Page 29 of Should've Been Us
Chapter Seven
Lulu had never been so confusedin her life. She’d always thought she knew exactly who she was. She’d known what she wanted. Even when she’d learned that she couldn’t have the life she wanted, the person she’d wanted, she’d still known where shestood.
Until today. Until Connor had kissed her. Until he’d turned her world upsidedown.
Connor Shaw had kissed her. He’d told her she was gorgeous and sexy and that he wanted her. He’d said he had always wanted her. And when she hadn’t believed his words, had thought he was still up to something, he’d shown her. Connor had kissed her like both of their lives depended onit.
Connor had kissed her and she’d completely lost herfooting.
Her mind had been whirling ever since. Nonstop. Questioning everything. Every moment. Every interaction. Everything for the past twenty years of her life was suddenly flashing to her through a new filter, the Connor filter, without the mask of disapproval she’d always seen shading theirrelationship.
He did disapprove. She hadn’t dreamed that. But now she had a small inkling of why it was that Connor had continued to dash her dreams of a life with Derek again andagain.
It wasn’t because he was rude or mean-spirited. It wasn’t because he had wanted to hurt her. He’d wanted her to face the truth, to give up on the man that had broken her heart so many times she was certain it would never fullyheal.
He’d needed her to face that truth before she’d be able to hear his. He knew her. He knew her better than she’d ever let herself believe hedid.
In his own way, Connor had helped her pick up the pieces of her heart again and again through the years. He’d distracted her from her pain and sadness. For the first time, she wondered if she gave him a chance, if he wouldn’t just pick up the pieces but help her healtoo.
She shook her head to clear the thoughts. It was crazy. She was crazy. One kiss and she was thinking of crazy things andpossibilities.
Just this afternoon she’d accused Sierra of being the insane one but as it turned out, the woman was really insightful, observant, and perhaps nowhere near as crazy as she liked for people tobelieve.
Sierra had told Lulu that Connor wanted her. She’d been right. She’d pointed out the ways he had taken care of her throughout the day, made her smile and laugh, and pulled her out of her own head. Lulu hadn’t been willing to listen then but now, thinking on everything between them she could see it forherself.
Connor had been taking care of her for a longtime.
Sierra had also said that Lulu wanted Connor though and she wasn’t entirely sure how the blonde had known that. She hadn’t known it herself. Not at the time. She’d known that her eyes had a tendency to linger on his beautiful features when he wasn’t looking. She’d known that her body reacted to his presence with heat that she’d never been able to completely explain away. But she hadn’t thought it was anything more than a simple chemical reaction to his superior genesequence.
But then he’d kissedher…
Connor had kissed her and she hadn’t pushed him away. She’d never even considered it. As soon as his mouth had taken hers, she’d melted. She’d been overcome by the surge of desire that leapt inside ofher.
The part of herself that had always wondered what he would taste like, how he would kiss, why every woman that had ever been graced by his touch went all dreamy at just the sound of his name afterwards, had wanted that kiss, had needed it. She’d needed to know but it had been so much more than anything she’d everexpected.
His hand in her hair had been firm and aggressive. His mouth had taken absolute possession of her. He’d held her right where he wanted her. He had been in total and complete control and she had been able to do nothing but accept the onslaught of his passion in thatmoment.
She’d never experienced anything likeit.
The boyfriends she’d had, the lovers she’d taken, none of them had ever been so demanding. Never been so thorough. Never forced her to feel every ounce of desire, every spark, with nothing but the stroke of their tongue and their hands on herbody.
When that phone had interrupted Connor and his kiss, she’d felt on the verge of coming apart at the seams. She would have climaxed the minute he touched her. Maybe even before. He’d driven her so high, so fast, that when the kiss had ended so suddenly she’d felt like all of the oxygen had been sucked away from her. When he’d pulled back, pulled away, she’d felt like she lost the ability to breathe. She still wasn’t sure she was breathing properly because she kept getting bouts of dizziness as she spun across the dancefloor.
The instructor Aubrey had hired to teach them the steps to the all-important first dance the wedding party would be doing kept clapping and yelling out tips and counting steps. His voice rang in her ears. It was the only thing she heard over the sound of her own thunderous thoughts that keptasking…
Nowwhat?
“Darlin, you’re giving my ego a hell of a bruising you knowthat?”
She blinked and glanced up into a set of playful, dark brown eyes that she’d known all her life, “Sorry,what?”
“Exactly.” Dean chuckled. “You haven’t heard a word I said, haveyou?”
She must have winced because her current dance partner only laughed again. He led her awkwardly through the next round of steps without commenting. She hadn’t even realized he’d been talking to her. In all honesty, because they kept changing partners every few minutes to make sure the dance would go off flawlessly, she couldn’t even remember when it had gone from Reed guiding her across the floor toDean.
She could dance all day and night without giving the steps a second thought. Dance was her life. It always had been. She’d been practicing ballet since she was a kid. She’d taken up ballroom as a teen. She’d tried jazz and tap and hip hop and everything in between. If it had a beat that she could get lost in, Lulu fell in love withit.
She’d made dance her career. Teaching classes at the fitness center back in Fate. Doing shows across the state with a local troupe when she found thetime.
