Page 78 of Lessons in Forgiving
I looked up when his head cocked sideways, scanning the hallway like he couldn’t get himself to look at me. His throat worked, eyes flickering from door to door—and I wondered which one would leave an empty room behind it. For no reason at all. “What’s up?”
“Can we talk?” He asked again, gaze finally snapping to mine. “Alone.”Technically, we were alone.But he amended his words quickly. “Somewhere more private.”
The last time we’d been in public I almost climbed the man. To think what might have happened behind closed doors—
“Of course.” Autopilot again. I wouldn’t have said it that way otherwise; eager and willing. I might’ve not said it at all. And as if I hadn’t already been too much of both—eager and willing—I said, “Follow me.”
I steered us toward the room of our first interview right away. It was the only one I could think of that was sure to be free. No one would voluntarily spend a sunny lunch break in there, and I didn’t want to risk delaying whatever time I might get with him alone by searching for another one.
So up the stairs, down the hall, and a right turn later, I opened its door. Empty.
Relief flooded every single one of my senses.
It had taken physical restraint to stay away from Henry after he’d kissed me. Multiple times, I’d been on the verge of marching over to his apartment. So the fact that he was here now… my body thrummed with every single desire I’d been trying to push away for a week.
The way Henry just stepped past me and into the room without an invitation, he might feel the same way. Eager. Desperate.
Please don’t make me kiss you. Because I won’t be able to stop. I won’t want to.
My breath hitched at the thought, imagining his rough voice against my lips, my breasts, below my hips. And the next time I looked at him, standing in the small room, just inches away, that string snapped. Violently lashing out in every direction.
“Listen,” he said, shaking his head like he was trying to escape similar thoughts. “I tried. Ireallytried so hard not to read anything into last week—”
I didn’t even feel bad for cutting him off. So harshly, desperately, I might’ve been embarrassed if he’d been anyone else.
But he was Henry. My Henry. Wasn’t he?
“Please just kiss me again,” I blurted.
And the way he looked at me, the second it took him to adjust to my request, I knew I was right to trust him with the pure honesty of my words. Because I could see the same thing on his face.
His eyes snapped up to mine, frozen for a moment before he moved. And it was obvious, in every single one of his heavy steps, that he wanted me, too.
“What?” he asked, but a hair’s length away.
“Kiss me.”
He did not hesitate. And with everything that he was, Henry Parker Pressley kissed me again.
With his hand on my cheek and the other on my waist, he kissed me. With my hair in his face and my arms around his neck, he kissed me. With my body pressed between his and the door, he kissed me.
Desperately, longingly, like he was trying to make up for the past week, and then the past year before that, with only a matter of minutes to do so.
Over and over and over again, he kissed me. Or maybe he never really stopped. I thought if I could die like this, slowly suffocating because we wouldn’t come up for air, I would.
His breath stuttered and my hands found themselves in his brown hair, grabbing, pulling, earning me a soft groan against my lips that could make me come undone, just by the implication. My hands fell from his hair to the waistband of his pants.
“Paula,” he panted, and I only allowed his lips from mine for a second. “Darling, hey.” The sound he drew out of me when he disconnected our lips was needy, whiny—half a broken moan. “Here?”
He looked around, not opposed, but unsure when his eyes found mine again.
“I don’t care.” My voice broke. “Anywhere.”
His next kiss landed on my neck. He sucked and nibbled, coerced hushed moans out of me when he held my thigh, pulled it against himself, only for his hand to move to my backside.
“You still taste the same,” he groaned against my skin, voice hushed. “Feel the same, sound the same. Do you know that?” His lips trailed up my neck. “It’s like you’re still mine.”
I almost told him I was.
