Bloom (16 page)

“Then don’t stop,” I urge him.

“Elle,” he says hoarsely, “I’m trying to do the right thing here and you’re making it so hard.”

“Yes, because I don’t want you to do the right thing,” I argue. “And because it’s
not
the right thing.”

He rolls off of me, gently pulling my tank back up. “Last night was too much. It would have gone too far and I just … can’t. After you left, I promised myself that I wouldn’t get carried away again. And I already have. I’m already not thinking, I’m already practically ripping your top off and rationalizing it to myself,” he says.

“I loved that,” I whisper. “I want you to not think.”

He closes his eyes and exhales. “Let me be with you just like this for a while first,” he says. “Please.”

I agree, because there’s not much else I can do. A part of me would like to prod further, because my guess is that this is somehow related to the age difference, but then he turns toward me and captures my mouth, and I can’t quite think well enough to form the question.

Chapter 35

The next day
I wake and for once there’s no worry and no regret. I can savor everything that happened without worrying that it won’t happen again. A smile spreads over my face, and I would squeal if it wouldn’t wake Ginny. He likes me. After all this time. My mother can make her bad decisions, my father can forget I exist, Ginny can continue to veer unpredictably between sweet and spiteful. James Campbell has finally chosen
me
.

It’s early, and I’ll feel it later, but right now I’m too excited to go back to sleep.

Downstairs, Max is already up and showered and the coffee is brewed.

“When do you sleep?” I laugh.

He just grins. “Life’s too good to waste it sleeping.”

“So who did you not ‘waste it sleeping’ with last night?”

“If I knew her name that wouldn’t be nearly as fun.”

I look at him curiously. In a way, his sleeping around doesn’t really seem to line up with everything else I know about him. Sure, he wants to have a good time, but he doesn’t have shallow friendships, and despite his jokes he’s actually been a good friend to both Ginny and me. “You seem like the kind of guy who would want a relationship, Max,” I tell him. “Is it really such a terrifying idea to you?”

“No,” he says. “But a relationship wouldn’t really work for me.”

“Why not?” I ask.

He shrugs. “I lead a pretty unsettled life,” he says. “Am I going to meet some girl in Colorado and then spend the six months I’m down here waiting for the next winter? Or vice versa?”

“Maybe you’d meet someone who wanted to migrate with you.”

He shakes his head. “That’s not the kind of girl I’d want to be with long-term. The girls I’m attracted to are more goal-driven than that.”

I laugh. “So your type is someone more like Ginny?”

“No,” he says, looking slightly panicked. “That’s not even vaguely what I just said.”

I take my coffee out onto the deck. It’s my favorite time to be outside, a slight breeze in the air and just warm enough without being hot. You can actually smell the heat seeping through the pines, the world rising. I hear the door slide open behind me and turn to find James.

“Hey there,” he grins. That smile of his does things to me. The day is just getting started and I think I may be spending it every bit as worked up as I did yesterday. He sits, turning his chair just enough that he can see me while sitting beside me. “I missed you this morning.”

“I snuck back upstairs in the middle of the night. You never know what time Max is getting home.”

He nods. “I know. It just would have been nice to have you there.”

I smile. “If Max wasn’t sitting in the kitchen I’d suggest we go there right now.”

His eyes darken. “Max just left.”

“Ginny won’t be up for hours,” I reply.

He pulls me to my feet. With a quick glance inside, he puts his hand at the small of my back and hurries me to his room. The second we’re inside and the door is shut, he presses me to the wall. “This is better,” he whispers against my mouth. “Good morning.”

He kisses me sweetly, and then his lips part, as do mine, and we meet each other. Slowly at first, our breath mingling, tongues gliding. But then he leans into me, all weight and heat, and something is triggered. There’s a low hum in my throat – a sound of desire, of aquiescence — and he is suddenly kissing me harder, his hands digging into my skin as if he can’t grip me tightly enough. He scoops me up and throws me on the mattress, and then he is above me, consuming me, pressing me into the bed with his weight.

“Take off your shirt,” I demand.

He hesitates for just a moment and then pulls it off, throwing it onto the floor behind him. I place my palms flat against his stomach, watch the way his eyes flutter shut, as if he’s being absolved. He flips us, so that I’m on top, and this time it’s my turn to taste his neck, to run my tongue along every line of definition in his chest. To go lower, pressing light kisses over his stomach as I slide, until my chest is pressed against his erection, my fingers at his waist.

“Fuck,” he winces. “Stop. Stop.”

I am sorely tempted to continue, but I give in, though not without intentionally grazing him with the flat of my hand. I can wait. His restraint is already failing.

Chapter 36

Friday night at
the bar is insane, as always. It doesn’t begin to clear out until 1 a.m., at which point most of the patrons are so tanked that they become twice as difficult to manage. Particularly the six guys I’ve been waiting on since my shift began. They are currently on their 9th pitcher of beer, and Kristy and I have placed a small wager on which one will be first to fall off his barstool.

It’s always a fine line, with male customers. Remaining friendly enough to get a tip while making your lack of interest clear. But the more they have to drink, the less they seem to care about my interest level. Their behavior is less of a problem for me, it would seem, than it is for James. He’s been watching all night, his face growing tighter with every round they order. No matter how busy the bar gets, when I’m at their table I feel his eyes on me.

One of them drapes an arm around my waist. “We took a vote and we all agreed that you’ve got the nicest ass any of us have ever seen,” he says. “That alone deserves a huge tip.”

I disengage his hand. “So what I hear you saying is that I can get away with crappy service for the rest of the night.”

They laugh and one of them suggests I’ve already provided fairly crappy service, which I don’t doubt.

I turn toward the bar with their drink order — they’ve moved on from pitchers to Jack and Coke, never the wisest progression — and James is making his angry face, staring them — and me — down.

“What did they just say to you?” he demands.

I roll my eyes. “Nothing.”

“The next time they say ‘nothing’ to you they’re going to find themselves launched from the bar.”

“Don’t do that,” I sigh. “Those guys have a $200 tab, and I’ve earned that tip.”

“Then make sure they keep their hands to themselves.”

I go back to the table and deliver the drinks. When I set the final one down, the guy who put his arm around me before pulls me toward him, trying to drag me into his lap. “You know who you look just like?” he is saying as I attempt to push away. And then James’s hand is on my wrist, moving me behind him with a look on his face that would make a sober man run.

“Don’t cockblock me, man,” says the guy at the table. Two seconds later he’s being lifted by his collar.

“Get the fuck out of my bar,” James says. “And you’d better hope I never run into you outside of it.”

Great. I’ve now not only lost my tip but have also incited what could be a major fight. I see them glancing at each other in silent conversation. James is a big guy, but not big enough to handle all of them at once if it comes down to it. He knows this, but his anger trumps common sense: he knows the odds and he still wants the fight.

There is a mumbled apology from one of the guys who never did anything in the first place, and they start throwing cash on the table. James stands there, arms crossed, until the last of them has walked out, and then he heads back to the bar, completely untroubled by the fact that he just did what I explicitly asked him not to do.

I know he meant well, but still he ignored me and proved once again that he thinks of me as a little kid. My temper has barely begun to settle by the time we head home.

“I’m sorry about earlier,” he finally says. “They didn’t stiff you, did they?”

“No,” I sigh. “They actually gave me about a 40% tip, although now it feels like I extorted it from them.”

“You earned it, dealing with those assholes.”

“I appreciate what you were trying to do, James,” I say diplomatically, although in truth I can’t say I really appreciate it all that much. “But seriously, I’m not as sheltered as you think. I really can take care of myself.”

He raises an eyebrow.

“I can,” I insist.

“Whatever,” he says. “As the guy who spent several weeks of his adolescence keeping boys away from you, I’ve earned the right to be overcautious.”

“What boys?”

“Do you remember that last summer at camp? I was a counselor and you and Ginny were in middle school?”

I nod.

“I heard two of the counselors talking about you, saying that if they gave you a year or two it would be just like getting to sleep with your mom. It was disgusting. I mean these guys were in
college
.” He grows impatient waiting for the light to change and takes a hard right. “I felt like I had to spend the next three weeks watching not just the boys your age, but the other counselors too.”

“Is that why Ginny and I didn’t get to go back to camp?” I ask. We’d only been a year off from becoming Counselors in Training. It was a rite of passage, so our parents’ unyielding refusal had devastated us both.

“Yep,” he says.

“I’m not sure what’s worse - them talking about me or them talking about my mom.”

“Uh, your mom
is
pretty hot,” he grins. “Not as hot as you, but still … ”

I smack his arm. “Shut up.”

“She is!” he laughs. “She was my first crush.”

“Please don’t tell me any more about this.”

“God’s honest truth. I told my dad and he told me I had good taste. And then he told me he’d kill me if I ever mentioned that to my mom.”

“Gross,” I laugh. “Just stop talking.”

“Okay, but my point, aside from the fact that your mom is super hot, is that it was already hard for me not to step in, and now … ”

He pulls into the driveway.

“Now?” I prompt.

He lifts me out of my seat entirely and places me in his lap, our mouths an inch apart. His hand runs through my hair as he bridges the distance. “And now Elle,” he says, “it would be impossible.”

**

The next morning he apologizes again for kicking my table out.

“Does that mean next time you’ll listen when I ask you not to intervene?” I ask.

“Sure, as long as no one’s touching you,” he counters. I roll my eyes – in other words, if last night happened again he’d do the
exact same thing
. But I’m incapable of staying annoyed.

“Well you can make it up to me by walking me to the bookstore,” I tell him.

“Not only will I walk you there, I’ll buy you any book you want, as long as it doesn’t enhance or inform you in any way.”

“You mean like
50 Shades of Grey
?” I laugh.

“No,” he says sternly. “You’re too young for that. Maybe one of those YA vampire books where do they a lot of talking and almost kiss at the end.”

“You do realize I’m in college, right?” I ask. “And I seem to recall you met my 22-year-old ex-boyfriend.”

“
50 Shades
is about bondage and stuff. That’s not something anyone in college is doing.”

“Speak for yourself,” I crack. He tenses beside me and I can feel irritation rolling off him.

I laugh. “It was a joke.”

“It’d better be,” he says. Just the tone of his voice makes something tighten deep in my stomach.

Something that demands more than the long, frustrating nights we spend fully clothed.

Chapter 37

In the mornings
it’s hard not to go directly to him, to find some way — or many ways — to touch him. He’s not much better. His eyes follow me as I walk across the room. Half the time he gets up the minute I walk in and stands beside me as I pour the coffee just like he did the first day.

He grabs my hand as we walk into town. I glance at him. “No one we work with is out this early,” he says with a small smile. “I think it’s safe.”

I’d like to ask what ‘it’ is exactly — are we just a fling? Are we dating? Is he hiding this because of Ginny and Dan, or because he’s ashamed? But I say nothing. It’s childish, I suppose, but I worry that asking for specifics will end up stripping pieces away rather than contributing. If it’s only a fling or if he’s ashamed, I just don’t want to know.

Our schedules mysteriously change so that they are almost exactly the same — we close on the same nights, work lunch on the same days. I’m not sure how it isn’t clear to everyone that something is going on. There’s a permanent smile on my face, one I have to struggle to get rid of half the time and only then with marginal success.

And people definitely notice the change in James. Including Brian, who comes out from the back and asks him if he’s been drinking, though it’s only 11 a.m.

James scowls. “You know I don’t drink at work.”

“You also don’t smile at work,” says Brian. “If you haven’t been drinking you must finally be getting laid.”

Which James, of course, is not. It’s a situation I’m finding increasingly difficult to deal with. We’ve now spent a week glued to each other, kissing, groping, moving from mouth to ear to neck, and he refuses to go farther.

Kristy is coming in to pick Matt up just as we’re leaving, and she asks me, volubly, about my date with Nick. I haven’t had a chance to tell her about the progress I’ve made in other areas.

I shrug. “I don’t think that’s happening.”

“Really?” she pouts. “I was planning to live through you vicariously. At least sleep with him before you make a decision.” James’s hand lands firmly at the small of my back, nudging me toward the exit.

“You’re not going out with him again, are you?” he asks when we get outside.

“Of course not,” I say. “I already texted him to say I was seeing someone else.” For just a moment I worry that I’ve gone too far. Are we actually ‘seeing’ each other, or is this the kind of phrase that will send James running?

He pulls me to the side of the restaurant and presses me up to the brick. “Good,” he says, finding my mouth. Our kisses, I’m finding, rarely stay G-rated for long. And, increasingly, don’t even start that way.

“It’s so hard to work with you like that all night,” he whispers, his hands sliding low. I arch against him, giving him access he doesn’t take.
Sigh
.

“Because I’m such a bad waitress?” I grin.

He laughs. “Yeah, there’s that too, but not what I was talking about.”

“You know, it’d probably be a lot easier for us if we didn’t enter the restaurant so worked up.”

He pulls away, tugging my hand. “Come on,” he says. “We can talk about this in the car.”

By which, I presume, he means we will go to the car and avoid the topic.

When he starts driving I twist toward him. “This is about my age, isn’t it?” I demand.

“Sort of,” he sighs. “When I’m with you I forget about the age difference entirely, but then I think about how it would look to someone on the outside. And I wonder if I’m just rationalizing, convincing myself it’s okay because I want it so badly.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I argue. “We’re both in school. We work at the same place. It’s not like you have a home in the suburbs and I’m the kid delivering your paper.”

“You know why my parents were okay with Ginny living at the beach with us?” he asks. “Because they thought she’d be okay, with three
adults
supervising her. That’s what they said. ‘Adults supervising’. So I know for a fact people would look at it negatively.”

I consider what he said while I shower. I can understand his reluctance, under the circumstances, but it doesn’t change the fact that he’s wrong. And if I go through the rest of the summer like this I am likely to explode.

I find him in his room, waiting. His pupils dilate as they graze over me – the tiny boyshorts, the thin tank which leaves nothing to the imagination. “You can’t walk through the house in that,” he says roughly.

“No one’s home but us,” I say. I crawl toward him from the foot of the bed, and don’t stop until I’m straddling him, our faces an inch apart.

He winces. “I’m probably better off not seeing you like that too.”

I lean down and kiss the corner of his mouth, and then I move to the other side, to the corner of his jaw, to the paler skin beneath it, relishing the feel of him growing hard beneath me, the small, stifled sound he makes as I press against him. “I know what your parents said, but that doesn’t make them right.”

“I don’t know,” he replies, but there’s a wavering note in his voice. His hand moves to the back of my neck, pulling me toward him while his fingers twine through my hair. His tongue parts my lips.

I lift my hips so that I’m centered directly on top of him. Air hisses through his teeth at the contact. And then I pull my tank over my head. “Elle,” he begs, his gaze heavy-lidded and feral. “Don’t do this.” But he’s looking at me, his jaw grinding, and his hands come up to my span my rib cage. “You’re fucking perfect,” he groans. I take his hand, and place it over my breast, let him feel the way it pebbles from his slightest touch. The pad of his thumb moves over it — once, twice, and when I gasp his resolve disappears entirely.

He flips me onto my back and is above me so quickly that there’s no time to register my surprise. My mouth opens but no noise comes out before he’s pushing my arms above my head, kissing me hard, his hands everywhere.

“You don’t know how many times I’ve thought about this,” he whispers as he moves lower, taking one taut nipple with his tongue and then his teeth. The small sounds I make turn into whimpers.

It’s been a long summer, and a lot of build-up. When he moves to the other breast, when his hand glides between my legs, I begin to feel that sharp tug in my stomach, heat washing over me.

“Don’t stop,” I beg.

“You’re going to come like this?” he groans, as if the idea pains him.

“Yes,” I pant.

“No,” he says. He pulls away, and before I can protest his hand is sliding up my inner thigh and into my shorts. “I want to feel you when it happens,” he breathes, and then his fingers are gliding against me.

His index finger moves lightly over me, and then slides inside. That’s all it takes. I cry out and his mouth comes down on mine hard, stifling my cries, his hand holding its place while I spasm around him.

His lips move to my throat, my collarbone, his body pressed hard against mine, still tense and full of need, and then finally he rolls to the side.

“I can’t believe you came so fast,” he murmurs, his mouth at my ear.

“It’s embarrassing,” I whisper.

“No,” he sighs. “It’s amazing. God I’m going to think about that every night.” His words trigger an alarm, a small voice that wonders why he seems to think it’s a foregone conclusion that one day I’ll be something he can only remember, a part of his past.

I ignore the voice. “I think I can give you something better than that to remember,” I say, pushing him on his back and reaching into his shorts.

“Fuck,” he groans as he springs free into my hand. And something I’d guessed at, but wasn’t certain of, is affirmed: he’s huge. “No, Elle,” he whispers. I ignore him, circling him with my fingers before I shimmy lower, dragging a path down his chest on the way. I come to rest with my head between his legs, and he watches me with feverish eyes.

“This isn’t a good idea,” he pants.

“Really?” I ask, smiling up at him before I take him in my mouth, allowing one quick swipe of my tongue before I pull back. And then another. Light, inconsequential movements that have him writhing under me, grasping the sheets.

“Stop grabbing the sheets like that,” I tease, bringing my mouth back where it was.

“It’s the only thing keeping me from grabbing your hair,” he pants.

I take as much of him as I can in my mouth, once, quickly, and then grin up at him. “Maybe I want you to grab my hair.”

“Fuuuuuuuccck,” he groans, and then he gives in, his hands burying themselves in my hair as I continue, increasing the pressure, adding in all the little tricks Ryan so painstakingly taught me.

“Stop, Elle,” he begs, even as he is arching toward me, his hands tighter in my hair. “I’m gonna come.”

I increase the pace instead, and within seconds he is crying out, his hands digging into my scalp, his head thrown backward.

It takes him nearly a minute to release his death grip on my hair. He pulls me toward him so that I am lying on his chest, which rises and falls like a raft at sea.

“That was amazing,” he whispers. “Like completely fucking amazing.”

“Now are you glad I didn’t stop?” I giggle.

“Yes,” he breathes. And then he pauses. “But Elle? I’m only going to say this once: I don’t ever want you to tell me how you got to be so good at that.”