Dating Trouble (Grover Beach Team Book 5)

by Katmore, Anna

  I parted my lips a little.

  “You don’t trust me?” There was a smile in his voice.

  Warily, I opened my mouth a tiny bit more. When something touched my tongue, I closed my teeth on it and pulled it out of his fingers. The taste was a mix of sour and sweet, fleshy and juicy. It was kind of hard to figure out what exactly he’d fed me with my eyes shut, but in the end I knew. It was half an orange wedge, coated with warm, dark chocolate.

  As a moan of pleasure escaped me, Chris asked, “Good?”

  “Jeez!” Good didn’t even begin to describe it. “This is awesome!”

  He chuckled, but I didn’t open my eyes yet. “Next one,” he said and gently put another fruit into my mouth. This time, however, he didn’t pull back his fingers fast enough and I closed my lips on them. With the speed of a shooting star, heat traveled through my veins and in that instant I was aware of him in every single cell of my body.

  Chris dragged his finger across my bottom lip, leaving me vibrating when he pulled his hand away. Maybe now was the right moment to open my eyes and run from the room. But I was struggling so hard to just keep breathing, I couldn’t manage anything else.

  “Susan?” His voice was barely a whisper.

  I swallowed the strawberry, then croaked, “Hm?”

  His breath teased the skin on my cheek as he gently said in my ear, “What’s the temperature in Hell right now?”

  This time, my eyelids flew open and my jaw dropped, but all that came out was a shaky breath. From three inches away, we gazed into each other’s eyes. Chris was so quiet, I wondered if he could catch the sound of my drumming heart.

  Lifting his hand to my face, he brushed my cheek with only the tips of his fingers.

  Jeez, he was going to kiss me, and I was going to let him, and then he would go break my heart, and I was going to regret it, but still I would let him kiss me now and, oh my God, please don’t let there be strawberry bits left between my teeth, and of course I should jump off this kitchen counter and run as fast and far as I can, but heck… I closed my eyes.

  Chris touched his lips to the corner of mine. And the butterflies were back. All ten thousand and then some.

  “Are we getting close to freezing point?” he breathed.

  As an answer, I turned my head slightly his way. Splaying his fingers, he cupped my cheek and he placed another gentle kiss on my lips. It felt so incredibly good that I wanted to press pause on this moment, call Sam, and tell her all about it. An excited squeak built up inside me. I was going to explode! But of course, I contained it all, even when Chris tilted his face a little and slowly molded his mouth to mine.

  I’d never been aware that lips could actually feel so soft. And boy, when he made me open my mouth and touched my tongue with his for the first brief moment, my stomach became too small a place for the butterflies in there. I had the feeling all of them were pushing up and trying to escape through my mouth, nose, and ears.

  Chris’s other hand graced my right cheek. It moved to my neck until his fingers brushed the skin behind my ears and his thumbs stroked my cheekbones. This way he had total control and tipped my head up a little as he stepped in front of me, pushing gently against my knees until I opened them and let him stand between my thighs.

  Unclasping my hands, I prayed they weren’t coated with cold sweat. There was nothing I could do about their soft tremble, however, as I flattened them against his chest. My fingers dug into his shirt, needing something to hold on to.

  His tongue came back for another sample of mine, this time not as fleetingly as before. In fact, Chris took his time feeling his way around my mouth and teased my tongue out of hiding. Everything was amazingly tender.

  From the taste of his mouth, he’d been nibbling an orange while he fed me fruit. Maybe he could also taste chocolate and strawberries in mine? Chris deepened the kiss, seeming hungry for whatever I was ready to give him. In spite of a small voice at the back of my mind telling me that this was dangerous, insane, and stupid even, I didn’t hold back.

  The next moment, I was reminded that I’d grown a perfect pair of boobs since last summer, because they pressed against his chest—that’s how close he was. The touch gave me chills of a funny kind.

  I moved my hands over his shoulders, feeling up the back of his warm neck until my fingers slid into his cropped hair. A slight shiver traveled through him. His lips tightened to a smile, and he kissed a path along my jaw to my ear. “Hey there, Frosty,” he teased.

  A little shy, I pulled my hands way. I didn’t want to give him chills with my cold fingers, but Chris caught my hands in front of his chest and led them back to where I’d touched his neck.

  Bracing his hands on the counter on either side of my hips, he nibbled the length of my throat. These small kisses didn’t feel slobbery like when he’d given me the hickey. They were just warm and very, very gentle.

  When I exhaled a sigh, he moved his mouth back to mine and traced my bottom lip with his teeth. Tenderly, he bit down and suckled with a sensual pull. He might’ve been sucking the life right out of me that way, because my head began to spin from the sensation. Eyes closed, I let my brow dip against his, surrendering with everything I had when he deepened the kiss once again.

  I could have done this forever—wanted to do this forever. Except, Ethan chose that precise and utterly wrong moment to come back from the store.

  Chris heard it first—the sound of a car parking in front of the house. He inched away from me, growling with irritation and a good deal of unsatisfied hunger, but soon enough a warm smile crept to his face. With the tip of his finger, he brushed a few unruly wisps of my hair out of my eyes. “Now…that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  I licked my bottom lip, savoring the last taste of him there, and shook my head, grinning.

  He stepped away from me and resumed stirring the cooling chocolate as if nothing at all had happened between us, just as Ethan walked through the door.

  “Hey, guys,” he called out. “Here are the kiwis.” He tossed one after the other across the room at Chris, who put them on the counter with the other fruits he’d already chopped. With Ethan checking the meat in the oven, Chris cast me a half-smile and winked.

  Once again, I clasped my hands in my lap, suppressing a smile of my own, but a wave of warmth surged to my cheeks. I couldn’t hold Chris’s gaze for long and lowered my eyes.

  Ethan went to pull the scalloped fillets of pork out of the oven and prepared three fantastic-looking meals on white porcelain plates. Hopping off the counter, I helped him lay out the table for only the three of us, while Chris finished decorating the cream cake and put it in the fridge to cool for later.

  “God, Ethan, this is delicious,” I complimented him a quarter into my meal. Other than that, we didn’t speak much as we ate, and I wondered if Ethan sensed that something was off. He sent me glances across the table, but so did Chris, and at some point I just didn’t know where to look anymore, so I focused only on my plate.

  Dinner over, Chris checked on the cake but told us, “It could do with another twenty minutes.”

  “Maybe we should clean up the kitchen before dessert,” I suggested.

  “Good idea,” Chris replied. “Ethan can do it.”

  His twin brother crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in his chair. “Why me?”

  “Because you forgot the kiwis today.”

  “Well, I actually drove to the store again and got them. You clean up here.”

  The guys stared each other down in a tight match until they both said at once, “Let’s play it out.”

  Like a couple of racehorses that could barely control their energy, they stomped to the backyard and I followed them. Most of the ground out here was lawn and flowerbeds, but a square was paved right behind the house, too. Only a fifth of the size of a real basketball court, it had a basket mounted on an iron bar cemented into the ground. Ethan brought a ball from the little shed at the very back of the yard and the boys made me toss
it in the air for an unbiased start.

  I knew that Chris was a pro, fit for college basketball, no doubt, but it surprised me to see that Ethan could totally keep up with him. There was no way of telling which of them would win this game.

  I watched them jump, run, dive for the ball, and dunk it for several minutes. Finally, I decided to contribute my share to today’s date with the two of them and went inside to clean the kitchen myself. Rinsing and scrubbing the plates, pots, and bowls until they were clean enough to go into the dishwasher, the sound of their game drifted to me through the open window above the sink. The guys laughed and cussed all the way through it, and with Ethan’s counting out loud, I knew the score at all times.

  Once done with the dishes and wiping the cutting boards clean, I headed outside again, but something caught the corner of my eye and stopped me in the kitchen door. Chris’s stained t-shirt still hung over one of the chairs.

  Safe with no one here to observe me, I sneaked closer and snatched it from the backrest. Holding the fabric to my nose, a deep breath filled my head with Chris’s enticing scent. Reminded of how the car had smelled of him after we played soccer the other day, I closed my eyes.

  On a sad note, I wondered if I’d done the wrong thing when I let him kiss me. A while back, I’d told him that I could never kiss a boy without having some feelings for him. Today, I’d proven myself right.

  Now, a nervousness crept over me that the deal was over for Chris. He’d finally gotten where he wanted with me. The challenge was over…he’d won. What was going to happen now? Would he walk away and find his next challenge?

  If so, I had no right to whine about it. The rules of this game were clear from the beginning. The fact that I’d changed my mind had nothing to do with him. Well, no, that wasn’t quite true. It had everything to do with Chris, but it didn’t mean the new rules applied to him, too.

  I sucked in another lungful of his scent and sighed. He’d succeeded. This past week, I’d gotten to know a side of him that had me utterly smitten…and confused. I really had fallen for playboy Chris Donovan.

  At a subtle cough, I jerked around, abruptly dropping my hands with the shirt. My gasp of utter mortification echoed in the room.

  Chris leaned against the doorjamb, arms casually folded over his chest, a taunting smile riding his lips. “Would it make you feel better if I pretend I didn’t see that?”

  In fact, the only thing that could make me feel better right now was a shovel in my hand so I could dig myself a hole and disappear. Why did fate hate me so? Hadn’t I suffered enough yet?

  “Hey now, don’t look so bashful,” Chris teased and walked toward me. “It was just a matter of time until you fell for my irresistible charm.” With a gesture at the t-shirt in my hands, he added, “And scent.”

  From the sound of it, he meant it as a joke, but I knew better. He was right, it had only been a matter of time. I took a wary step back, not ready for any teasing, and knocked into the island behind me.

  Trapped and with a pounding heart, I watched him prowl closer. Where was Ethan? He should come and save me!

  “I won,” Chris said in a lower voice than before and took the shirt out of my shaking hands, tossing it aside. I thought he’d read my mind and was referring to our challenge, but he continued, “Ethan has to do the dishes.” Looking over my shoulder at the clean counter, he shrugged. “I see you already did his job. Nice.” His gaze moved back to my eyes. “So we can go straight to dessert…”

  He scrutinized me as if I was a piece of cake on his dessert plate. His hands lifted to my hips, his fingers hooking through the belt loops of my jeans. Slowly, he pulled me against him, the length of my body flush with his. Even our thighs touched, and I clasped his upper arms to steady myself.

  “We have about twenty seconds for us,” he purred.

  When he dipped his head down a little and leaned his brow to mine, I sighed. Here I stood, about to make the second mistake today, and no one came to stop me. How was I supposed to protect my heart from this playboy if I kept stumbling into his kisses?

  His lips had barely brushed mine when, down the hallway, the back door slammed close. “Make that five,” Chris growled. To my absolute astonishment, he pressed a hard kiss on my mouth, then let go of me altogether and headed around the kitchen island.

  I stood rigid, struggling to rein in my ragged breathing as Ethan walked through the door. He stopped at the sight of me, and I blurted, “Hi!”

  “Hi,” he replied, pulling his brows into a puzzled V. “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah! Sure! Why?”

  Obviously, Ethan was going to explain to me that my jumpy behavior was the reason for his wondering, but I didn’t give him the ten seconds he’d have needed for it. Instead, I made my legs move and rushed past him, down the hallway, and locked myself into the bathroom, falling against the door with my back.

  Breathe, I told myself. All is good. The light above blinded me as I gazed at the ceiling. This was not the best moment to panic over being kissed by the wrong guy. There was enough time to do that later, at home, where no one would notice.

  But then, a small voice spoke up at the back of my mind. Maybe Chris wasn’t the wrong guy after all. He wanted to kiss me again, which meant he probably enjoyed our first time…as much as I did, right? And if he liked it, maybe he wanted to repeat it more often. What if I was all wrong and maybe he’d changed the rules of our challenge for himself as well during the past few days? His text messages had become a lot more sensitive, and when he’d touched me today, it didn’t feel like a meaningless brush-off.

  I rubbed my hands over my face, adjusted my shirt and squared my shoulders. Walking back to the kitchen proved a long way with legs as shaky as mine. On the threshold, I stopped, casting a shy glance into the room.

  Ethan was working the coffee machine, filling three cups with classy smelling cappuccino and adding a cream top to all of them.

  Chris placed two plates each with a square piece of cake on the table. When he went for the third, he took a detour to where I stood, reached for my hand, and pulled me along with him to the seat I’d already deemed mine in this house. With a gentle push and a smile, he made me sit down before he headed for my dessert plate.

  Kiwi wedges framed this piece of cake, and one half of a strawberry cut in the shape of a heart sat in the middle. The upper part was dipped in chocolate. I dared a probing sideways glance at Chris, which he returned with a half-smile before he cut a piece of his cake with his fork and ate it.

  Grapes and strawberries formed a pattern on his piece, while banana eyes and an orange wedge grinned from Ethan’s. Chris’s creativity when it came to desserts was certainly unsurpassed.

  “Thanks for doing the dishes, by the way,” Ethan said to me. “You know you didn’t have to do that.”

  “Of course. But between watching two hunky guys playing basketball or doing dishes…” I laughed. “Well, I guess I’m just weird.”

  “Only a little.” Ethan smiled back at me. “I’ll drive you home for it later.”

  “No. I can drive her home,” Chris said around another bite of cake.

  Ethan licked his fork clean. “No, you can’t.”

  “Sure can.”

  “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  Flashing him an evil grin, Ethan stated, “You’re grounded.”

  “Ah, fu—sh—craaap.”

  Glad I didn’t have cake in my mouth, I laughed out loud. Half an hour ago, when the guys were playing outside and he thought they were alone, he didn’t bother to swallow his four-letter words like that.

  Actually, I wouldn’t mind if Chris was the one driving me home tonight, but I didn’t want him to get in trouble with his mom later, so I happily accepted Ethan’s offer.

  Taking my plate and cup to the sink, I said to Chris, “Well, thanks. That was a very…interesting and delicious dessert.” Ethan was in the room hearing every word, so I didn’t say anything else. As long as things hung at the
edge between Chris and me, I didn’t want Ethan to know what had happened on this kitchen counter while he was gone. First, Chris had to come clean with his intentions concerning me. Maybe a text later or a chat on the phone would help clear the situation. Excitement gripped me at the thought of what he was going to write me tonight.

  Chris nodded. He secretly stroked my hand with the back of his as I walked past him. “Good night, sweetness,” he whispered so only I could hear.

  Chapter 16

  “ACTUALLY, THERE’S A reason I wanted to drive you home tonight,” Ethan said as we climbed into his car. For a split second, I was afraid he’d seen everything and was cornering me for letting his brother kiss me, but only he cast me a sheepish grin. “You’ve been to my house so often now, I’m dying to see your room from the inside. Think it’s okay if you show me?”

  A queasy feeling churned my gut. Saturday evening. Both my parents would be home. There was a fifty-fifty chance we’d find my house in a peaceful mood when we arrived, but I didn’t dare get my hopes high on that.

  However, when we got to my place, Dad’s car was gone. Maybe his boss had called him to an urgent meeting with clients. At times, Dad did work on weekends, so this wasn’t all that strange. Tonight, I thanked God for the saving grace and welcomed Ethan to my house with a happy smile.

  My mom was dying to meet him since she’d heard of our first date. I searched for her downstairs but she was nowhere around.

  “Mom?” I yelled. No answer. A little disappointed, I turned to Ethan. “She’s probably taking a bath. Come on.” I quietly ushered Ethan upstairs to my room, not wanting to disturb her.

  Ethan ambled around the room, marveling at my huge collection of books and CDs, then he plopped on the bed, feet dangling off the edge. “I like it.”

  “There’s just no Wii or Xbox in here,” I mocked.

  “That’s okay. We can watch a movie instead.” He bounced on my bed, grinning. “It’s cozy.”

  A car pulled up the drive to the garage underneath my window. A quick glance proved my suspicion right, my dad had come home. “Come on,” I said to Ethan. “I want to introduce you to someone.”