AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He cocks an eyebrow, the dim light of the bar dancing over his face in orange and purple, casting deep shadows that draw my eyes down his neck towards his perfectly proportioned chest. “If I was, what would you say?”
One night can’t hurt, right?
I lean in again, brushing my lips over his cheek as I go to whisper in his ear. “Yes.”
CHAPTER9
CANDICE
Ithink I might have underestimated how much money Aiden comes from.
He pulls into the garage of his apartment block and turns off the engine, plunging us into darkness for a moment until he opens the car door. Almost running, he circles the vehicle to open it for me, then holds out his hand for me to take and leads me to the elevators up to his place. It’s dimly lit in here, but for an underground parking lot, it’s pretty nice. It almost looks clean.
He presses the button to call the elevator, and I take his hand. His knuckles are cold, so I lift them to my lips to warm them.
“Your mouth is warm,” he whispers.
“Is yours cold?”
“What will you do if I say yes?”
With a wicked smirk, I slowly lean in to kiss him, a chaste brush of our lips to tease him before pulling away again. His breath catches audibly in his throat. “Yes,” he breathes. “My mouth is cold.”
I don’t hesitate to kiss him again. If I didn’t want to keep kissing him so much, I would call him out for his lie — his mouth isn’t cold at all. His lips are like embers and when they press against the kindling of mine, they set mine ablaze, lighting a fire inside me like no other I’ve ever felt.
It’s painfully hard to not make out with him in the elevator or rip his clothes off right here, but I don’t want to get caught out by a stranger. I can’t handle that level of embarrassment. Instead, I focus on how clean it is — a far cry from the grungy elevator in my apartment; here, there’s no unwashed carpet or mirrors with greasy handprints that stick around for weeks. This is modern, shiny; worlds away from what I’m used to.
If I were the kind of girl who gave in to self-doubt, I would wonder why the hell a guy like him would ever want a girl like me. Between the car and the suit and the apartment, it looks like his family is the kind that makes a check every month with a number of zeroes that would make me giddy. But soon I’ll have a job like that too, and it’ll be like I’ve always fitted into this gilded world of excess.
We walk to his front door and he digs in his pocket for the key, then fumbles with it in the lock a little. Is he nervous, or excited? What’s making his hands shake?
Finally, he opens the door and holds it for me. I step into the place and am immediately greeted with high ceilings and hardwood furniture and a bright, wide, open-plan space, and the biggest couch I have ever seen in my life. It’s an effort to not let my mouth drop open.
He has an actual chandelier above the dining table. A real, glittering chandelier with jewels dripping down from it like a waterfall.
I’m glad we came here and not to mine. Not that my apartment isbad. I’m just not made of the same kind of money that Aiden is.
But before I can overthink things any harder, he comes up behind me and kisses me on the neck and my whole body bursts with light, like I’m seeing colors I never knew existed. How can his lips be sorighton my skin?
“You hungry?” he whispers, vaguely gesturing to the kitchen.
“Yes,” I say, turning in his arms and kissing him hard, running my hands down his back, feeling each movement of his muscles as his arms tighten around me. He doesn’t need to be told twice.
We drag each other towards the bedroom, pushing and pulling like spinning magnets, clawing at each other’s clothes as we stumble into the bedroom, tearing at the buttons on our shirts as if we want to rip them off and scatter them on the floor like pearls. I cast my bag onto the ground somewhere, blindly, not wanting to take my mouth from his.
Aiden gasps in quiet satisfaction when we pull my shirt off and throw it to the ground, his eyes raking over my body. He seems almost hesitant to touch me, but then we’re kissing again and his hands are on my hips and shooting sparks down each limb that only intensify as his fingertips drag over my skin. Slowly, he reaches round to unclasp my bra, then, when his lips hit the tender flesh of my breasts, I ascend to a whole new plane of reality.
We fall down onto the bed but I feel more like I’m floating. I toss his shirt to the floor and trace my fingertips across his chest, down to his firm abs, mapping the softness of his skin, the smattering of marks that show evidence of a life lived. I breathe a deep breath and am filled with the smell of him, taking him into my lungs and willing him to take root, like a whole forest.
“You’re gorgeous,” he gasps, maneuvering us so I’m on my back and he can kiss my stomach. It sends little butterfly thrills up my spine, making me so wet I’m soaking my underwear.
“I need you inside me,” I say, my voice husky with want.
He doesn’t stop kissing me, just looks up through his eyelashes to catch my eye, his smile hovering over my belly button. “I’ve needed you since the moment I laid eyes on you.”
“Prove it,” I say, brushing my hand through his hair. It’s soft and silky, falling through my fingers like sand. I’m glad he looks away from my face, though, because my cheeks are surely pink with embarrassment.
Since the moment he saw me? From anyone else, I’d scoff and roll my eyes at how sappy that is. But from him, I almost believe it. The way he’s touching me so tenderly, kissing me so reverently, looking at me like I’m a sunset that he can’t take his eyes off — these things can’t be faked.
