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Now, I rubbed my nose against Holt’s neck and breathed him in. His long fingers threaded through my hair, cradling the back of my head, and I squeezed my eyes shut tighter when I felt heat prickling at them. No one had touched me the way Holt did in so, so long. I hadn’t realised just how lonely and starved of affection I’d become.
He kissed my temple, nuzzling me there before pulling back, his hands slipping onto the sides of my neck.
I blinked rapidly and found myself blurting, “Can you stay?”
Holt froze.
“Wait, sorry, you’re probably really busy.” I tried to let out a carefree chuckle and stepped back, but Holt took a step with me to stay close. “Forget I asked. Thank you for the breakfast and, um, the frotting—”
“I can stay,” he said quickly, tongue darting out to swipe over his lips. “I can—I’ll just ask Seb to come back later and pick me up.”
“You don’t have to,” I said automatically.
“I want to.” He smiled at me, smoothing his thumb over my hot cheek. “Can we watch depressing British soaps and make out on the couch?”
God, that sounded perfect.
Chapter Nineteen
Copper Balls with Character
It was the best Sunday I’d had in a very, very long time.
After Holt called Seb and told him to take the day off and come pick him up around sixish, we reheated our breakfast sandwiches and got settled on the couch to eat them in front of the TV.
My coffee was lukewarm by this point, but it still tasted amazing because Holt had bought it for me. He slurped from his straw between mouthfuls, then held his huge soda cup out.
“Want some? Don’t worry, it’s sugar-free,” he added reassuringly, as if that made soda a healthy breakfast choice.
I hadn’t had soda at breakfast for… Actually, I didn’t think I’d ever had soda this early in the day, but I leaned forward to take a sip.
“What is that?” I asked as the sweet, mellow taste exploded on my tongue.
“Blueberry lemonade.” Holt clamped the straw between his lips to take another long slurp. “With some calming syrup, because I was, uh, kind of nervous on the way here.”
“You were?” I asked, unable to imagine anyone, especially Holt, being nervous about speaking to me.
He squirmed and set the cup down to keep eating. “I mean, yeah. I didn’t want to freak you out, and I was worried that you weren’t… that you didn’t want to see me again.”
I let out an incredulous snort at the idea of Holt thinking I wasn’t interested in him. He grinned at me, then leaned in to press a smacking kiss to my cheek.
“But now that you’ve seen my lopsided nuts and you still asked me to stay, I’m pretty confident you wanna hang out with me again.”
“Your lopsided nuts are perfect,” I told him. “I mean, they’re metallic. They’re the prettiest balls I’ve ever seen.”
“Still called them lopsided, though,” Holt commented before taking a big bite of his sandwich.
“They have character.”
He grinned at me with his mouth full and gave them a gentle pat through the sweats, voice muffled as he said, “Yeah, they do. Thanks, Taylor.”
After we finished eating, Holt urged me to stretch my legs out along the couch and wriggled around until he was situated between them with his head on my chest. I wrapped my arms loosely around his neck, periodically pressing my nose into his hair and inhaling deeply.
I was worried that he’d get bored quickly, but he got really into Antiques Roadshow and made us watch several episodes back-to-back.
“That has to be worth, like, ten thousand dollars. No, pounds,” he declared as the camera zoomed in on a little figurine of a unicorn. “Look at it. It’s majestic.”
“I’m afraid these usually only go for around fifty pounds,” the historian said solemnly on the screen, before the camera operator panned gleefully to the expression of abject disappointment on the face of the man who’d brought it.
