Tossed Into Love
Page 23

“You’re really good at kissing,” I blurt, then groan when I feel his body start to shake on top of mine with silent laughter. “Gahh. I think you short-circuit my brain. I can’t seem to stop myself from telling you things I shouldn’t be telling you.”
“I like it,” he says teasingly.
I open my eyes to look up at him.
“It’s refreshing.”
“It’s also embarrassing.”
“You shouldn’t be embarrassed, Princess. I prefer you being overly honest to keeping shit from me.”
My heart thumps hard. I open my mouth once more to tell him about the shop, then snap it closed when the next words leave his mouth.
“Now tell me—why are you on birth control?”
“I thought you forgot about that.”
“How would I forget about it? We just spoke about it this evening.” He frowns.
“Okay. Well, then, I thought you were going to let it go,” I try.
He shakes his head. “I did let it go while we were at the shop. But we’re not at the shop anymore.”
“I’m hungry,” I try again as I push at his chest to get him to move off me.
“You can eat in a minute.” He denies me.
“I need to pee.”
“You can pee in a minute,” he says, wrapping his hands around my wrists and pulling them away from his chest, where I’m shoving uselessly.
“I can’t wait to pee. I have a weak bladder,” I lie.
He sits back slightly.
“Why don’t you want to talk about it?”
“Because it’s my business.”
“If this is heading where I know it’s heading, Libby, it’s gonna be my business.”
“Oh my god. You’re so annoying. Get off me.” I buck up against him, but he still doesn’t move.
“Tell me what I want to know, and I will,” he says.
My temper flares. “Fine,” I huff, glaring at him. “My periods make me sick. That is, they used to until I got on birth control to regulate them. I would miss at least one day of work a month because I couldn’t get out of bed the first day of my cycle. Now if I take a couple Advil and have a warm bath, that is usually enough to ease the pain,” I finish. Then I ask snidely, “Are you happy now?”
“I’m not happy that you’re in so much pain that you gotta miss work, but I’m happy to know so that if something like that happens, I can help you out,” he says softly, running his fingers through my hair. “Don’t be pissed at me for asking.”
“I’m not pissed,” I lie.
“I want to know everything about you, Libby. And I mean everything,” he says, his voice tender.
“Do you think maybe we can start talking about that kind of stuff on . . . say . . . date number twelve?”
“No.” He shakes his head, and I return to glaring at him.
“You know, you are seriously annoying.”
“You’ve mentioned that before, Princess.”
“Well, I don’t want you to forget that, so I’ll tell you again. You are annoying—seriously annoying.”
“But you like me.”
“I’m not sure about that anymore.”
“Really?” He raises a brow. “Your tongue in my mouth and those sweet little sounds you were making a few minutes ago say differently.”
“That was a few minutes ago.”
“So if I kiss you now, you won’t kiss me back?”
“Nope.” I shake my head.
He grins, then lowers his mouth to mine, nipping my bottom lip.
“Kiss me,” he coaxes, kissing my upper and then bottom lip before nibbling on them.
“No.” I try not to give in. I really, really do. But when his hand moves up my side and his thumb sweeps under my breast, I lose all rational thought, open my mouth, and kiss him back.
“We need to stop,” he says, pulling his mouth from mine sometime later.
Once more, it takes a few seconds for me to get my eyes to open. I shift under him, feeling the hard outline of his cock through his jeans and mine. I shiver.
“Yeah, we really need to stop,” he mutters. But instead of stopping, he kisses me once more. This means by the time we do stop making out on my couch, we end up eating really cold pizza.
Still, I’m pretty sure it’s the best pizza I’ve ever had.
“Libby Reed, answer this door right now.”
I force one eye open, then the other. I look at the clock next to my bed. Eight. Way too early to be up when I didn’t get to sleep until after two, when Antonio left.
“Libby!” Miss Ina shouts once more, knocking—no, not knocking—pounding on the door.
“Go away,” I groan, putting my pillow over my head in an attempt to drown her out.
“Answer this door,” she shouts back, banging even more and using a hard object to do it.
Since I know she won’t go away until I get up, I toss back the covers, roll out of bed, and stomp toward the door.
“Miss Ina, it’s only eight in the morning,” I snap as soon as I swing the door open. I find her with a cane in the air, ready to start pounding again.
“I know what time it is, child.” She shoves past me into my apartment. “I waited until seven fifty-five to come up here because I knew it would take me a good five minutes to make it up the darn stairs to your door.”
“You could have called me. I would have come down to you,” I tell her, scrubbing my hands down my tired face.
“You would have ignored your phone until you finally got your behind out of bed.”
She had me there—I would have.
“Okay, so what’s so urgent?”
She narrows her eyes at me.
“Did that Antonio fellow come home with you last night and leave early this morning?” she asks.
“Since you know he was here last night and you were obviously spying on us, you know the answer to that question, Miss Ina.” I sigh, moving toward the kitchen. I’ll need coffee if I’m going to deal with her.
“I wasn’t spying. I can hear everything that happens in this building—even the things I don’t want to hear. Now answer my question.”
“If I do, will you go away so I can get back to sleep?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so,” I mutter to myself, filling the coffeepot with water.
“You don’t need to make coffee. We’re going to have breakfast together after you tell me what happened last night.”
“What?” I frown, my brain too tired to deal with her right now.
“I got breakfast in the oven downstairs. I made a casserole.”
Oh lord. Why-oh-why did Mac befriend her, and why-oh-why did I think it was a good idea to do the same?
“Now tell me.”
“Antonio came over last night.”
“I know that part. Now tell me what happened,” she snaps.
“We had pizza and watched a movie,” I say, leaving out the fact that neither of us really watched the movie because our faces were glued together through most of it.
“That’s all you did? Just watched a movie?”
“Yes, it was all very PG. Our clothes even stayed on the entire time.”
It’s a half truth, since I did lose my shirt at some point . . . but I kept my bra on.
“Hmm.” She stares at me, and I stare back into her dark, almost-black eyes. I wonder if she can actually read what’s written on my soul. “Good.” She approves of whatever she sees. “Now put on some clothes and help me down the stairs. And hurry up about it. I’m hungry. I’ve been waiting forever on you to eat.”
“You could have eaten without me,” I inform her, leaving out the fact that since I didn’t know we were going to be eating together this morning, it’s not my fault she had to wait. “Never mind, I’ll hurry.” I hold up my hand when I see her eyes turn squinty; then I let out an exaggerated sigh. I leave the coffeepot as is and head for my bedroom.
I brush my teeth, wash my face, then put on a pair of sweats, a bra, and a hoodie. I shove my feet into a pair of slippers. Once I’m ready, I find Miss Ina sitting on the couch. She looks at me like I’ve made her wait a year rather than the maybe five minutes it took me to get dressed.