Page 88 of The Fine Art of Faking It
“Just think of all those years you missed out on my humor. Guess we’ll have to make up for it now.”
There was nothing fake about the way his eyes raked her body when she shrugged out of her coat. And, damn it, there was nothing fake about the way her body thrummed with anticipation.
She backed her way to the stairs, Davis following her. “Want to see my room?” she asked, arching an eyebrow.
“I’ve been waiting fifteen years for that invitation,” he told her.
She bit her lower lip, refusing to be charmed by him. She turned and jogged up the stairs to the landing. “Coming?”
“God, I hope so.”
Giddy at the sound of his footsteps, Eden hurried ahead and pushed open the door to what had been her bedroom for eighteen long, happy, painful years. The walls were still papered with the dozens of posters—Evanescence and Nirvana and Foo Fighters—she’d hung. She rolled the switch for her lava lamp and was delighted when it began to glow orange.
“Always the rebel,” Davis observed from the doorway.
The twin bed stood between them. Her black rose comforter had been traded in for a cheery checkered throw that matched nothing for guests that her parents never hosted.
Davis stood on the other side of the small bed, tension in every muscle, waiting for her.
Eden bit her lip and took the plunge. She unhooked the clasp on her pants and shimmied out of them.
Without tearing his eyes away from her, Davis toed off his loafers and ditched his pants. His thighs were lean and muscled, and she caught a glimpse of the growing bulge in his black briefs. It made the throb in her core intensify. He straightened, waiting again.
Eden closed her fingers on the hem of her sweater and slowly dragged it over her head. When she heard his sharp intake of breath, she was thankful she’d gone with the purple lace set and the condom in her purse.
Just another fluke, she assured herself. She wasn’t setting herself up for pain. Not this time. They both knew the score. Temporary. Pretend. If they had a little fun in the process, what was the harm?
Davis shucked his sweater. She saw her own nerves mirrored when his fingers fumbled with the buttons on his shirt.
His shirt landed in the pile of clothing on the floor, and Eden looked her fill at his broad chest, his lean torso, tapering to those sexy AF briefs. Nothing was left to the imagination as his erection swelled.
She, Eden Moody, made him feel like this. There was a power in knowing that. And a responsibility. But she’d revel in the first and ignore the second. Just for tonight. Just one more time.
“I used to wish you’d show up here in the middle of the night and throw rocks at my window,” she whispered.Where had that come from? Why would she tell him that?Confessions like that weren’t meant to be shared.
Davis held out his hand across the bed. With the slightest of hesitations, Eden took it. “What would have happened if I did?”
She tugged, pulling him onto his knees on the bed with her. “I’d hoped something like this.”
Eden took her time kissing the man who’d been the boy she’d dreamed of. The boy who’d dented her heart. The boy she’d never quite forgotten.
She coasted her hands up his arms, across his chest, and down his stomach, enjoying the feel of him quiver the closer she got to the waistband of his briefs. He stroked her back, her hips, her sides, skimming his palms over the outer curves of her breasts.
“You’re beautiful, Eden.”
Fantasy Davis had told her dreamy seventeen-year-old self that.
“You’re not so bad yourself,” she whispered back, slipping her hands into the back of his briefs to squeeze his ass cheeks.
“I love it when you touch me,” he told her, sliding his hands into her hair to angle her face for a kiss.
It was too intimate, too gentle for a fluke. Eden couldn’t pretend this was something it wasn’t.
She couldn’t handle the words. They would dent her heart again. But she could move the two of them from sweet to desperate, where soft words wouldn’t reach through the haze.
Eden shoved her hands into the sides of his underwear, sliding them down those thighs until his erection sprang free and proud. It jutted toward her, craving her touch. Reverently she grasped it in an eager fist.
“Go slow,” Davis whispered, dropping his forehead to hers.
