Tempting (13 page)

So I just placed a quick kiss on the inside of her thigh, then curled two fingers inside of her, pulling a moan from her mouth. I added the thumb of my other hand, making slow, tight circles over her clit. I pulled my fingers in and out, pressed down harder and harder onto the hard nub of flesh, watching as her chest heaved. She was so close, I could tell by the tiny pulses around my finger. So I hooked my fingers hard at the same time I flicked her clit, then turned my head to bite down on the toned flesh of her inner thigh.

“Ohhhhhhhhhh yes yes yes, oh Nathan,” she said on one long sigh, her whole body relaxing. Those perfect lips spread in a soft, contented smile and it made my heart squeeze. I carefully lifted her legs from off my shoulders and stood, swiping my shorts off the floor and pulling them on.

I turned to the side, wiping a hand down my face, then dropped it quickly, given it still smelled like Adele. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, I was completely cleaved down the middle. The part of me that wanted to go sink on the couch with her, feel her warm skin next to me, soak in the moments like this where she was soft and pliant, that was the part that was quietly pounding at my brain.

But the other part, the other part was a relentless buzzing. The part that sent the email in the first place. Nothing had changed, other than the fact that I had underestimated Adele. And her hold on me, and
my
hold on her apparently.

“What’s wrong?”

I was too pulled apart inside to do anything other than be honest. But I didn’t turn to face her. “Everything should still stay the same, the same thing that I was trying to do before you showed up. But there’s
something
here, Adele. I don’t understand it and I don’t know why I can’t resist you. But I can’t.” I hung my hands from the back of my neck and finally moved my head so I could see her. She’d pulled her knees up to cover her chest, and her face looked completely lost. “I
want
to be able to resist you.”

“So where does that leave us?”

I dropped my hands and lifted my shoulders briefly. “I don’t know.”

“I think I’m gonna go home.” Adele stood from the couch, and I couldn’t help but admire how she didn’t rush to put her clothes on, completely comfortable in her skin. Once she’d pulled her shirt over her head, she finally met my eyes again. “You’re not going to tell me why you sent that email, are you?”

A flash of Diana laughing at me in the bathroom mirror, like the quick blink of my eyelids, burst through my head. It disappeared quickly enough that the tingling didn’t start in my hands, thank goodness. That was the last thing I needed. “No, not in the way you probably want me to. I’m sorry.” And I was. She shook her head, turning toward the door. “I’m not trying to be cruel, Adele. Or jerk you around. Sometimes it’s just not easy to let yourself enjoy something good while it’s in front of you.”

It resonated with her. I could see the understanding, the empathy, fall across her face. Coming back toward me, she lifted a hand and covered the place that she’d hit me earlier.

“I’m sorry I slapped you.” I laid my hand on top of hers, noticing how cool her fingers were compared to mine. Then her hand slipped away when she pulled back. “Goodnight, Nathan.”

Before I could formulate a thought—even if I knew what the hell to think about everything—she was gone.

I
let
myself into my apartment shortly after one in the morning, feeling sufficiently pummeled from my head to my vagina. Gingerly, I dropped my things by the door and climbed into bed, hissing from the burn in my muscles. And yet, I had to bite hard on my lip to prevent the smile from forming.

I shouldn’t have felt pleased by it, I should have been upset. But, fuck. When Nathan had come unglued and poured all that rage into me—biting, pinching, pounding. I had taken every bit of it, and happily. It was as if he understood my desperate need for sensory stimulation and maybe on some level, he needed that too.

But when I reflected on the moments after, when he’d said, “I don’t know,” in that defeated, lost voice—I’d suddenly felt like some kind of villain. He’d asked me not to come to him, and I had. He’d told me to leave, and I hadn’t.

Around two in the morning, after replaying in my head the outstanding sex for the fourth time, I resigned myself to not sleeping a wink and fumbled my way into the shower, my body sore and weeping, but my brain wretchedly wired.

In the shower, standing under the spray, I pressed a fist to my heart.

“I’m not trying to be cruel, Adele. Or jerk you around. Sometimes it’s just not easy to let yourself enjoy something good while it’s in front of you.”

Fuck. I could relate to that on a very elementary level. Hadn’t I just been pining for him, for weeks? Especially after all the men I’d trampled over in years past, unwilling to enjoy their kindness and consideration. I wanted men to want me, and while there was no doubt Nathan did, it seemed wanting me was terrorizing him.

I tilted my head under the water and cranked up the heat. As my hand traveled down my body, caressing the spots he’d marked, I was overcome with the most miserable kind of loneliness. Would that be the last time I had his lips on my skin?

And moreover, what the hell was wrong with me? Why him? Why, when I wasn’t exactly lacking in men to entertain me, was I so focused on Nathan? With his black hair and bright eyes and hands that held me tender and held me tight. What did he awaken inside of me that had remained dormant for so many other men?

As I wrapped myself up in a towel and dried off, I decided to send him an email. I wasn’t sure what I’d say, but there was nothing comfortable about silence for me.

I plopped into my seat and wiggled the mouse. Seconds later, my stomach flip-flopped and my hand froze.

He’d beat me to the punch, sending me an email first.

I
stared
at that email for a long, long time. Agitation coiled tightly into my chest, burning bright with a flash of anger.

An acrimonious response flashed in my head.

That’s it? That’s all you have to say to me? Never mind the fact that you confess this without even a semblance of apology and assume—because you don’t fucking ask—that I’m clean too.

Well, Nathan. Fuck. You.

E
ven as I
was deleting my imprudent response, I whispered, “Oh, but fuck him you did, Adele.”

I tapped on the keys of my keyboard repeatedly, crafting replies before promptly deleting them. Finally, around three in the morning, I pushed my face into my pillow and willed sleep to come, the email sitting in my account without an answer.

I
awoke
to my phone vibrating off the nightstand, its buzz indecently reminiscent of my favorite vibrator.

Craning open one eye, I slapped the screen to turn off the alarm. I was so disoriented from the little sleep that it took me more than usually necessary to remember why I had an alarm going off in the first place.

When I remembered, I groaned. Work.

Six in the morning, a mere three hours after I’d climbed into bed. It was times like then that I wished my religion was coffee, because I knew I would desperately need caffeine to make it through the day.

When my phone buzzed a second time, I cursed and grabbed it, ready to chuck it across the bedroom. But the buzz lasted only a second, alerting me to the fact that it wasn’t another alarm.

I
was too Goddamned tired
to trifle with forming any kind of intelligent response, so I ignored it for the moment and got ready for work.

Two hours into my shift at the coffee shop, I was beginning to lag. After writing down the wrong orders twice and getting questioning looks from my coworkers, I was on the verge of telling them I had the plague just so I could go home.

“Large soy mocha, half-sweet.” I pushed the empty cup into my coworker’s hands after handing back the customer’s change.

The next girl in line hemmed and hawed over what to get, asking me what was in our cinnamon spice chai and when I dully replied, “Tea and cinnamon,” she seemed to have an epiphany, ordering the chai with extra cinnamon.

I wrote her order on the cup and passed it to the next available employee, blowing the hair out of my eyes after she left the register. I angled my head toward my left shoulder and then my right, feeling a very dull satisfaction from the aches. I’d washed my body clean of his scent, but the memory of his touch lingered, especially in
the marks he’d left on my skin. The bite on my neck especially screamed his name. I’d attempted covering it with makeup before giving up, praying the collar of my work shirt would hide the bulk of it.

During my break, I splashed freezing cold water on my face in the bathroom and redid my hair. The bags under my eyes were more pronounced than they’d been when I’d woken up. There would be no helping them, but I squeezed eye drops into my eyes to hide some of the redness. My listlessness was echoed in the way I moved; slowly like I was in need of a hip replacement.

After exiting the bathroom and returning to my shift, I almost didn’t notice. I was so focused on staying awake for the walk to the register that I nearly disregarded the way my surroundings had changed since I’d entered the bathroom. I raised my head, my eyes connecting with the pair of eyes I’d been thinking about all fucking morning.

Nathan. The word formed on my lips upon meeting his gaze. I was rooted to the spot right behind the patisserie case, holding his eyes like I was physically incapable of doing anything else.

He looked good—damn him—if maybe a little tired. The circles under his eyes weren’t as pronounced with his tanned skin, but in his eyes I saw it all: fatigue, remorse, expectation, desire. His body radiated a calmness that I envied.

He blinked, long black lashes sweeping over the tops of his cheekbones like he couldn’t believe I was here.

“Adele.”

The voice wasn’t his. I whipped my head toward the cash register, coming out of that shared moment with Nathan to where my head should be: at work.

“Are you just going to stand there?” a coworker asked.

I swallowed and shook my head, swiftly making my way to the register and my eyes focused down.

I smelled him before I saw him: that warm and spicy scent that was tied so closely to the memories of him I liked the most. My traitorous eyes lifted, meeting his. It was alarming, having him within touching distance when the one thing I couldn’t do was actually touch him.

“Wh-what can I get you?” I squeezed my eyes shut briefly, feeling out of my element for the first time. Why was he here? What did he want?

“Ah.” He tucked his hands into the pockets of his jeans and gave me a moment’s respite as he scanned the board. “Just a medium coffee. Light cream.”

I wrote the order on the cup and hesitated on writing his name. Initially, I’d written “Nathan.” But my pen had hovered over that last ‘n’ a moment too long and I crossed through it roughly before shoving it in the trash and grabbing a new cup. Deftly, I wrote, “Prof. Easton” on the cup and passed it off to one of the baristas.

When I rang up his total and he handed me a five dollar bill, I felt my hands shake as I plucked it from him, careful not to make contact. When I reached my hand over to give him his change, his fingers curled around mine as I deposited the coin into his hand. My eyes snapped to his before darting away. He let go and I backed away. “Have a nice day,” I said dismissively.

Nathan looked to the barista making his coffee before he leaned forward. With a low voice, he said, “You didn’t reply.”

It took my brain a minute to catch up. His email and text.

“I was busy.”

He nodded slowly, licking his lower lip as he contemplated my answer.

“Do you…” his voice dropped off as he glanced at the only barista behind the counter with me, who was currently focused on pouring cream into his cup. We were running out of time to reasonably maintain a discussion and I was happy to prolong the moment. Tired Adele was more vulnerable than I’d expected.

I spun away, not answering him. I took the coffee from my coworker and pressed the lid onto it before setting it on the counter under the “pick up order here” sign. Nathan looked left and right again before walking down to me and placing his hand over mine on the cup, preventing me from being able to walk away without making a scene of extracting his hand from mine.

“What do you want?” I asked under my breath, making sure to keep an eye on my coworker. Because this was a campus coffee shop, the professors who frequented it weren’t strangers. He could be recognized by anyone, leaving them to wonder what I was doing talking so intently with him.

“I feel like we left things on the wrong foot last night.”

“I have to work.” I moved back to the register and gestured for the other barista to take a break.

It took less than ten seconds before Nathan was at the register again. “What do you want?”

He stood, staring at me for a moment. “A bagel.”

“What?” I shook my head. “A bagel?”

“What kinds do you have?” He stepped closer to the register. “I meant to order breakfast with my coffee.” He lifted the cup up between us and I ground my teeth.

“Cinnamon raisin, poppy seed, whole wheat.”

Nathan made a face. “Raisins? Who willingly chooses raisins in their baked goods?”

Because I knew he was stalling so that he could talk to me, I was fuming. Maybe I was experiencing PMS or maybe I was annoyed that he was trying to joke with me after the night before and all the confusing signals he gave me, but whatever it was drove me to say, “You do, today.” I thrust my hand into the case and pulled out a cinnamon bagel, popping it into the toaster and taking his money even as he looked bewildered. This time, when it was time to hand back his change, I dropped it on the counter and turned away to get the cream cheese from the refrigerator.

“Adele.” Nathan’s voice over the patisserie case caused me to drop the cream cheese covered knife on my apron, smearing it everywhere.

Glaring at him, I plopped the cream cheese onto the bagel and shoved it into a plastic bag. I stalked to the “pick up order here” side and tried to walk away after setting the bagel down, but he stopped me with a hand on my upper arm. He held me neither roughly or with threat, but I still felt frozen.

“Don’t make a scene,” he said through his teeth. He casually glanced around us before turning back to me. “We need to talk. Not here.” His thumb grazed the crook of my elbow and I tilted my head, feeling depleted of all the nervous energy seeing him had given me. His eyes paused on the bite on my neck and I watched the movement of his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “Did I do that?” he asked on a whisper.

I opened my mouth to answer but was interrupted by a booming voice behind him. “Nathaniel.”

Nathan’s hand left my arm like I’d burned him, his eyes going wide before he schooled his features. “Sir,” he said turning around.

The man was in his fifties, his hair a blend of salt and pepper and his face tanned. He wore a suit and tie and looked familiar to me, but I couldn’t place him.

“Good morning,” the man said, looking between Nathan and me. His gaze paused on mine and he said, “Have we met?”

Nervously, I laughed. “I was just wondering the same thing.”

“Are you here on a scholarship?”

Wow, he didn’t throw any punches. It seemed an odd thing to ask and I struggled over my answer before he spoke again.

“I oversee many of the interviews for scholarship applications,” he explained. “What’s your name?”

“Adele,” I said, feeling it suddenly click into place. “I was awarded the Margaret Phillips Memorial Scholarship last year and again this year.”

He pointed a finger at me. “Yes, that’s it.” Seemingly pleased with himself, he tucked his hands into his pockets. “Adele Morello.”

“You have a great memory.” I vaguely remembered him, but couldn’t recall his name. “I’m sorry, I haven’t absorbed any caffeine through osmosis today,” I joked. “I can’t remember your name.”