Touch of Fondness: A New Adult Romance (Stay in Touch)

by Joy Penny

  Brielle peeked at him over the rim of her own cup before taking a sip. “You’re probably talking about the tea. But I don’t know. Maybe in certain circumstances, I’m not always so sweet.”

  The cup in Archer’s hand wobbled as he practically spit his sip back into it.

  Brielle grinned from ear to ear. He was hers if she wanted him, she was sure of it. She kicked back her glass. So what if you barely know him? So what if you have no idea where the future will take you—and be honest, you’re partly hoping and partly terrified it’ll just be more of right here. You’re not thinking about marrying him or anything.

  But first things first. “So I’m being fired because…?”

  “My mother is just…” said Archer, drifting off. “She gets an idea into her head and she passively aggressively does whatever she can to make sure I know she’s not pleased with me.”

  “So she does think we’re dating.”

  “She… I don’t know. She might think we are. But I need to pick up after myself more and not rely on other people so much anyway.”

  A little alarm bell went off in Brielle’s head. The “picking up after himself” thing seemed more like an excuse. Mother Issues 101. But whatever. She didn’t even have to see Mrs. Ward again necessarily. And without meaning to, the woman had actually made it easier for Brielle to act on her darkest desires. “Do you want to… um, go back to your place after this?” she asked. She hesitated, devouring the look of shock on his face as the cup practically slipped from his fingers. “Oh, it’s your mother’s day with you, isn’t it? Maybe we can have a rain check.”

  “Nope! No, I mean… My mother isn’t coming by today.” Squished between his fingers, his cup started leaking some tea onto his hands. He jumped, looking down at the spot on his lap.

  Laughing, Brielle fished some tissues out of her purse and handed them to him. She purposely brushed her fingers over the palm of his hand as she did, letting the tips dance lightly over his partially calloused skin. “This is going to become a habit with you, isn’t it?”

  “What? Oh.” He stared down at his wet crotch. His legs were a little too skinny for the bulk of his upper body, but Brielle didn’t care—it looked right on him. “I’ll try not to make it one?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  That went amazingly well despite being a spectacular failure on so many accounts.

  Archer stared at the dark-haired beauty sitting kitty-corner from him at the picnic table. He’d thought his half-assed attempts at making the meal seem more formal might come across as charming, might play well enough to get her to consider a second date.

  He didn’t know when—if, even—he’d ever have her in his bed.

  She clearly had no reservations about not waiting.

  When he’d found Brielle’s number and email written on that piece of paper his mother had dropped, he’d considered it a sign.

  He’d had no idea it was a neon-blazing, flickering, you-better-not-pass-this-up kind of sign.

  He was not going to pass this up. The only problem was, he didn’t just like this girl. He really liked this girl. If he didn’t get to know her first or, god forbid, he really disappointed her behind closed doors—as was likely, considering he’d never hit a ball before in that analogy, let alone made it to even first base—he’d utterly and totally blow it.

  But she was here. She was interested, despite how badly he’d messed up their first meeting, despite how crazy his mother was. And she was going to leave him soon anyway…

  “Yes,” he blurted out. “Um, yes, please, let’s go to my place. But I…” He looked around the park and let his shoulders slink as he lowered his voice, even though the nearest other people were well over two hundred yards away. Still, there were kids around. And grannies. “I don’t have anything to…” He gestured wildly. “I don’t have a…”

  “Condom?” Brielle looked amused and spoke at a normal volume. “I do.”

  “Oh. Oh…” Archer didn’t want to feel jealous at the idea of Brielle sleeping with guys so casually she had a condom in her purse, but he sort of did.

  “And I’m on birth control,” she added. “So… we’re good.” She cocked her head. “You catch on quick, don’t you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What if I just meant to go back to your place and talk some more?”

  He felt his stomach drop. “Did—Did you? I’m sorry. That would be… No, that would be great, I’m sorry I…” He couldn’t string two words together.

  Covering her pretty red lips with a long-fingered delicate hand, she still couldn’t hide the way her eyes lit up. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re just too easy to tease.” Her nose crinkled. “I would have thought you’d have been more comfortable with flirting, being so…” She gestured toward him, as if that explained it all.

  A burst of wind caused their plates to fly up, and Archer’s still had part of a sandwich on it. Laughing, Brielle chased after them, picking up both plates and the sandwich and bringing them to a nearby trash can. Holding the sandwich over the can in midair, she asked, “I take it you’re not eating this, right?”

  “No.” I’ve kind of lost my appetite. It was apparently possible to get this nervous about something good. He just couldn’t help but focus on everything that could go wrong.

  “There were soooo many women flirting with you yesterday,” said Brielle, swinging her legs in those too-tight jeans around the bench to sit back beside him. “And maybe even some men, too.”

  “You’re exaggerating.”

  “I am not.” She pulled her phone out of her purse on the bench beside her, scrolling through her messages. “My gay friend even knew who you were because, and I quote, you’re ‘super hot.’”

  She’s been talking about me to her friends? Pembroke had mentioned that too. That was somehow more impressive to him than the idea that some stranger found him “super hot.”

  Something must have passed over his face because Brielle filled the silence as she tucked her phone away again. “You don’t even know you’re hot, do you? Or you don’t even care?”

  He shrugged.

  “Okay, then, that’s really hot, too.” She bit her lip. “Not being so full of yourself you’re in love with yourself.”

  “Is there anything I can do that doesn’t make me hot to you?” he said boldly.

  Her laughter was like a soprano’s solo carried across the warm breeze. “But you’re just the right amount of confident, too. So the answer, I guess, is no. Everything you do makes you hot.”

  If there was such a thing as dying from embarrassment, Archer might be the very first person to die from an assault of compliments. He didn’t consider himself confident at all, but that self-defense mechanism he’d fostered growing up “different” from everyone else, that instinct to make it seem like he was cool and calm and on top of the world, often snuck its way through. Especially when he was nervous. And this woman definitely made him nervous.

  “Okay, maybe we should cool it down a bit.” Brielle wrapped both hands around her cup, and Archer scrambled to grab her more tea from the tote. She smiled and put a hand over her mostly-empty cup. “I’m good, thank you.” Some of her hair whipped across her face and somehow the subtle movement of her tucking it back behind her ears made Archer want to reach over and cradle her face. “I really liked your books,” she said, not meeting his eyes.

  Which ones? he wanted to ask. But she’d mentioned Wheels in the car, and he was afraid to press further. “Thanks.”

  “No, I mean it.” The plastic cup crinkled under her grasp. “I only read comics on occasion, but your art in The Mystified is outstanding. You give this…” She looked up and gestured broadly with one hand. “…sort of real feeling to even a story that’s so unreal. And after reading Wheels, it makes sense. It’s such a grounded story—even with the talking squirrel.”

  “You’re making me blush,” said Archer, although that was long past being obvious. He felt a stab of guilt for ever
even thinking she might be one of “those” girls with just a passing interest in comics thanks to hunks in superhero movies. That didn’t seem to be the case—and even if it were, who cared?

  “So was the squirrel really talking or was Todd just hearing her voice?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Ah, one of those creators, huh? Leave it all up to the reader to fill in the gaps?” She stared down at her cup as she rolled the bottom in a little circle across the tablecloth. “Fine. I’m going to believe she could talk for real because I like to believe that magic exists, even if only in the realm of fiction.” She flicked her head slightly to move that billowing hair out of her face.

  “Magic is real… in fiction?” He smirked. She was somehow both sexy and cute all at the same time.

  “Oh, shush. You know what I mean.” She took one last swig from her cup, although there barely seemed to be more than a drop left. “So how did you get into the comic industry?”

  “Passion, interest, a bit of talent, and a lot of luck,” he answered honestly. “And the safety net of my parents, I suppose.”

  “Just a bit of talent?” She raised an eyebrow. “So most of that I get… It must be so freaking hard to break into the industry.”

  “A lot of talent goes overlooked.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I was just lucky with Wheels… I self-published it and it got just the right amount of attention and that led to the job on The Mystified.”

  “Thus the safety net,” added Brielle. “But about the passion… How come you have like no comic books at your house? No fun little trinkets? No posters?”

  Wincing, Archer poured himself some more tea and took a drink. “The books are in the video cabinet.”

  “The perfect place for books, sure.”

  He grinned. “The rest of the stuff, I don’t know. I guess I’m not that type of fan.”

  “So you’re a fake geek boy,” said Brielle, staring down at him but with an amused look on her face.

  “Mother always found those kinds of purchases useless.” He couldn’t believe he was bringing her up again or reminding Brielle just how much of a momma’s boy he might be, special circumstances or not.

  “And is your mother still your interior decorator?”

  “I… didn’t really care.”

  “That’s right, you said the art was hers.” She crumpled the cup in her hand entirely.

  He couldn’t stop staring at her face, which seemed set with grim determination. “Pretty landscapes make for better wall art than caped men jumping out of buildings, right?”

  “Says you.” Studying him a moment, she stood up. “Or maybe not. Maybe says Mom?”

  He lifted both hands in the air up and down as if weighing options. “I guess…? I don’t exactly care what my surroundings look like, and I don’t want an overly cluttered space.”

  Grabbing the candle, she flipped it over to switch it off. “Luckily for you, you have an expert on cleanliness and clutter to help you out.” She dropped the candle and bottle of tea into his tote bag and flung herself forward, clutching at the tablecloth, pulling it toward her as if her life depended on it. Under a light sweater, she had a fluffy white top that didn’t even cover her midriff, and the movement made it ride even higher, revealing a perfectly planed abdomen that dipped only at the navel before disappearing under her jeans. “Thanks for the lunch,” she said. “This whole thing has been adorable, but I think I really need to study your condo right now. For some design ideas.” She shook out the tablecloth and folded it hastily, watching Archer with half-lidded eyes the entire time.

  He hadn’t been mistaken. She could make any mundane cleaning task seem incredibly sexy.

  “I need your design ideas like yesterday,” he said, taking the tote bag from her. He didn’t even care that neither of them remembered to take the blanket along as they started back down the sidewalk.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Brielle felt like she could benefit from a little liquid courage just about now. But that was the thing—she usually didn’t need it. When in the orbit of Lilac, it was hard to come across as sexy or domineering or anything but a blip in the background. But when she wanted someone, she could be quite bold, if she did say so herself. She may not want to jump every guy who flirted with her at a party, but once she found the guy she would like to jump…

  So what was different this time? Was it because of his disability? She couldn’t even bring herself to ask him what his disability was. As if that mattered. But the thought of jumping him made her stomach roar, in both a good and bad way. She’d never felt this way with Daniel or any of her shorter-term boyfriends before him. With Daniel especially, she’d just wanted him to shut up so she could close her eyes and forget it was him she was under the sheets with.

  This time she didn’t want to keep her eyes closed the whole time. She didn’t want to turn off the lights—not that that would even matter since she was about to have, at minimum, a make-out session in the middle of the day.

  She let him hold the door open for her—which made her hesitate for half a step because she felt like she should be holding the door open for him—and stepped inside his condo, looking around for a place to drop her purse that wouldn’t take her out of his orbit and settling for letting it fall to the floor beside where she kicked off her shoes. She immediately felt her face flush as she remembered the tight space and that he’d have to wheel past, so she bent over, picking up her shoes and purse again and squishing them against the wall.

  Despite the close quarters, Archer spun around to shut the door and dropped his tote behind it. He bent to take his braces off, then stopped, one Velcro unfastened. Brielle wondered if she should offer to help—wondered if he’d had more plans for them where he might have needed to walk, then realized she didn’t even know when he needed the braces since she’d seen him walking a bit even without them.

  Her heart was hammering. Stop overthinking everything. This doesn’t have to mean anything. He’s not even your client anymore. Just go for it! Her legs felt like lead.

  Archer spun around slowly, his one pant leg shifted up, his brace sticking up a little awkwardly where it wasn’t fastened. “Do you think—”

  But Brielle didn’t hear what else he had to say. She launched herself forward, bending over to touch her lips to his. It felt awkward and her back strained, but she held the position anyway, softly taking his top lip between hers and letting go. She pulled back, not even remembering when she’d put her hands behind his head, running her fingers through that hair she’d wanted to fondle days ago. She felt something straining in her from her shoulders to her legs, but she didn’t want to move as she stared into his eyes. There was a light in those eyes, a hunger.

  “You’re shaking,” he whispered, and after a minute she realized she literally was. Shaking out of nervousness, out of desire.

  But she really was in an awkward position.

  He tore his eyes away and put his arms behind her back, pulling her closer, practically inviting her to crawl onto his lap.

  So she did. The laughter that escaped her lips was quivering, both because she felt stupid but also because she knew she was trying to be sexy and it was a little hard to be as she kept shifting her legs around, trying to figure out how to sit in the tight quarters without crushing him. She settled for sitting on her calves.

  “Here,” he said, taking first one calf and then the other and sliding them on either side of his thighs. Her legs were flush against the sides of the seat of the wheelchair, but she really didn’t mind. She just kept focusing on the feel of his hands on her legs, and how she wished she’d tossed her jeans off before she’d even launched herself at him.

  He looked up at her and this time, he strained upward, pushing his lips against hers. Gently, hesitating at first. Then she slipped her hands back through his hair and leaned forward, pushing into the kiss. Each kiss lasted longer than the one before, each moment until she had to come up for air a precious one she didn’t want
to let go. She kept kissing him and kissing him, her lips moving to the slight stubble on his cheeks, a jolt of excitement running down her torso to her toes at the rough texture beneath her lips. She was hot, burning even.

  She took a deep breath and leaned back to remove her sweater, accidentally bumping into him with her elbow as she did.

  “Oop,” he said, reaching out to try to help her get it off. She managed without him, staring down at his heaving chest, his slightly parted lips, the whole time. She had barely closed her eyes—she could barely keep her eyes off him.

  She slammed her hand down on the armrest of his chair as she squirmed out of the second sleeve and tossed it behind her.

  He stared at her, his gaze flicking downward toward her bare abdomen. She grabbed his hands and put them once more on the small of her back, a moan escaping her lips at the feel of his rough hands against her bare skin.

  She pushed forward and kissed him again, kissing his neck and shifting his T-shirt to allow better access to the skin of his shoulder, the skin at the base of his throat. She felt his hands go up her back, up under her blouse, sliding in hard beneath the strap of her bra. She pulled back, gasping, shoving her fingers downward to get up under his shirt.

  “Off,” she said, clipped, rolling the shirt upward and forcing him to let go and lift his hands up so she could fling the shirt away. She didn’t even feel bad when she tugged it up past his face, knocking his nose just a little in her exuberance. She let her fingers run through the soft, fine down on his pecs. How is he so, so toned? She wondered if his possibly-daily physical therapy had something to do with it. Daniel was built like someone had let the air out of a man-shaped-being.

  Archer placed his hands on her mid-back, staring up at her as her hair teased the side of his face. “You’re really not one for small talk, are you?”