Page 51 of Lovestrung

I lowered my voice. “I know you’re scared, and fuck, so am I, but I’ve been desperate for you for years. You’re my girl, and you always have been. Now, we won’t only be friends anymore. We’ll be friends dating, exploring the fucking mind blowing attraction we have for one another, and we’ll take it one day at a time. You hear me?”

“I’m your girl?” she whispered.

The quiet wonder in her voice made me groan. How could she not know this?

“For fuck’s sake, this conversation would be so much easier to have if you were here.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes,” I hissed. “At least then I could shut down your fears with my mouth and my body. Make you forget everything but you and me.”

“Damn it, now I wish I was at your place, too,” she sighed. “Tomorrow night?”

I fisted my hand and quietly rejoiced. “Fuck, yes. And bring a bag. I’m not letting you out of my sight until Wednesday. Maybe Thursday.”

Fuck, stay the whole week with me.

I could hear the grin in her voice when she answered. “I’ll bring enough, don’t worry.” Then she seemed to sober up and sighed softly. “I better let you go.”

The reluctance in her voice made me feel like I was ten feet tall.

“Only if you feel you should. I don’t mind.”

“I thought you said you weren’t good at talking on the phone?”

“Well, you’re not horrible to talk with, darlin’. You never have been.” I stood up and stretched before going back to the living room. “Plus,” I scowled at the offending bookshelves littering the floor all around me, “you’d be giving me a break from working on the meanest bookshelves for a while.”

“Aww. Cute.” The teasing note in her voice made me ache for her. “Actually, I do need to unpack, and once the honeymooners are awake, I’ll go see what they want to do.”

“Technically, they aren’t on their honeymoon because they aren’t married yet.”

“Semantics. They’ve been together for five years, lived together the past three, and they bicker as if they’ve been married for fifty. Trust me, the fact that they haven’t made it official yet is just a technicality.”

My grin turned into a full blown smile. “You’re adorable.”

She hummed, and the sound made my dick stir. “All right, I’ll talk to you later. Oh, and you haven’t texted me your address yet.”

“I’ll get on that right away. Later, darlin’.”

“Later, Ethan.”

Smiling wide, I swiped the red button before tossing the phone on the couch next to me. Feeling happier than I had in a very long time, I looked at the mess on my floor. Then, deciding I needed to get a move on, I got up and got to work.

If my girl was going to stay with me for a couple of days, I wanted her to see that it was the truth I wasn’t a boy anymore. A man didn’t act or live like a slob in a dorm room. A man got shit done in order to impress his girl.

13

Stalling

I wasn’t prepared to have Penelope over for dinner.

Well, I was and I wasn’t.

I’d cleaned the whole place after conquering and finishing the bookshelves late last night, the chicken was in the oven, and I’d lit fucking candles on practically every available surface.

Candles. I should be admitted to a psychiatric ward, trying to set a romantic mood like I did.

But having a girl – scratch that, a woman – over for dinner was so new for me that I hardly knew what to do with myself. Hence the cleaning all day. I didn’t want to be presumptuous, but I’d changed the sheets and bedding on my bed – after waking up with a leaking dick, it would be rude not to. Maybe she’d talked herself out of staying the night, and if she had, I wouldn’t put any pressure on her – even though it would suck if she wanted to leave, I’d accept it. I only hoped she’d let me play with her first.