“It’s… not…” I clamp my mouth shut, before I say anything even more incriminating.
But Mrs. Brown just laughs and waves me off. “Don’t worry. I understand perfectly. Now go on. And tell Selena we said hello, and congratulations on a job well done,” she calls after me, as I start to trudge back toward my car.
I offer a wave, and then climb back into Betty and turn the ignition on. Time to go find Selena. Whatever it takes.
11
Antonio
She’s not at the beach either, or the restaurant we walked to, or any of the cute little cafes within walking distance of her apartment building. And her phone continues going straight to voicemail, which means it’s not even turned on, so a text will be pointless.
Finally, lacking any other options, I park in her lot and take the stairs up to her apartment. If nothing else, she’ll have to come back here eventually, right?
Just in case she’s been inside and hiding with the lights off this whole time, I try knocking again. And again. And again. Finally, I lean back against the door and slump down until I’m sitting with my back against it. I let my head fall back against the wood with a hard thud.
“Look,” I say, loud enough that if she is inside, she’ll be able to hear me through the door. “I get why you don’t want to talk to me now. I wouldn’t want to either. I just… I didn’t know about your history. About the accident, or your brother. I should never have tried to pry, especially when you made it clear you didn’t want to talk about it.”
I shift and stare down at my fists balled in my lap. “I guess I just thought…” I shake my head. “It was pretty clear that you were hurting, and I thought if I knew why, then I could help. But I was a completely insensitive jerk about it. And I should never have accused you of hiding a boyfriend or anything from me, that was so stupid. I was being jealous and irrational.”
I let my head fall back with another hard thunk and shut my eyes, my throat feeling tight. What if I’ve screwed it up for good? What if she never wants to talk to me again?
Then I hear a faint sigh. “Yes, you were,” says a voice, but not from behind me. It’s coming from out here, in the hallway.
My eyes fly open. And there she is. Selena’s standing a few feet away, a coffee mug in one hand and an overflowing bag of books in the other, with the brand of a local indie bookstore stamped across it.
She smiles a little sheepishly when she catches me looking, and shrugs. “It’s the book nerd equivalent of falling off the bandwagon,” she explains. “Sometimes buying a heap of new books is the only thing that makes me feel better.”
I climb to my feet, frowning. “I’m sorry that you needed to do that because of me,” I tell her, stepping aside so she can unlock her door. “If you’d rather I go, I can, I just wanted to apologize first—”
But she’s shaking her head, cutting me off. “Come in.”
Trying not to get my hopes up, but unable to resist, I trail her into the apartment. This time, when my gaze lands on the photographs, I notice the similarities between Selena’s face and her brother’s. It’s subtle, but they have similar eyes, and their jawlines almost match.
I also notice the placement of those photographs. Front and center, right where you’d place someone you don’t want to forget about.
I don’t know how I ever could have thought he was an ex or a boyfriend or something stupid like that. “Selena, I’m sorry,” I start again, but she cuts me off, lifting one hand to stop me in my tracks.
“I already heard your apology out in the corridor,” she says. The corner of her mouth twitches up into a faint smile. “And I accept. But…” She sighs and drops the bag of books onto a chair, and then sinks onto the couch. This close, I can see that her eyes are red and puffy, her cheeks streaked with dried tear tracts.
My heart clenches hard in my chest.
I hesitate, but only for a split second. Then I drop onto the couch beside her and hold out an arm. She looks at me for a long, quiet moment. Then she scoots closer, and leans against me, letting me drape my arm around her shoulders and hold her tight against my side.
“You had a point,” she murmurs. “Not about thinking my brother was my boyfriend, ew, gross.” She swats my chest playfully, and I chuckle. This time when she sighs, she’s so close to me that I can feel the rise and fall of her chest against mine. “But I should open up more. I should talk about it.” She frowns across the room at the photo of them. “It hurts to do it. But afterward… I feel a little bit better. Lighter. Like talking about it helps me share the burden of missing him, a little bit.”
I rub her arm gently, up and down. “That makes sense,” I say softly. “When my mom died, I tried to bottle it up for the first year. I never spoke to anyone about it, didn’t want to confront it or deal. I was in denial, looking back.”
Selena tilts her head back so her chin rests on my chest, and she peers up at me. “How did you get over it?” she asks quietly.
I shake my head. “Wrong question. You never really get over losing a loved one. Part of you will always miss them.” I tighten my grip again, and she shifts a little closer to me on the couch, her soft curves melding against my side. “But when you talk about them, and remember them… Then it’s like they’re there with you, for a little bit. At least in your memory. It helps.”
Selena rests her cheek on my chest now, right above my heart. I know what she’s hearing. The steady thud of my pulse, always fast when she’s around, but not as quick as usual this time. Because it feels calming, to sit with her like this. To open up to each other.
“Daniel was a total goofball,” Selena finally says quietly. “We used to have all these dumb inside jokes…” She’s grinning. “They wouldn’t make sense to anybody but us, but we could keep each other laughing for hours on end.”
“He sounds great.”
“He was.” She bites her lip and lapses into quiet again. We sit like that for a little while, but it doesn’t feel awkward or uncomfortable. Far from it. I feel more comfortable sitting here like this than I have in a long, long time. “The accident…”
“You don’t have to talk about that if you don’t want to,” I say softly.
She shakes her head, though. “No, you’re right. I should try to. At least to get some kind of… closure, if that’s possible.” She presses her lips together tightly. “We were out at a party. Normally I always drove us to parties, because Daniel was a year older than me, and he really liked drinking, whereas I was sort of meh on it. Like, I’ll have a beer or two, but I don’t love the taste anyway, so… Usually I was the designated driver. And besides, I loved driving so much.”
I try to smile, but it feels painful, knowing what’s coming in this story.
“That night, though, it was my twenty-first birthday. I wanted to celebrate by actually having some drinks. Daniel agreed to drive me. I didn’t go nuts or anything, but I was definitely tipsy. We had the radio on high, and we were singing along to Top 40 pop songs, making our voices all bad and weird as a joke to make each other laugh… We were laughing so hard.”
She presses her lips together. I rub her arm as gently as possible.
“We never even saw the other car coming. We rounded a blind curve, and it was fully in our lane. We found out later, the other driver was drunk. No, worse than drunk, just completely shitfaced.” She scowls. “He survived, of course, because he was so drunk he just went with the flow when we collided. But Daniel…” She squeezes her eyes shut. A tear escapes. Then another, and another, tracking down her pretty cheeks.
I reach up with one thumb to brush them away, one at a time.
“They say he died on impact,” she says softly. “That he didn’t feel any pain. That’s something, at least. I’m glad it was quick.”
“Selena…”
She clears her throat hard, as if driving a lump away from it. Then she pushes up off my chest and uses the heel of her palm to rub her eyes, one at a time, brushing at her cheeks until they’re dry.
When she opens her eyes again, however, they’re redder and puffier than ever.
But she manages a weak, watery smile. “He wouldn’t want me to be like this, though. He’d want me to be able to laugh again. To have fun like we used to. You know?”
I nod, my gaze fixed on hers. “I’m sure he would.”
She presses her lips together tightly, and runs a hand through her hair. Glances away from me. Across the room at the smiling photo of her and her brother. “How did you find out, anyway?” she asks.
“Your mother told me,” I admit.
She turns back to me, surprised, her eyebrows rising. “You talked to my mother?”
“Actually…” I grimace. “I went over to your parents’ house. Your father wasn’t picking up his phone, and I just… wanted to make sure you were all right.”
She laughs softly, under her breath. “So, what you’re saying is you basically stalked me.” She reaches up to nudge me with a foot. But I catch her ankle in one hand, wrapping my fingers around it, rubbing gently.
She relaxes, lets me hold on.
“A little bit,” I say, smirking. “I just kept thinking about how hurt you looked when you left the garage, though. And you weren’t here, so…”
“So you decided you’d play here and come rescue the damsel in distress?” She nudges me with her toes again, and then I use my grip to tug her toward me on the couch, making her fall back against the cushions.
Taking advantage of the moment, I shift my weight, until I’m leaning over her, with her beneath me on the sofa. “Something like that,” I admit with a faint smile, before I lean in to kiss her, soft and slow.
She arches up against me, letting out one of those soft, sweet little sighs of hers, the ones I love so much. She reaches up, running her hands over my shoulders to drape them around my neck, at the same time, and I fold her against me. Just her proximity makes my thoughts run to all the things I’ve done to her before, all the things I still want to do to her now.
But instead, I shift her over a little, until I can lie alongside her on the couch, and I just pull her against me, holding her tight. At first she feels stiff with surprise. But slowly, she starts to relax. To sink against me. Trusting me.
“You can’t blame yourself,” I whisper into her hair. She inhales, sharp, like I’ve touched a nerve there. “It wasn’t your fault, none of it. And you can’t live your whole life under this burden. Like you said, your brother wouldn’t want that. He’d want you to be happy.”
I can feel her nod, where her face is pressed against my shoulder. For a long while, we just lie there together, and it feels so good to have her in my arms that I don’t ever want to have to let go. I want to show this woman what life can be if she lets herself be open to it again. I want to prove to her how much she still has to live for.
More than all that, I want the chance to love her.
There’s that word again, I think, and it warms me from the inside out to know how I’m starting to feel. Because that’s huge. I’ve never told a woman I loved her before. The few long- term relationships I’ve been in were fun, but things never felt completely right. Not like this. I never felt so easy or secure as I do with Selena.
I only hope she feels the same way around me, too.
As if she’s reading my mind, Selena tips her head back to peer up at me. Her eyelashes are still damp from the crying she did earlier, but her face is dry now, her eyes still puffy but starting to recover. She smiles, and it’s not a fake half-smile like before, but a full, real one. It takes my breath away.
“Thank you,” she whispers. “For being here.”
I raise an eyebrow, an amused smile dancing around my mouth. “You mean thanks for stalking you?”
She huffs out a laugh, which makes her body quiver against mine, which makes all the blood in my head start to rush south. Because I’m only human. I can only touch this gorgeous, sexy as hell woman for so long before my dick starts to get better ideas.
“I guess so,” she says, her eyes still fixed on mine. Then she tilts her head back to peer past me, toward the front window of the apartment and the parking lot beyond it. “You know, I never thought I’d get into a driver’s seat of a car again. Let alone learn all about the inner workings of one, or start to want to try driving again.”
I lift an eyebrow, but remain silent, letting her get this out.
She glances at me once more, a wry smile twisting her mouth. “But after working with you in the garage… Maybe I do want to get over this. I haven’t thought about how much I used to love driving in years, but… you’re right, I did love it when I was younger. Maybe someday I could get comfortable enough to love it again.”
I grin and tilt my head forward to rest my forehead against hers, gazing into those endless dark eyes of hers, the ones that have had me captivated from the first moment she narrowed them at me. “I’d love to see that,” I say quietly. “But you know, even if you don’t get over the fear, I’m always happy to chauffer you around.” The corner of my lip quirks up. “Especially now that you finished fixing my prize ride for me.”
She huffs out a laugh under her breath. “Thanks for the offer. But how would you feel about trying to teach me to drive for myself again, sometime?”
My smile widens. “I’d be honored.”
“Good.” She heaves another sigh, big enough to make my arm rise and fall where it’s wrapped around her waist. “I’d like that.” And then her teeth sink into her lower lip, in a move that makes my dick twitch against the seam of my jeans, already starting to get hard just from being this close to her. “And, sorry I ran out on you the other day, too. I panicked when you asked me to steer Betty.”
“I gathered that much.” I arch one eyebrow.
She laughs under her breath. “Yeah. I figured. But I was just so embarrassed—”
“Trust me, you have absolutely nothing to be embarrassed about.”
“Really?” Her gaze searches out mine once more, and this time, my face is close enough to hers to see the deeper seated worry in those eyes. “It felt pretty embarrassing.”
“Now that I know what you’ve been through?” I shake my head. “It’s completely understandable. Hell, I’m amazed that you were able to work with me on Betty for as long as you did without having any kind of freak-out sooner.”
“You’re just saying that because you want to get in my pants.” She narrows her eyes playfully.
I smirk. “Trust me, Selena, I’m confident I can get into your pants with or without needless flattery.” With that, I run my hand around her waist, tracing up over her hip, then along the sexy arch of that ass. When my hand reaches her thigh, I grip tightly, pulling her against me.
This time, when we crush together, I’m sure she can feel my cock, already hard and growing harder by the instant, digging into her belly. Her cheeks flush, and her eyelashes flutter a couple of times. “Hmm… maybe. But the flattery definitely helps.”
“Then I’ll keep flattering you all night long,” I promise, leaning in to kiss those plump, impossible to resist lips once more. They part, and my tongue twines with hers, tracing her lips, exploring her, wrestling with her.
When we break apart again, she’s breathless, flushed.
“As long as that’s okay,” I add, peering down at her again.
In response, she arches her back, to press those sexy hips against mine, grinding a little against the hard shaft of my cock. “Oh, trust me, Antonio. It’s more than okay. You make me feel so much more than okay.”
The next time I kiss her, I don’t stop.
12
Selena
This time isn’t like all the others that we’ve been together. Antonio takes his time undressing me. He peels off my shirt with exaggerated slowness, like he knows exactly what he’s doing to me, and he’s savoring it.
He probably does, the bastard. But I can’t say I don’t enjoy it. The way his warm, calloused hands glide over my body, tracing patterns into my back, my sides.
/> “You are so fucking beautiful,” he murmurs, before he presses his lips to the curve of my neck, the arch of my collarbone. His tongue flicks against my clavicle, and I shiver, a motion that continues from the top of my head all the way down to my curled toes.
His hands trace the edges of my bra, his fingertips gentle yet sure at the same time, as he follows the band around to my back and slowly, slowly enough that it makes my whole body quake with want, he undoes the clasp. Lets it fall away between us. I shift my arms to let him slide it off, and when he leans in to drop it beside the couch, my nipples graze his chest through the fabric of his shirt, already starting to stiffen.
His mouth dips lower, a searing hot brand against my skin as he kisses my chest, then lower, following the slope to the spot between my breasts. His tongue darts out across my smooth skin, and I inhale sharply, which makes him tilt his head to grin up at me.
“I want to taste every inch of you, Selena,” he whispers, and his breath feels cool against the skin he just licked, until he lowers his face to press his mouth against me again, hot all over. The temperature differences make me shiver, makes my heart speed up and my head swim.
He shifts his mouth to trail his tongue up and over my breast, until he reaches my areola. He doesn’t touch my nipple, not yet, but he circles it with his lips, his tongue, even his teeth, grazing my skin gently, not enough to hurt but enough to make me shiver from that sharp contrast.
All the while, I arch my back, press my chest closer to his face, his searching mouth. Finally, with a sly grin that tells me he knows exactly how badly he’s torturing me, Antonio curls his tongue around the hard nub of my nipple and sucks it into his mouth. I moan at the feel of his tongue brushing over my nipple, over and over, while his other hand travels up my waist to cup my other breast, his thumb following the same path as his tongue, rubbing across my other nipple again and again.
Work Me Up Page 11
