“It’s downtown. I’ll have to see what Laney’s plans are for tomorrow.”
He chuckled quietly. “No. I meant you and I should go see it. Not with them.”
“Like a… ”
“Date.”
Something inside me snapped. Or cracked. I wasn’t sure what the sound was, but I thought it meant that my brain was short-circuiting. “I thought you didn’t date.”
“I usually don’t. Maybe now is the right time for my first one.”
I stopped and looked up at him. He was so tall compared to me, but I loved it.
“You want me to be your first date?”
“Yeah. Is that weird?”
I tried to keep my smile at bay. “Of course it’s not weird. Yes. Let’s go to the exhibit.”
We returned to taking our walk around the pond and continued talking about things there were to do in East Branch. I had to try to keep a big cheesy smile off my face as well as not giggling with excitement.
Porter wanted to date me.
Chapter Twelve
It being Saturday, Zac and Laney had plans, so I didn’t even have to explain anything to her. She just told me her plans and asked if I’d be OK on my own, as if I hadn’t been on my own a million times before. Still, I didn’t hate that she asked. Then I spent the day doing laundry and dishes.
Once she left for her evening with Zac, I began to obsess about what to wear and started to think that maybe I should’ve told Laney about it so she could have helped me pick out something to wear.
Shorts were obviously no good. We were going to an art studio to see an exhibit. Though too fancy also wasn’t right. I settled on a pink sequined tank top and dark knee-length high-waisted skirt. It was comfortable but also looked really nice on me. I paired them with this cute pair of strappy sandals, curled some waves into my hair, and actually did my makeup. Not a ton. Still natural, but I was pretty happy with what I’d put together.
Just moments after finishing everything up, Porter knocked on the front door.
“Perfect timing,” I said as I turned out of the hallway, but then my footsteps faltered.
He was on the other side of the screen door, wearing khaki pants and a white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows.
I’d seen Porter in jeans and T-shirts mostly. His board shorts at the beach. But never like this. He cleaned up well, but I loved every look of his. The dark blond hair that I’d run my fingers through more than once was still his signature messy style.
Once I caught my breath, I got myself walking again, out the screen door while pulling the main one closed behind me.
“You look amazing,” he told me.
“You look fantastic yourself.” Because he was panty-dropping hot always, but now he took it to the next level.
“Why don’t we take your car?” he asked as we walked toward his.
I hadn’t planned to suggest that because he’d come to pick me up. I had no issue with his car. Yes, it was older and had some blemishes. It was the kind of vehicle my parents would’ve scoffed at, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.
“If you want.” I dug out my keys and handed them over to him.
For one thing, he knew where we were going. I hadn’t explored East Branch enough yet. I needed to. But for now, I’d let him cart me around.
“So, I was thinking we’d go to the exhibit first because they close at seven. Sorry we couldn’t go earlier.” He glanced at me then back to the road.
“No problem. People have stuff to do. That gives me two hours to view the exhibit. More than enough.”
“Then dinner?”
“Perfect,” I agreed.
He’d really gone out of his way to plan this. Not too shabby for a first date.
Soon after leaving our little neighborhood, the houses became much bigger, much nicer, eventually blending into a cute downtown area.
“I seriously haven’t been out of the neighborhood since I moved here,” I told him as I glanced around to take everything in.
“You need to get out more.”
I snorted. “I really do.”
We arrived at the studio rather quickly and set out to enter the exhibit. There was a small fee to get in, which Porter wouldn’t let me pay for. The first set of photographs were of East Branch.
Black-and-white prints of children playing in water that sprayed from a fire hydrant. Laney had told me they’d done that when she’d been young, but based on how they were dressed, these kids were not from her time, but maybe her parents’ generation.
“Huh,” Porter said, looking at the prints. “I thought only we did that.”
“Isn’t that how it goes?” I asked him. “Every generation thinks they’ve discovered everything.”
He shrugged and chuckled. “I guess.”
The next set were various shots from a street party. A crowd of people in front of several houses. Lights streaming from one house to the other creating a canopy of light in the night.
They were beautiful.
We continued slowly walking through the studio, taking time with each set. Sometimes we had to maneuver around people to get where we wanted to go. There was a very nice turnout.
The photographer moved on from East Branch at some point and that was when the grittier side of his work came out. He’d traveled the world. He’d taken photographs of the slums in India and the overindulgence in Paris.
The entire thing was amazing and as we talked about each set in hushed tones, it seemed that Porter really appreciated them as well. We stayed until closing at seven.
“I want to go to Paris one day,” I told him as we walked back out to my car. “Do you want to travel?”
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “In East Branch people don’t really do that, so it’s not something I’ve ever thought about. As in something that I could actually do.”
“I want to go everywhere.” I climbed in the passenger side of my car as he got behind the wheel. “I wanted to study abroad in college, but my parents put the kibosh on that.”
“Why?”
I hadn’t asked him where we were going to eat, but he seemed to have a plan because he didn’t say anything before getting us out of that parking lot and onto the road.
“Well, they paid for college, so they held the purse strings. They didn’t want me going overseas alone but I really thought they were worried I’d be too far away to control.”
He pondered that for a minute before saying, “I wouldn’t want you to go alone.”
“What?” I snapped.
He held up a hand that indicated I should let him explain. “Now, yes, you should be able to go wherever you want. But I can see them being worried about you out there alone.”
“It’s studying abroad. I wouldn’t have been alone. I would’ve had a host family or lived on campus. No different than at school.”
“Totally different.” He brought us to a stop in front of a nice Italian restaurant. Not fancy, but nice. “If you left right now to go to Europe alone, nobody would try to stop you. But I’d worry like hell until the day you got back.”
“So you’re trying to say that they would worry for my safety?” I asked. He nodded. “Nah. I think they just didn’t want me to find some hot European guy to marry and ruin all their plans.”
Porter pushed his car door open but looked back at me with a scowl. “Yeah. I’d kind of hate that too.”
After covering my mouth with a hand so he wouldn’t see my snicker, I joined him outside.
The two of us ate a quick dinner at the family-owned restaurant he’d chosen. It was pretty perfect, to be honest. Not fancy, which I would’ve felt uncomfortable in. But it wasn’t a burger place, though I would’ve loved that too. I ordered this delicious chicken and baked potato. A salad to start even thought I’d likely only eat half. I really needed to get a handle on how much I was eating here in East Branch.
When we were done, Porter asked if I wanted to go for a walk. I wasn’t rea
dy to go home, so I said yes.
This part of East Branch was nothing like that part where we lived. There were lights and people out for a good time on Saturday night. Much more like Detroit.
He pointed out places he thought I’d need at some point. But it was when he finally reached out and took my hand that I had to lean into him. He’d been so careful about not touching me in public that I was beginning to get a complex.
“You’re holding my hand,” I said. It wasn’t a question, but I thought he’d understand that there was one behind my statement.
“That OK with you?”
“More than, but you didn’t before, so I was beginning to worry I had the wrong impression.”
Now he slipped a hand around my shoulders and pulled me into him even more. “Sorry about that. You don’t want Laney to know, so I wasn’t sure what you’d be OK with.”
“Until now?”
“Well, now I just took a chance.”
He leaned down as we walked and kissed me softly on the lips. Because the air had begun to cool, I wrapped one arm around his back and the other around his front. He was warm and I hadn’t brought a jacket.
“You cold?” he asked. I nodded. I wasn’t truly cold, just chilly, but the same principle applied. “Want me to take you home?”
I pushed away from him just enough to look up at him. “No. Not ready for that yet.”
He thought about it. As if trying to come up with something else to do that would be out of the elements. It was June in Michigan. Hot during the day, sometimes hot during the night, and sometimes cooler at night. One just never knew.
“If you’re not ready to go home yet, we could go to my apartment,” he suggested.
Something warm flooded my body. His apartment. Deep breath in. Slowly blown back out. My heart took off like a little racehorse. His apartment. Alone. Perhaps to finish what we’d started in Laney’s backyard. I wanted that and hoped he did too.
“Yes. Let’s do that.”
We made our way back across town and everything happened in reverse. The downtown became nice houses, which became small, close-together houses where we lived. I’d been here long enough to know how to get back to Laney’s from here, but instead of going straight, he turned right. Still, I’d never known how close he lived to Zac and Laney. Honestly, just about three blocks away. Walking distance.
He parked on the street then led me down the side of his building. In the side door, up a flight of stairs and into a small apartment. It was tidy. I hadn’t imagined Porter being tidy. Laney had said Zac was too and I wondered why that was. The only thing out of place was a book on the coffee table. I glanced at the cover and it was a mystery. Porter liked to read mystery books.
I knew Porter could read, obviously, but hadn’t thought he might do it as a hobby.
Every single new thing I found out about him made me fall for him that much more.
His small living room and dining room shared space. The table was small, enough for four people, but it’d be close. The dining room led to the kitchen. A barely there square that had everything he’d need. Talk about open floor plan. But there was a two-step hallway with two doors attached, which I had to assume led to the bathroom and his bedroom.
“This is nice,” I told him.
He shrugged. “I can afford it, which is what matters. Are you surprised it’s clean?”
I glanced over my shoulder at him and tried not to smile. He’d caught me. “Sort of. But only because my experience with guys’ living spaces was in college and they don’t take care of themselves at all. It’s disgusting.”
He led me over to the couch. “Yeah, well, I’d guess that Zac and I grew up with a hell of a lot less that those college boys so when we get something of our own, we take care of it.”
I wet my bottom lip quickly, my breath coming faster than it had been before I’d entered his space. “Does that go for everything?”
One side of his mouth drew up. “Hell yes, it does.”
I shouldn’t have asked that question. After all, he’d never had a woman of his own if what I’d been told was true. And it sure seemed to be.
“What are you reading?” I asked him.
He cocked his head to the side. “Do you really want to talk about that book?”
Worrying my bottom lip as I decided how honest I wanted to be, I decided not to pretend we weren’t here because I wanted to be.
“No.”
Chapter Thirteen
Porter had been sitting only a foot from me, but he slid closer, cupped my face between his hands, and kissed me. Somehow this kiss was different than the others. Slower. More like savoring. His tongue stroked mine softly as if he were in no hurry. But I was. I wanted this to happen tonight because we’d been dancing around it since I’d moved here.
That night in the backyard had made clear that we wanted this to happen. Now was the time.
I pulled back, which made him groan. “Maybe we should go to your bedroom.”
His eyebrows rose as if he hadn’t known exactly what we were going to do tonight. Or maybe he hadn’t wanted to assume.
“Unless you don’t want to,” I said as I played with the ends of hair at the nape of his neck.
He sprung up off the couch, took my hand, and pulled me up with him. He tugged me down that tiny hallway and into his room.
This room was simple. Nothing superfluous about it. Everything in there had a purpose, but right now I only cared about the purpose of his bed.
His neatly made bed.
Porter didn’t stop until he dropped onto the bed with me standing in front of him between his legs. He reached up, clasped his hand behind my head, and pulled me down to him. Porter’s kisses lit me on fire, sending waves of desire crashing through me.
His hands slid up the backs of my thighs and I almost lost control of myself right then.
“Wait,” I said before stepping back. The shoes had to go. I flipped my sandals toward the open space on the floor then climbed onto his bed.
He did the same thing with his shoes then came to me.
We kissed as our hands explored. He leaned back to get rid of his shirt then lifted mine above my head. But when he trailed his fingers up my leg to my lower belly, dipping under the waistband of my panties, I pulled back.
“Wait,” I said breathlessly. My head felt light with what we were doing.
Porter groaned again just like the last time I’d told him to wait and he dropped his head to my shoulder.
“I… I can’t do this,” I told him. His head popped up with a look of confusion on his face. “I don’t know your name,” I explained.
“Are you serious?” he asked, but he grinned. “Did you plan this to get it out of me?”
“Yes, I’m serious.” I gave him a gentle push. “And yes. I planned for you to get me all worked up just to say stop.” His body shook in silent laughter. “Porter, I’m serious. I’ve never had sex with someone whose name I didn’t know. I don’t think I can do it.”
“My name is Porter.” He kissed me again, trying to draw me back in, and it almost worked.
But I worked up the strength to stop him. “I’m serious. I know your name is Porter. That’s what you prefer, but if you didn’t legally change it to that, then I don’t know your name.”
“And that’s a deal-breaker?”
With the temptation to tell him no so strong, I nodded instead of trying to speak. “I’m sorry. I swear I didn’t plan this.”
“OK, but I warn you now, it could kill the mood.”
“Not possible.” I ran my hand down his chest and stomach.
A low sound came from his chest. “It’s Eugene.”
I bit my lips together. Was he making this up? Like he didn’t think I’d seen Tangled where Flynn Rider’s real name was Eugene? I had. And I’d call him on it.
“Eugene Urbanowitz.” His eyes settled on me and something behind them told me he was telling the truth. Telling the truth and never wanted me to ever use t
hat name ever.
I slid one hand behind his head and began bringing him to me. “Come here.”
It was like we picked up exactly where we’d left off. Kissing, his body pressed against mine. His hand sliding up my leg and into my panties, where he ran a single finger down the middle.
Fucking hell, I was going to come before he ever got inside me.
“I think we need fewer clothes on,” he whispered into my ear.
As soon as the words fell out of his mouth, I pushed at my skirt until I got it down my legs. He chuckled at either my erratic movements or at just how eager I’d become.
“I’ll help,” he said, the humor still in his voice.
He pushed away and yanked off his pants and boxers first. His rock-hard erection sprung loose and I got to see him for the first time, his eyes glowing as he watched me watching him. My skin heated. Then he pulled my skirt the rest of the way off my legs and slowly lowered my panties.
At first, his eyes remained locked with mine, but then they slowly slid down my body, taking in every inch. It was the kind of look that I normally would’ve squirmed at. But something about Porter made me want him to look. Wanted him to want me as much as I did him.
His hands wrapped around my thighs and pulled. They fell open and he dove in like a man starving and I was the last thing on the planet for him to eat.
“Fuck,” fell from my lips as soon as his mouth made contact. Lucky me that he lived alone or the noises coming out of my mouth might’ve been truly embarrassing. He licked. He sucked. He got his fingers involved. All in a way that reminded me of just how much experience he’d had.
And I appreciated every single bit.
Normally, I’d try to control myself. Orgasm without the neighbors knowing, but with Porter, there was no control. My movements were even unattractive. The sounds were embarrassing.
And I couldn’t have cared less.
Once the pleasure took over and burst into a rainbow of dreams and desire, Porter pushed off me, opened the drawer next to us and sheathed himself in a condom. I had some in purse if he hadn’t had any himself. Then he was back over me, sucking on each nipple and the sensitive skin over my pulse point, right behind my ear as he pushed inside me.
A Little More Touch Me (The Fallout Series Book 2) Page 11
