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“I’m glad to,” he told me. “And it seemed like you needed it.”
My heart flipped again in my chest hearing him say that. For fuck’s sake, I was no good at being vulnerable. Eight in the morning was definitely too early for a beer, but I needed to stop talking about myself, pronto.
I slapped my hand on the top of the table and got up, gathering our food wrappers and taking them over to the trash. “Enough about me,” I said. “I want to know how you’re doing on your assignment.”
Shawn groaned. “I didn’t come over here at eight in the morning to talk about my nonexistent dating life,” he protested. “Can’t we just go right into planning the renovation projects?”
I walked back over to him, leaning against the table near where he was still sitting. I opened the doughnut box, pulling out a strawberry glazed.
“We can go into the renovation work soon,” I said. “But you woke me up early, so now I want to torture you a little, too. How’s the dating app going?”
I swallowed a bite of the absurdly delicious doughnut and then offered it to him.
And to my surprise, Shawn looked up at me from under those thick, dark lashes and leaned forward, taking a bite out of the doughnut while it was still in my hand. A little smear of pink strawberry icing was left on his lip as he ate it.
“Oh, now you’re just trying to turn me on,” I said, my voice coming out lower and quieter than it had been before.
He paused for a moment, lifting an eyebrow. “Thought you were already plenty turned on when you answered the door.”
I chuckled. “Wondered if you noticed that.”
“How could anyone miss it? I get it. You can’t control morning wood.”
I reached out, wiping the strawberry icing from his lip with my thumb. I kept it near his mouth, nodding once, and then he dragged his tongue across the pad of my thumb, licking it off.
“There you go,” I said, my voice still low.
Desire rippled through me just like it had the first time I’d hugged him in the bar, or when he’d sat on my lap right here at this table. For many days now I’d been able to put that out of my mind, to focus on work and pretend I hadn’t loved every minute of it.
But God damn, I liked having his tongue on my skin, even if it was just him teasing me by licking my thumb.
He was looking up at me now like he was half-hypnotized, his eyelids dropping a little. “So, does this count as cuddling?” Shawn asked.
I bit my lower lip. “This counts as you avoiding telling me how your dating app adventures went.”
He glanced down toward my crotch, where I had another hard-on situation rapidly escalating.
“They sucked, okay?” he said, his voice a little desperate in a way that made my cock jump. “I sent out at least twenty messages, only got responses from half of them, and most of those guys seemed braindead or creepy. I met up with one guy down in Denver last night and all he did was talk about his bottle cap collection. For almost an hour. It’s all so boring and awkward and I still have no idea what I’m doing, and I feel like I’ll die before I ever get to touch another guy, you know, really touch someone—”
I ran my fingers through Shawn’s hair and cradled his head, bringing his face up against the side of my bare stomach. I let my fingers gently glide through his perfect, soft hair, clutching him against me like that, with him still sitting at the table while I stood next to him.
“You are not going to die without touching or being touched,” I said softly. “And that’s why you didn’t text me last night? You were out on a date?”
He leaned his head against my hand, letting his eyelids flutter shut for a moment. “A really bad date.” He hummed softly, pulling in a slow breath. “Is it pathetic that this is the best thing I’ve felt since the last time you touched me?”
Fuck. Shawn clearly had no idea about the effect he had on me.
“I’m glad I can help.”
“If I find strawberry doughnut glaze in my hair I’m going to be so mad.”
“Come on. This is my clean hand. I’m not a monster.”
He sighed against me and I could feel him exhale on my skin. “Can I just do this instead of dating?” he murmured. “I know we aren’t going to fuck each other. I can live without that. But you’re strangely really good at touching me exactly how I like it.”
“I call BS. You wouldn’t be able to live without fucking, and neither could I,” I said. “We both know that.”
