Page 53 of Adrift

This is the only color for you.

I’m just about to pull up my phone to text him a thank you when there’s a soft knock on my door. I haven’t moved from the spot, so I turn around, knowing who to expect.

His hands are in his pockets as our eyes meet, his lips a shade pinker from our kiss. A vulnerable look passes over his face as he takes me in, as if he hadn’t just seen me a minute ago. “Goodnight, Rani.”

I can’t even help it. I throw myself at him, giving in to everything my heart wants to tell him but can’t. He catches me by my waist as I lock my arms behind his neck and press my lips to his. This delicious and confusing man has my mind buzzing with thoughts of him and my tongue tied.

He opens his mouth to let me deepen our kiss, and I suck on his tongue, relishing its sweetness before moving back to his bottom lip, pulling it with my teeth. He smiles against my lips, and another swarm of butterflies flutters through my stomach.

Kissing him might have become my most favorite thing, but kissing him while he smiles against my mouth just took first place.

Chapter Nineteen

Darian

I plate some scrambled eggs, hash browns, and banana pieces for Arman and place it on his high chair tray. He lifts his arms, squealing with delight. There’s no doubt about it, my boy likes his food. I ruffle his hair and let him go at it, which he does with fervor.

I hear Rani’s footsteps upstairs and before long, she’s coming down the steps. Her eyes lock with mine instantly. Her hair is half-up in a clip while the rest of it lies down her back. It’s one of my favorite features about her–thick, curly, and so long that it hits the middle of her back. Her hair is jet-black and the curls are so fucking wild and luminous, I get a hard-on just thinking about them around my fist.

Which is exactly what’s happening, because just the sight of her, the memory of her lips on mine, her body writhing against me last night, has my dick stirring in my pants.

Last night.

Another taste, another test. One of which I failed miserably.

I just couldn’t fucking do it anymore. I couldn’t stand the cold war she was waging inside my house. I couldn’t stand her flowery scent lingering in the spaces she’d just left, only for me to find them empty. I couldn’t allow myself one more day without her.

Fuck, I grappled.

I grappled with it all–my guilt, my reservations, the weight of the consequences I knew we’d face if I were to keep going. But her pull was stronger than any reasoning against it. She’d thrown her damn fairy dust on me, and I was fucking enchanted.

I turn to grab a coffee mug from the cupboard behind me. Using the mug she brought with her from home, which says, I have principles, but only after my cup of coffee, I pour her a cup I just brewed. I add a small amount of creamer and a teaspoon of sugar, like I’ve seen her do many times.

She’s talking to Arman behind me, asking him what he’s going to do today. When I turn around, she’s kissing his face and pretending to eat his eggs. He giggles before reprimanding her with his standard, “No, no!”

I see it.

In just a little over three weeks, she’s taken over his smiles. Even when I got home last week to take him from her so she could leave to do whatever it was she was doing, Arman searched for her–crawl-walking to the window to watch her drive away, saying bye-bye long after she’d left. Fuck, it’s everything I worried about. He can feel her sincerity and love, and it makes whatever her and I are doing so much more complicated.

She has to go back, that’s a fact. Whatever this is between us can’t last–and that’s the hardest fact to swallow. Between her mother ready to snap my neck if I touch her–I don’t need her to tell me to know it–to her needing to finish school, to me being a single parent with long hours at work, how the fuck could this last?

I take a sip of my smoothie, watching her straighten up and find my gaze on her again. She gives me a hesitant smile. “It smells good in here. I thought you said you only knew how to grill and make salads.”

I put my smoothie on the counter and serve us both some eggs, toast, and hash browns on the two plates I’d gotten out earlier. “I’d hardly call scrambling eggs and making boxed hash browns cooking.”

She inches closer to me and eyes the coffee sitting out on the counter in her special cup. A smile graces her lips, and I practically white-knuckle the spoon I’m using to scoop the eggs. Her voice is soft, like the lips I tasted last night, like the way she felt against me. “I’m assuming this is for me?”

I nod.

Her nearness, almost close enough that she’s touching me but not actually doing so, is making every brain cell and body cell and whatever other fucking cell I have go haywire. They’re crisscrossing and getting all sorts of scrambled like these damn eggs in front of me.

I want to touch her. Grab her and press my lips to hers again, but I don’t fucking know what going slow means.

Am I going slow enough? Am I going too slow? I feel like I’m moving at a snail’s pace. Does this going slow thing apply to everything or just sex? I honestly don’t know when to hit the brakes, when to just coast, or when to slam the pedal to the floor.

I barely slept last night as I weaved in and out of lucid dreams about her. At times I felt like I was clear; I knew exactly what I wanted–her. But then the dark room would dim my thoughts, and I’d feel confused all over again. But one thing remained . . ..

My craving for her.

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