My heart’s booming in my chest, thundering as I stare at him. As I dare to imagine… As I dare to imagine those lips wrapped around my slightly bleeding thumb and sucking the hurt away.
It probably won’t happen, of course. He’s not crazy. He’s not buying this but what if?
What if he puts it in his mouth and I feel the heat of it? I feel the flick of his tongue.
Slowly, he raises my arm further. He brings it close to his mouth and I stop breathing. He looks at the blood, a tiny drop oozing out of the cut, and grazes his thumb over the pulse on my wrist.
My own mouth parts as if I’m the one who’s going to suck on my wounded digit.
Turns out though, I am.
Because his eyelids flicker up and he murmurs, “I think you’re better at sucking, don’t you?”
He pushes the thumb in my mouth then, and my lips close over it.
“Suck.”
As soon as he says it, I do. I suck on my thumb because he asked me to. The metallic taste of blood spreads over my tongue and I almost close my eyes. I bet it wouldn’t feel this erotic, that taste, if he wasn’t watching me like he is.
If he wasn’t so focused on my mouth and the little sucks I’m taking. This wasn’t what I wanted, my own mouth on me. But somehow, this is beyond anything I could’ve imagined.
His eyes, all dark and dilated. My mouth.
His rough fingers on my wrist that he’s still clutching on to.
The flutters in my belly. The clenching of my thighs. The throbbing that I feel between them.
This is surreal, isn’t it? The way he’s watching me.
I think I’ll explode. His eyes will make me fall apart and break open my body because I’m swelling and swelling with feelings when he rasps, “I think you got all of it.”
Only then, he steps away and lets go of my wrist, before leaving me there, all crazy and horny still drowning in his scent and wondering about his eyes.
I wonder about them the next day too.
I wonder about them and debate what to do about groceries. We’re running out and I’ve been thinking if I should have them delivered to the cabin or if I should don my disguise, drive into town, wait for the bar to close so I can slip in the list for my pen pal, Billy.
At some point, I might have to ask him for his phone number though. I can’t keep slipping him notes like we’re in middle school.
I need to be more mature about this.
I’m debating it and mixing the wet ingredients for the muffins I’m baking, while listening to “You Give Love a Bad Name” by Bon Jovi and singing along, when I hear a noise from behind me.
I whip off my headphones and turn around to find Mr. Edwards standing at the island, his eyes glued to me.
Man, his eyes.
“Oh, hey.” I press a hand to my chest. “You scared me.”
He looks at my hand. “I can see that.”
“I didn’t hear you come in.”
He looks to the headphones I haphazardly took off and threw on the counter. “I’m not surprised.”
I tuck my hair behind my ears and duck my head down, and mutter uselessly, “I was listening to my kickass playlist.”
“Kickass playlist.”
I nod. “Yeah. It’s all my favorite songs from like, forever. And of course, they’re kickass so I just can’t stop singing along.”
“Of course.”
The way he says it with such sarcasm, I have to kinda take offense. “Why, you don’t think “You Give Love a Bad Name” is kickass?”
His gaze flicks back and forth between mine. “You know the lake behind the cabin? Through the woods?”
“Yeah?”
He scratches his beard with his thumb, momentarily distracting me with his sexy gesture. “Kickass or not, I think you should stop singing if you don’t want the fish in that lake to drown themselves.”
Fish? Drown themselves?
My mouth gapes open. “Are you saying that I’m a bad singer?”
Amusement flickers through his eyes. Damn him. Why does it have to be so sexy, sexier than his beard scratching?
“I’m saying that you’re killing the fish.”
Before I can retort, he sets something down on the island. “Here.”
And then, he walks out.
It’s a brown grocery bag. I dash to it and see it has everything from the list I was going to give to Billy. But it has something else too. It’s sitting right at the top and I fish it out, running after him.
“You went grocery shopping?” I ask his back; he’s in the hallway.
“Looks like it.”
“You bought me lollipops?” I say, breathily but whatever.
He bought me lollipops. No one has ever bought me lollipops that I can remember. Maybe my nanny when I was a kid and didn’t know how to buy things for myself.