Page 64 of Wild Ever After
We say our goodbyes as soon as the last auction winner is announced. At the car, he walks me to the passenger side, but instead of opening it, he presses me against the door and kisses me again.
Reaching up, I lace my fingers together behind his neck and press into him. He doesn’t make any move to take it further, but I can feel how his body reacts to the kiss.
“I think we should take things slow,” I say, pulling back an inch and looking up at him. “And if either of us isn’t feeling it, we say so right away, and we go back to just being friends.”
His hands glide up and down my back. “Whatever you want.”
I want to get lost in him, but I know I owe it to him to make sure we both survive this year. “Well, what do you want?”
“I want you,” he says. “But if taking it slow is what you need, then that’s fine by me.”
He reaches down and opens the car door for me. I sink into the plush leather seat, and he closes me in and then walks around and gets in to drive us home.
Once he starts the engine and puts it in drive, he looks over at me. “Home?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Let’s go home.”
He holds my hand the entire way back, but otherwise, we’re silent until he pulls into the garage. Inside the house, we both linger in the kitchen. Declan reaches up and undoes the top two buttons of his shirt, watching me. “Heading to bed?”
“Yeah. I have to go into the office tomorrow.”
He nods. Slowly. We’re taking this slow, I remind myself.
“I’ll see you tomorrow night, then?” he asks. He’s usually gone in the mornings by the time I wake up, but the thought of going so long without seeing him suddenly feels like an eternity.
“Yeah.” I hesitate, but he seems to have this transition between friends and more already dialed in because he steps forward and brushes his lips against mine again.
He moves back far sooner than I’d like. “Night, Jade.”
“Night.” I head upstairs in a trance, still feeling his lips on mine. I get ready for bed and pull out my laptop to check on work.
Fifteen minutes later, I hear Declan coming upstairs. I pause, listening as he walks in the opposite direction to his room. He usually shuts himself in, but I don’t hear the click of the door tonight.
When the house finally goes totally silent, I get up and pad quietly down the hall. I stop, then start again. Is this too much too fast? I pause again and squeeze my eyes shut. It might be too fast, but I don’t want this night to end. At the realization, I continue down the hallway in long, confident strides. When I get to the doorway, he’s lying in bed, holding his phone in one hand in front of his face. It illuminates his features enough that I catch the surprise when he spots me.
“Hey.” He drops the phone and leans forward. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah. I’m fine, but I was thinking.” I fidget with the hem of my long T-shirt. It hangs just above thigh-level. “I do want to take this slow, but maybe we could try a slumber party?”
Smiling, he picks up a pillow and tosses it to me. I catch it and hurry over to the other side of his bed. It’s just as big and comfy as the one in my room, and bonus, because the sheets and pillows smell of him.
“What do you think couples do at slumber parties?” I ask, climbing under the covers.
“I don’t give a shit what other people do, what do you want to do?”
“I want to kiss you until my lips hurt,” I admit.
He sets his phone on the nightstand and turns to me, bringing me flush against him and then he does just that.
* * *
Saturday morning, I wake up in Declan’s bed for the third morning in a row. He’s already up, as he has been every morning. The faint sound of a saw tells me he’s working on the house. After he finished the room he turned into my office, he went back to working on the bathroom. The sink and showerhead he wants are on backorder, but are supposed to be here tomorrow.
It’s all coming together. The longer I’m here, the more it’s feeling like home. And today, I’m going to pitch in. Maybe it’s not my forever home, but I am living here, basically for free, so the least I can do is help with some of the renovations. Seriously, how hard can it be?
I take a quick shower and get dressed in shorts and a tank top, then pull my hair back and slide into a pair of old tennis shoes.
I find Declan outside in the driveway. The gray T-shirt he’s wearing stretches across his back as he uses a miter saw to cut baseboards. When he sees me, he stops and lifts the safety glasses to the top of his head.
