nothing to worry about.”
“Likewise, because the only guy whose lap I want to crawl into is yours.”
“Didn’t know you were such a romantic.”
“You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
26
ELLA
Bodhi and I spent a lazy morning in bed before stumbling into the shower together and running the water till it went cold. His hands had been all over my body, touching and caressing while I stroked his cock until his cum painted my belly.
He’d been mesmerized, and honestly, so had I.
It felt like being marked.
Claimed.
And I liked it.
But nothing compared to the feeling of him washing my hair, his fingers digging into my scalp nothing short of heaven. More than that, the intimacy of the act nearly took my breath away. The man whose scars run so much deeper than the surface was sweet and gentle and completely focused on me.
“You all right over there?” he says, bringing me back to reality as I drop my towel and watch his eyes darken like he didn’t just have me like this in the shower. “I’m having a hard time trying to reconcile the girl from the coffee shop and the one standing in front of me.”
“Is it because I’m naked?” I tease and he snorts, shaking his head.
“That’s just a bonus,” he muses as I grab a pair of panties and slide them up my legs, his gaze following my every move.
“Well, to answer yournotquestion, I did a lot of growing up working at the Poppy Seed, and you, sir, have done your very best to ignore me as much as possible without seeming rude.” His lips press into a hard line, his hand still fisted on the towel slung around his waist with all that lickable skin on display.
“I have not,” he protests, blushing a little when I narrow my eyes. “Fine, a little,” he concedes.
“I’ll let it slide.” I wink before continuing. “I was really shy when I started working at the Poppy Seed. I waswowedby the Thayers, almost starstruck whenever one of the brothers came in. But as I learned the business, I got to know them too. They brought me out of my shell, and when Rhea and Sorren started dating, it all clicked into place for me.”
“What do you mean?”
“They had a lot of things to work through and the tension washighand explosive, and she’s my boss but she’s also my friend so I felt like I had to protect her.”
“From him?”
“And herself. They both ran in circles around the other for years, and I had a front-row seat.”
“I didn’t really know them until he and Tanner were getting ready to open Vetted Paws, and even then it was only on the surface. Mostly kept to myself anytime we went to one of the events at the Thayers’. Didn’t really get to know anyone outside Case, Otto, and Flora.”
“But you work there now, right?”
He snorts, and my head tilts to the side at the sound. “What?”
