Chapter Twenty-Eight
It didn’t feel like I’d slept very long when I woke up in the same arms I had fallen asleep in. Only we were lying down, my head resting against his chest. I wasn’t sure when that happened. I could think of worse places to find myself, but none any better. When my eyes fluttered open and my head tilted up, a pair were already staring back at me.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t care.” He drew me up and closer, so both our heads rested against the same pillow. He touched my face and ran his fingers through my hair. His fingers glided silkily down my bare arm. I’d never changed out of the dress I’d worn the night before. It was as if he was making sure I was really there.
“Did you sleep at all?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I didn’t want to miss a minute with you, and I had a lot to think about.”
“Sleep deprivation isn’t good. It allows too much cortisol to be released, which will make your skin collagen breakdown. And it prevents the human growth hormone from releasing at night. You need that to repair your—”
“Shhh.” Porter smiled and put his finger to my lips. “I’ll be okay.” He outlined my lips with his finger. It seemed more intimate now when he did it, lying in bed together in the dark. It made me ache to kiss him, to do other things.
I regrettably removed one of my hands from his chest and took hold of his hand wreaking havoc on my senses before I did something prematurely.
“Was that bothering you?”
“Quite the contrary.”
Our fingers intertwined. We held our clasped hands steady between us.
His bright smile shined in the dark. “You don’t know how many times I’ve imagined waking up with you like this.”
“You never slept,” I teased.
“I’ll try and catch a few Z’s, but first I have some things I need to say to you.”
I waited while taking in the view. I admired his thick, long eyelashes, though his red eyes pricked my heart. They weren’t only red due to the lack of sleep. They wore the mark of someone who had been crying. Despite that, he didn’t seem unhappy; in fact, there was a hopeful glint playing in his eyes. The forlornness of the previous night had all but disappeared. His next statement may have given a clue as to why.
“Did you know that you make little hiccup sounds when you sleep?”
“I do not.”
“You do, and it’s the most adorable thing ever. You are the most adorable thing ever.”
“I don’t know about that, but I hope my nonexistent hiccups didn’t keep you up.”
He sighed, erasing most of his smile. “You gave me a lot to think about last night. I knew I was a jerk for leaving you the way I did, but the way you looked at me that night has tormented me, and not only because I knew I hurt you, but because there was something in your eyes that cut me to my center. Until last night, I could never put a word to it. I thought maybe it was hate because that’s what I wanted it to be. You should have hated me for what I did to you. But it was worse; it was love, and I stole that from you.”
That was exactly how I felt.
“I don’t even deserve to be in the same room with you, much less the same bed.”
“That’s probably true.” I grinned.
He pulled up our clasped hands and pressed his lips against mine for several seconds. “Yet here you are, and God help me, I want you to stay, despite what I did to you. To us. But say the word and I’ll leave.”
I snuggled closer to him. “You’re right, you did take something from me, but you gave me far more than you’ll ever know. All these years I’ve tried to forget how much that meant to me. I’ve tried to forget about you. It’s the first thing I’ve failed at. And I hate failing.”
His grin was back.
“Last night I realized some things, too. Any time I’ve ever conducted an experiment that didn’t go as expected or when the research I’ve done didn’t add up to what I thought to be true or at least something close to it, I would redo the experiment or dig in deeper to see what I missed or to prove to myself I was wrong. The way you left has never added up. It didn’t reflect the person I knew.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I need to dig deeper. I need to know if I was wrong about you so I can move forward one way or another, with or without you.”
“My vote is for with.”
“You can’t know the conclusion before the experiment is conducted.”
“Holland, from the moment I laid eyes on you, I knew how our story was supposed to end, even though I’ve done my best to screw it up.”
“You definitely get an A for that. But the truth is, we don’t know how this will end.”
His impassioned eyes blazed. “I do.”
“Regardless, I have to conduct my own experiment.”
He pulled me flush against his body. “Then let’s get experimenting.”
“Not that kind of experimentation.” I gave a minuscule effort to put some distance between us.
He leaned away laughing. “What kind of an experimenter do you think I am?” He mocked being offended.
“The kind with a Y chromosome.”
“Guilty as charged. Can I at least kiss you?”
I took a moment to pause. “I suppose for scientific purposes we’ll have to. If not, the data would be inconclusive.”
He leaned his forehead against mine. “There you go, turning me on again with your science talk. Is there anything else you’d like to say to me before I share my testosterone with you?”
“Did you know—”
I guess he really didn’t want to know; his lips consumed mine before I could tell him that water could boil and freeze at the same time. It’s called the triple point, and it occurs when the temperature and pressure is just right for a substance to coexist in thermodynamic equilibrium. But who really cared?
Porter’s body melded with mine and our lips seemed to melt together like chocolate in the sun, hot and sweet. His hand ran down and up the length of my body before landing in my hair and tangling itself up. My fingers explored his tight chest and shoulders, all while his mouth traveled over my mouth and down my neck, making me gasp and shiver. He matched my gasp with a groan and kissed me as deeply and thoroughly as he could. My senses exploded; it was almost as if I could feel the rush of adrenaline releasing from my adrenal glands. The bonding hormone, oxytocin, was in force and doing a fantastic job.
Out of nowhere, Porter pulled away and inhaled deeply, throwing himself back against the pillow.
He exhaled loudly. “We need to quit experimenting for a while before we cross a line that shouldn’t be crossed right now.” He turned his head to meet my gaze. We were both breathing harder than normal. He answered the question in my eyes. “I want you to know that you aren’t only some physical pursuit for me. I know you won’t believe it and I know you don’t feel the same way, but I love you, Holland. I always have. I’ll do whatever it takes to show you I’m in earnest, even if that means keeping my hands off you.”
I wiped the tear at the corner of my eye. It had been a long time since I’d heard those three words that had been like a rare gem, elusive but worth searching for.
“You aren’t going to keep them completely off me, right?”
He chuckled before wrapping me up and holding me as if I was that priceless gem to him. “Does this mean the experiment was successful?”
“I’ll have to analyze the data,” I spoke against his chest, “and most likely redo it. Probably several times. You know, to make sure. I like to be thorough.”
“This is excellent news.” He tenderly rubbed my back. “How about we get a few hours of sleep and then we spend the day experimenting.”
“I’d like that.”
He kissed the top of my head. “Sweet dreams,” he said through a yawn.
I had a feeling they would be.