Chapter 25
Kelsi
“Your feet will take you where your heart is.”
~ Rowan O’Sullivan
Stop, you’re being ridiculous, I told myself as I swept hair into a pile in the middle of the salon.
It wasn’t, technically, my job to clean up the main area, but Bella had looked exhausted, and so I’d offered. The motivation wasn’t completely altruistic, I needed to pull myself together and the alone time sounded like heaven to me. This past week I’d been lost in the never-ending cycle of guilt, regret, and sadness that the hamster wheel of my brain was running on. It’d been one week since I’d said those horrible things to Bryson. I’d picked up the phone to call him at least a hundred times, but I never did. I’d written out at least twenty texts, but deleted every one. I’d driven over to The Tipsy Cow and sat in the parking lot, but never gone in. The thing that was stopping me was there was no point. I could apologize but what good would that do. It wouldn’t change anything.
The sound of the bell jingling over the door of the shop caught my attention, and my head snapped up. Words were already spilling out of my mouth before I had even taken stock of the situation.
“Oh sorry we’re closed…” My voice trailed off in the middle of the sentence, and my heart leapt at what I saw in front of me.
Bryson.
Standing there, looking like a bad-boy fantasy come to life, he was backlit by the sunset coming through the glass doors behind him. The hair on the back of my neck stood up, my core pulsed, and tingles spread from my head to my toes against my better judgment. Seriously, body? Why can’t you get on #teamkelsi? It had no sense when it came to Bryson. Regardless of what my brain or my heart told it to do, it insisted on going its own way. And that way was, without fail, to have a cataclysmic reaction to Bryson.
I closed my eyes and made a point of trying to shut down all of the feelings that were quickly rising inside me. I sighed. “I don’t have energy to fight with you,” I told him in a weary, flat voice. “I just…I can’t.”
“I’m not here to fight with you, Kelsi. And I know that you want me to leave you alone, and I will. I do care about what you want, but I couldn’t leave things like they were between us. I had to at least try and clear the air with you. I have things I need to say, but if you want me to turn around and leave, I will. Do you want me to leave?”
I shook my head and tried to ignore the buzz of awareness zinging through me at the fact that Bryson was here. I tried to push down the hope blossoming in me that he wasn’t mad at me. He wanted to talk, not fight. I tried to tell myself that none of that mattered because it didn’t change anything. But mostly, I just tried to stay standing and not swoon from Bryson’s overwhelming sexiness.
“This week has been hell for me. If you don’t want to have any kind of a relationship with me, that’s fine, but I just thought you should have all the facts. You are the strongest, bravest, sweetest most selfless person I’ve ever met. You make the world a better place just being in it. You make my world a better place, even if we can’t be together, even if we can’t be friends. Just knowing you exist, that your smile, your heart, your love exists, makes my world a better place. I love you, Kelsi. I know that might not be what you want to hear, but it’s the truth. I love you, and nothing will change that. Since I looked up and saw you standing in the bar, in your sweats and tennis shoes, I knew, it was over. You owned me.”
His words caused a flurry of butterflies to erupt in my Benedict Arnold of a belly. All my instincts said that the only right thing to do in this situation was to run to Bryson, throw myself in his arms, kiss him all over his face and neck, and a few other places that were a bit further south.
Almost every instinct. There was one small voice in the back of my head that was whispering don’t give in, you don’t have just yourself to think about now. You have to think of Milo. You can’t be vulnerable or it will lead to falling apart. Be strong, be independent, be smart.
And I tried to listen to that voice. I did. I knew it had a point, but in the end, it was just no match for my Judas of a body. At least, in the end, I did have enough dignity to stop myself from doing what I really wanted to do, which was run to him and jump up into his arms and wrap my legs around him as he spun me around like the end of some cheesy romantic movie.
Instead, I leaned the broom that I was holding up against the wall in a slow, deliberate manner and then walked slowly over to him, wrapped my arms around his neck, and planted one hell of a kiss right on his lips. It got my point across. Before I knew it, we were a desperate breathless tangled mass of arms and lips and tongues and legs.
I drew back just long enough to gasp, “This doesn’t change the fact that we can’t be together, but I want you. I want to be with you one more time.”
He answered my request by cupping my face and crushing his mouth to mine in a soul-binding kiss. I reached behind him and fumbled with the door, clicking the lock in place before pulling the blinds without ever breaking the kiss. We had complete privacy now, and I planned to make the most of it.
We tore each other’s clothes off and I noticed that my hands weren’t the only ones shaking. His fingers were going off like jackhammers as he undid every button and zipper as well. I liked knowing that he was already so full of adrenaline, either from arousal or emotion. That his body was that affected before we’d even really gotten into things.
The truth was, watching his reactions, the way his muscles twitched or his eyes closed, or how his manhood grew harder and stiffer, was one of my favorite parts of being with him. I figured that had to mean something.
All of my favorite things about sex with him were about him and not me. It had to mean something; the question was what? Being responsible for Milo, I wasn’t in a position where I could up-end my life and trust someone even if all my instincts told me that that was exactly what I needed to do. Use your head, I reminded myself for the millionth time. Not your body and not your heart.
Even if my body felt amazing right now, and that was entirely because of Bryson, and even if, my heart felt amazing right now as well, also entirely because of Bryson, I couldn’t put too much stock in it. Yes, it meant something but what it meant was ultimately up to me.
I tried to clear my brain of all pesky thoughts of the future and focus on the moment. It shouldn’t have been hard. Every time Bryson touched me, it turned my brains into scrambled eggs. But every single day more that I knew him, hell, every hour every minute more, that he was in my life, I became increasingly consumed with one burning thought.
Bryson is it for me. He is my forever.
And it was harder and harder to banish that thought from consuming my mind. Even with the best kind of distractions.
“I’ve missed this,” he murmured between kisses. “I’ve missed the way you feel. I’ve missed the way you taste.”
His words, as they always did, sent explosions rocketing through my body and brain. It was crazy how even more than his touch, his words had the power to make me come unglued at the seams. But in a way, I guess it also made sense. After all, as four-alarm blazing hot as his body was, it was his mind and his soul that I was truly taken by, and his words were the best expression of that.
Damn, I just couldn’t get enough of this man, body, mind, and spirit.
When we were completely undressed, Bryson pushed me into one of the leatherette hairdressing chairs and a delighted laugh escaped my lips as an errant thought crossed my mind.
“I’m never gonna be able to look at this chair in the same way anymore.” A blush heated my cheeks at the thought. This was going to be a nice scene to store in the memory bank. I was sure it was going to pop up at random moments, or every day, when I saw this chair in the future and I wasn’t opposed to that idea at all.
He trailed kisses down my neck, brushing my hair softly away from my face as he did. Those tender, gentle kisses caused the butterflies that were already having a party in my belly to up things a notch. Damn, it was practically a butterfly mosh pit in there at this point.
Everywhere his lips touched my skin they left a trail of heat that I couldn’t deny. In my mind, a vivid mental picture flashed. The flat expanse of my pale skin punctuated by infrared impressions in the shape of Bryson’s lips that led down my body leaving a trail of hot foot stones on a path.
Sparks exploded across my torso as Bryson traced his fingertips up my sides, his light feather-like touch somehow having even more of a sensational impact on me then if he had gripped me firmly. My skin jumped as it came in contact with his hot fingers and I arched my back unconsciously.
My body wanted more and more of him. Wanted to be closer. Wanted to be as close to him as I could get. It was an unending hunger, and it seemed like feeding it only served to stoke the fire to even higher and hotter heights. This was something that could never be satisfied. I knew that now. I would only want more and more and more when it came to Bryson.
He slid his palms up the flat of my belly and took my breasts in his hands, engulfing them in his warm grip. He rubbed his fingers smoothly and rhythmically around the edges of my supple flesh and then started to stroke his thumb across my hard, sensitive nipples. The tightening tingling and burst of moisture between my legs was immediate.
“Oh,” I gasped. “Just like that.”
I was rewarded with a cocky self-satisfied grin that spread across his face. The best reward I could imagine. Damn, that grin was so sexy.
He lowered his head and moved his tongue across my nipples in the same pattern that his thumbs had just been moving, alternating back and forth from one to the other. Each time he moved his mouth away from one hard distended nub, his thumb would pick up where his tongue had just left off. It was such a heady and overwhelming sensation. That constant stimulation. The pressure never let up and a raw cry tore from my throat.
“Oh,” I moaned. “You don’t know how good that is. How good you make me feel. It’s insane.”
Then his sexy mouth continued its erotic journey down my body, tracing a trail down my flat belly. Unlike before though, when he was kissing his way down my chest, I couldn’t differentiate between the heat that his mouth was leaving on my skin and the feeling like my entire body was on fire now. He had set me on fire, and I was burning for him.
When he’d almost reached his goal, he pushed my knees apart and dragged his fingertips lightly up and down my inner thighs while he kissed my stomach. It felt so good, but at the same time, I wanted it to stop. Only so that he would move on to what I knew he was gonna do next which would be even better.
Okay, I needed to work on that live-in-the-moment thing that people talk about. With Bryson it was impossible. As much as I was enjoying what we were doing to each other in any given moment, he stirred a drive in me. A desire to do more, be closer. It was just part of what I felt for him, the fact that I could never get enough. And it scared me. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t scare me. But on the other hand, it was also the most exhilarating thing I’d ever known.
“Please. Just…please,” I pleaded as my fingers tangled in the back of his hair, urging him downward.
Some girls might be embarrassed to ask for what they wanted, but I wasn’t. At least not with Bryson. I was an open book to him.
There was no hiding anything when it came to Bryson. Every thought, every feeling, every sensation, every tiny bit of pleasure, my body broadcast for him to see.
“I just want you. I want you so much” I moaned.
He stopped what he was doing and looked up directly into my eyes. When he spoke his voice was earnest, and his words shot straight to my heart. “I want you too, Kelsi.” He said plainly. “I love you. All of you. Forever.”
I wanted to tell him that I loved him too. That I wanted him forever, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. We stared into each other’s eyes for a long silent moment; my mind was racing. It was killing me to not respond, but he put me out of my misery when he dipped his head back down between my legs and covered me entirely with his hot mouth, and my body and mind exploded in a white-hot flash. After that, I had no conscious thoughts again for a good long while.