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“I’m all good now, promise,” I responded as I buckled myself.
The two hour drive to Running Springs was turning out to be a quiet one. Though, Dom didn’t complain when I connected my phone to his car and played the ‘xoxo Gossip Girl’ playlist from Spotify the entirety of the drive.
As we wound through the mountains, Dom said, “Look at the snow on the trees and how it sparkles in the sunlight.”
I was already looking. I’d always loved snow-heavy pines. The way they drooped, and especially when the snow sprinkled down off the branches, making it appear as if it was still falling in one place. “Yeah.”
“It’s beautiful.” I glanced at him then, but he wasn’t looking at the trees, he was looking at me. “When was the last time you went skiing?” he asked.
I had my bare feet propped up on his dashboard, my head leaned against the window, his eyes went back to the road, and mine went back to the sparkling snow. “Five or six years, I think. Not since college.”
“Oh, so you’re rusty, then.”
“Skiing is like riding a bike.”
I noticed him smile slightly from the corner of my eye. “I look forward to seeing you prove that statement incredibly wrong.”
Feeling uncomfortable all morning, I was much less talkative than normal. For some people, like Penelope, being quiet isn’t an immediate sign of discomfort or any particular emotion. I didn’t have that luxury, but yet, I couldn’t think of anything else to say to Dom. I couldn’t stop thinking of his admission the other night. It shouldn’t have flustered me, obviously. He admitted to having been dreaming about my…body parts that morning in the kitchen. He seemed content to have his tongue between my legs. He seemed downright transcended when his own body was in my mouth, so it shouldn’t surprise me he wanted to take it a step farther.
Yet, when I tried to kiss him, he stopped me before I could.
I wasn’t sure what that said about him. I wasn’t sure what it said about me. I told myself
kissing was too intimate. That moment in the Brentwood mansion would be the first and last of its kind. He seemingly agreed to nothing more than friendship, but then he essentially said he wanted to fuck me. I couldn’t make sense of any of it.
How he felt. Or how I did.
I leaned forward and raised the volume on the speakers. He immediately turned it down.
“What’s got you so broody this morning, Mace?”
I hate him and his mind reading.
“I’m not brooding. I’m just not a morning person.”
“I don’t doubt that,” he chuckled. “But there is something else going on up there,” he said, nodding toward my head. “Tell me.”
I remember trying to kiss you and now I feel stupid.
Even thinking that made me feel incredibly juvenile.
I spent my entire life making my loud mouth and my over abundance of honesty a personality trait. I’ve never struggled with just telling someone how I felt like this. “It just feels kind of awkward after…everything the other night.”
I fed him a half truth, because somehow Dominic-fucking-Evans could read every emotion on my face at all times. He expected me, like everyone else who knows me, to say exactly what is on my mind. I wonder if being unable to do that around him is more telling of the way he makes me feel than anything else is.
A slow smile creeped over his features. “Because you tried to kiss me?”
I sighed, squeezing the tension out of my forehead as I looked down at my lap.
That slow smile turned into a roaring laugh. I turned my head away from him, until I felt his hand grab my arm and lower it from my face. “Are you blushing, Mace?” He gripped my chin, “Let me see,” and turned my head toward him. “You look so pretty when you’re bashful.”
My stomach clenched in on itself and I was suddenly very motion sick. Or maybe those were butterflies. He dropped my chin and moved his hand back to the steering wheel. “I’m surprised by this, Macie. You weren’t nearly as embarrassed when you were grinding on my tongue.”
Oh my God.I shot him a scowl.
He raised his brows as if surrendering and let out a small chuckle before turning back to theroad. “You admitted that you didn’t know what we were doing. That told me that you weren’t sure what you wanted, either. I won’t kiss you—and I won’t let you kiss me—until you know exactly what it is you’re asking for. Until I know you won’t come up with some kind of excuse to regret it afterward.”
Minutes passed in silence as I tried to think of a response before finally giving up.
