Page 49 of The Soulmate Theory

Roaring laughter flew from his throat. He threw his head back, pure delight dancing on his face. I peeked back into the fridge, ignoring him. I grabbed the bottle of wine and slammed the door shut. Without facing him, I opened a cabinet and pulled out two glasses. Before I turned, I straightened my face into an expression that I hoped looked sultry and spun on my heel. “You think my mouth is pretty?” I asked, my voice dripping with seductive curiosity.

His laughing ceased. His eyes glimmered with pleasant surprise, and his mouth parted slightly. I watched his tongue glisten his lips as he watched me walk towards him. “Devastating,” he said, his voice rough.

The chemistry between us was a tangible thing. The tension alone was enough to send me over the edge most nights. When I’d allow myself to picture him. His hands– where’d they explore, where they’d touch. His lips– where’d they kiss, his tongue. I’d think about his mouth, his voice. What it would sound like when he moaned my name. I shivered.

Just the thought of him brought me to my peak more often than not, and I knew that the moment I’d gain the real thing, I’d be ruined. I didn’t need to test the theory. I knew that nobody else would ever compare to him. That awareness used to scare me. Scare me to the point of retreat from him. I’d given up on that a while ago. No matter how brief, how fleeting, I wouldn’t deny myself this anymore. Deny both of us this feeling regardless of the fallout.

I pulled my eyes back to him. He was still glimmering at me.He was taking the bait.

“Wine?” I asked. He only nodded. He had moved from the barstool on the other side of the counter and was now standing next to me. Once I’d poured both glasses, I turned to him, my chest so close it’d brush against him if I only arched enough. So, I did. He saw it coming, and he began to smile. I could almost see the scenes that began to play out in his head. The ones that started on this counter and ended on the couch. Clothes strewn across the room. He’d seen the look in my eye as I thought about his hands, his mouth, his tongue. He thought he knew where I was headed.

I felt playful. It was a rare feeling for me. Something I was unwilling to let go of just yet. As I arched my back, Iaccidentallytipped his glass of wine and watched it spill through down his shirt. Soaking the fabric right into his perfect skin. “Oops. Me and my ugly snorts are a bit clumsy. Sorry.” I set his now empty glass of wine down on the counter next to us and leaned back, sipping on my own full glass smugly.

After staring down at his shirt for several moments, his eyes found my face. He read my expression as if that was the telling factor that it had all been on purpose, as if he hadn’t even heard my words. Then, he smiled. It wasthatsmile. That grin. He lifted his shirt from the back of the neck and pulled it over his shoulders in one fluid motion. He tossed it across the room and I suddenly found myself face to face with his chiseled chest. His muscles were hard, his skin soft. Broad in all the right places and tapered in others. Then, there were the sprawling rays of sun that swirled along his body, filled inside with different symbols. The clash of the ink against his golden skin. The rough and smooth, the hard and soft, it was enough to make me pant. Late at night I thought about his hands, I thought about all the things he could do with that body. All those nights—all those thoughts—had done nothing to prepare me for what stood in front of me now.

He’s beautiful.I knew he’d heard my breath hitch as I took him in. He re-poured his glass of wine and looked at me, his gaze piercing me until I finally moved my eyes from his body to his face. He raised a brow and smirked, as if to saycheckmate. I leaned back against the counter. It wasn’t far enough, not enough distance to cool the heat that pooled between my thighs. This game felt a little like foreplay– who’d last the longest before giving in. I launched myself up onto the counter, allowing my legs to dangle off the edge. A little space from him, to keep me from losing the game already.

I cleared my throat in an obvious manner and attempted to change the subject to something more casual. “What do all the symbols inside your tattoo mean?”

His eyes flickered with uncertainty, but swiftly relaxed into his classic breezy expression. He pointed to a place on his bicep, a set of symbols that looked like waves. “Those are waves.” He laughed. His hand drew up to his shoulder, resting on rows of triangles. “Those represent shark teeth.”

“Do you like sharks?”

Stupid fucking question.I couldn’t think straight.

He smiled knowingly. “It’s not personally my favorite animal, but they are highly respected in Hawaiian culture. They’re believed to represent strength. A lot of my tattoo is made up of waves because I surf. I made a career photographing the beaches– the water. I must respect the ocean and all it’s given me. Sharks are a big part of that, and I think that incorporating them into this gives me strength when I’m far away.”

“I love that,” I whispered.

He laughed. He pointed at a design on the top of his shoulder that kind of looked like a flower. “That means wisdom.” And his hand dragged to his chest, to something that looked like a hook. “Courage.”

I leaned into the cupboards above my head, as if to admire the tattoo from a grander distance. “You know, the whole thing kind of looks like a big sun. The symbol for wisdom on your shoulder looks like the center, and all the other rays that snake out from there down your arm and across your chest.”

“Yeah, that was my own little touch. I told the artist what I wanted incorporated, but she handled most of the design itself. I told her I wanted to have the sun involved in some way. A tribute to my mom. She always called me herray of sunshine.”

I noticed that he’d taken a step closer to me, inching into me little by little as the conversation had bloomed. He was almost in between my legs, but we hadn’t touched quite yet. He was still playing the game. He’d been closing in on me, hoping the focus on his bare skin would break me. Instead, it entranced me. Instinctively, I reached out and traced my hand across his chest before realizing my actions and snapping it back quickly. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I did that.”

I’d expected the night to lean toward touching, hoped it would. But sometime between the moment I asked what his tattoo meant, and the time I glided my hand across it, things had become intimate. Intimate in a way that wasn’t sexual. Or physical. He’d told me about his tattoo, something that was deeply important to him. And although I was sure he didn’t mind my touch, I wasn’t sure if it had been right for me to touch him there. To snake my fingers across something that quite literally bared the depths of his soul.

He grabbed my hand and put it back on his body, right over the center of his sun. The heat of his skin felt nearly electric. He nudged my knees with his thighs and stepped between them, peering down at me intently. “You can touch me, Penelope.”

I pulled my gaze from his chest, from the place he held my hand against, and looked up at him. His eyes sparkled with cocoa undertones.

Brown was winning the war today.

I think I loved his eyes the most when they looked brown. Or maybe it was just because that’s how they looked right now. They were hungry, yes. There was something more that shimmered behind them, though. Something that felt like yearning, understanding– love. I allowed my instincts to continue their driving force as I traced the line of one of the rays of sunshine up his peck and across his sternum, until I reached his throat. My fingers continued their journey to his jawline– to his lips. I studied them. The way they parted, seemingly with permission. How his breath escaped through them in short, shallow bursts. I ran my thumb across his silky lower lip, savoring the way it felt against my skin.

A sound rumbled from deep in his chest, almost impatient. “Penelope,” he rasped, my thumb still on his mouth. The sound of my name rolling out of his throat in a tone deeper than I’d ever heard– it was my undoing. A whimper escaped me as he replaced my thumb with my lips. We both seemed to have forgotten about the game we’d been playing. There was no way to know who caved first, but we both won.

Where his first kiss was timid, this kiss was brazen. He braced himself on either side of the counter as his mouth smashed against my lips. I opened mine in invitation, clasping my hands behind his neck and pressing myself into him. It wasn’t enough. I couldn’t get close enough. I needed to feel more of him. All of him. My legs wrapped around his waist and something hard nuzzled against my inner thigh. A moan of approval escaped my throat.

I felt his smile against my mouth, and I slid my tongue across his teeth. He hissed as they parted to allow my tongue though. I entangled it with his, eager to explore, to memorize every part of his mouth. Yearning, searching, begging for the closeness I needed. He pressed farther into me, the hardness between his legs rubbing against the molten between mine. Painfully aware of the fact that all that separated us now were our clothes. His tongue stroked mine, his teeth nipped my bottom lip before sucking it beneath them.

He tasted like wine and the ocean.

He tasted like the sun, the stars.

He tasted like home.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com