18

When a knock sounded on the pool house door on Sunday morning, Olivia smoothed the non-existent creases from her high-waisted dark brown pants and looked down to make sure her gray-blue sweater was tucked in properly.

She couldn’t do anything about the bruise that still marred the side of her head and that her bangs didn’t fully cover, but at least the rest of her looked okay.

What are you doing? Chris will never give you what you want. He’ll use you and discard you like he did with all the other women.

Olivia did her best to ignore the pessimistic voice, but she couldn’t lie and say there wasn’t a small part of her that worried it was right. Chris wasn’t exactly known for his long-term relationships, after all. But he’d also sounded sincere when he’d said it wouldn’t be just sex between them, and she was choosing to believe him.

Her mouth felt dry as she opened the door, but her clammy palms didn’t seem to have the same problem. Nerves had started attacking her as soon as she’d woken up, and they hadn’t let up since. She barely remembered her first date with Drew, but she was certain she hadn’t felt the intense mixture of anxiety and excitement that was playing havoc on her body now.

Her stomach was in knots, her pulse was racing, and she hadn’t stopped fidgeting from when she’d finished applying her makeup to the moment she’d heard the knock.

Chris looked up from the ground, his face breaking into a smile when their gazes met. “Hey,” he said, the deep timbre of his voice sending a pleasant pulse down Olivia’s spine.

“Hey,” she replied, matching his smile with her own.

He stepped forward and placed his hands on her waist, his eyes never leaving hers. “You look beautiful.”

“Thank you.” Olivia bit her lip to keep her grin from growing any larger.

His eyebrow arched. “Aren’t you going to say I look handsome?”

She rolled her eyes. “You already know you do.”

He always looked good, but in the gray Henley and black bomber jacket he was wearing, he practically looked edible. And that was without taking into account the dark jeans that fit him in a way that made Olivia know his ass probably looked great in them.

“I do,” he agreed with a solemn nod. “It’s a blessing and a curse.”

Olivia rose on her toes and wrapped her hands around the back of his neck. “What? Being a narcissist?” she teased.

He sent her a scowl. “No. Being so good looking,” he corrected. “You should know how it feels.”

She chuckled at that. “Very smooth.”

Chris smiled, and his dimples appeared. It was unfair how good they looked on him. “Just telling it like it is.” He lowered his head an inch or two, his breath ghosting over her nose and mouth. “Is this okay?” he asked when their lips were almost grazing.

Olivia wet her lips and nodded. Even if her parents weren’t at church and could have spied on them from the main house, she didn’t think she could have said no.

“Yes,” she whispered, and then his lips were brushing against hers in the softest, slowest kiss she’d ever experienced.

Olivia had always imagined every kiss Chris gave would be the kind that left you breathless. The heated, rushed kisses of someone about to desperately rip your clothes off, but this was different.

This kiss was gentle and sweet. It wasn’t heady or fervent, but that made it all the better. It was a greeting kiss. It was a first-date kiss. It was the kind of kiss you gave to someone you wanted more than just sex from.

Maybe Olivia was reading too much into it, but she was smiling like a love-sick teenager when the kiss ended.

His hand lifted, and his thumb gently grazed the skin just below her bruise. “How does it feel?”

“Better,” she replied with a smile.

“Good,” he said, his hand returning to her waist. “Ready to go?”

She nodded, and Chris released her only to grab her hand and interlink their fingers. She closed the door behind her, and they walked to his car together, free from prying eyes that would have forced them to have at least three feet of distance between them.

Chris even opened the passenger door for her, something she could never have imagined him doing mere weeks earlier. It was like a dream from her teenage years come true. Only better. So much better.

“So where are we going?” Olivia asked once Chris had gotten in the driver’s seat and started the car.

“An escape room,” he replied.

“An escape room?” she asked, her smile stretching wider.

He nodded before reversing out of the driveway. “I thought to myself, what would Olivia Warner want to do on a date, and I ruled out all the usual things. You know, skydiving, hang gliding, abseiling.”

Olivia grinned. “Of course.”

“And then it hit me,” he continued. “Where do you take someone who enjoys puzzling out equations and loves having their brain challenged?”

“An escape room,” Olivia concluded.

“Exactly. So, how did I do?” Chris asked.

“You did good. I’m impressed,” she admitted, her nerves giving way to a warm glow in her chest.

He shot her a wink. “I aim to please.” He pulled to a stop at a four-way stop and handed her his phone. “You can be in charge of music again.”

“Are you sure you want to trust me with this?” Olivia asked, only half-joking. “What if Kelce sends you another text about wanting your coc—”

“Kelce won’t be texting me anymore,” Chris said loudly, cutting her off.

She stopped scrolling through his music to look at him. “She won’t?”

“I made the wise decision of blocking her,” Chris replied with a shrug.

A confusing combination of relief and envy shot through Olivia at his admission. She was obviously happy that he’d blocked a woman he’d used to hook up with, but she hated that there were countless others like Kelce who he’d been with before they’d started whatever this was.

Olivia had only ever slept with one guy. She wasn’t exactly experienced, and she worried that if and when they slept together, she would end up being nothing but a disappointment compared to the others.

“Oh,” she said. “That’s…”

“I think the word you’re looking for is good,” he filled in for her with an awkward chuckle.

“Yeah,” she agreed, looking back down at his screen and selecting a song by The Strumbellas.

“What’s your favorite color?” he asked.

Olivia frowned. “What?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s not pink or purple,” he said. “Maybe blue?”

“Why are you asking me about my favorite color?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” He shot her a grin. “I’m trying to get to know you better.”

Olivia shook her head in amusement. “Chris, you’ve known me for years.”

“I have,” he agreed. “And yet I somehow don’t know what your favorite color is. Mine is red, by the way.”

“Not Hoyas blue?” she teased.

“Unfortunately not.” He stole a glance at her. “Well, are you going to tell me?”

“Yellow,” she replied. “My favorite color is yellow.”

“Why yellow?”

She smiled. “Because it’s the happiest color.”

“Not going to lie, I wasn’t expecting that to be your answer.”

Olivia turned her head to look at his profile. “Because I’m far from a ray of sunshine?”

He winced. “I just meant that you weren’t exactly the happiest teenager in the world.”

She smiled sadly. “No, I certainly wasn’t,” she admitted. “Especially around the time Riley moved in with us.”

He let out a sound of agreement. “Before that, you were actually mostly smiles,” he noted. “I guess having Riley around made the problems with your mom get a lot worse?”

Olivia pinched the pendant hanging around her neck between her fingers. “Yeah, something like that.”

“Yellow,” he said, as though testing the word out. “I like it. It suits you.”

“That’s good, considering half my closet is yellow.”

“I’ve noticed,” he admitted. “And you should definitely wear that yellow sundress more often.”

She smiled. “It’s not summer anymore, Chris.”

“Pity,” he sighed. “Maybe next year.”

Olivia shook her head in amusement. She couldn’t believe he’d remembered that dress.

◆◆◆

“I am so disappointed in you,” Chris said while walking her back to the pool house after their failed attempt at the escape room. He clicked his tongue. “I thought you were meant to be some kind of math genius.”

Olivia’s jaw dropped open, and she shoved him playfully as they reached the door. “Firstly, I never claimed to be a genius, and secondly, you also didn’t see there were two cherries in the equation instead of three.”

They’d gotten stuck trying to unlock a door by solving an equation where numbers had been substituted with pictures of fruit. In Olivia’s defense, they’d been told that three cherries were equal to six, and if the equation had used three cherries, she would have been right. It wasn’t her fault she wasn’t a visual person and hadn’t seen the trick. Besides, who substituted numbers with fruit? It didn’t even make any sense.

“I’m not the math expert,” he retorted in a way that made it clear he was only teasing. “You had one job, Liv. One.”

“If that’s true, then why was I the one solving almost all the other clues?” she asked, turning to face him and stepping forward so she was in his personal space and their faces were inches apart. “Hm?”

Chris tried to keep a straight face, and he succeeded for all of two seconds before he cracked. His lips curved up, and his eyes lit up. “You’re incredible, you know.”

Olivia blinked. “What?”

“I wouldn’t have gotten past the first room without you.”

She quirked a brow. “I thought you were disappointed in me?”

His smile grew, and his dimples appeared. “Only a little.”

Olivia narrowed her eyes in mock anger. “You’re such a jerk.”

He nodded, lifting his hand to brush her hair behind her ear. He kept his palm on her cheek, and his gaze dropped down to her mouth. “Will you let me kiss you anyway?”

The corners of Olivia’s lips twitched up. “Fine, but only because you walked me to my door like a real gentleman.”

Chris stepped closer, his other hand moving to rest on her hip. “A real gentleman wouldn’t kiss you like this,” he told her before his mouth crashed down on hers.

Their kiss that morning had been sweet, but this one was anything but. It was hungry and urgent, Chris’s tongue almost immediately slipping into her mouth and sending a jolt of pleasure down her spine. He guided her backward until her back hit the door, and when his body pressed into hers, Olivia breathed a moan against his lips.

His hands were everywhere. In her hair, on her waist, behind her neck. His touch was scorching, leaving blazing trails in its wake, heating her skin and her core until she felt the need to pull her sweater over her head.

“Wait,” she murmured breathlessly, spinning in his grip to open the door and pull him inside her bedroom.

She slammed the door behind them. Olivia didn’t give him even a moment to speak before she was plastered to his front again, her tongue stroking against his and her fingers digging into his shoulders. Chris grabbed her waist, and in perhaps the sexiest move possible, he picked her up and placed her on the edge of her desk as easily as Olivia would pick up a book.

He stepped between her legs and tugged her closer, drawing her against his hardness, and Olivia’s hands gripped his sides, fruitlessly trying to pull him nearer when their bodies were already firmly joined.

Chris pulled her sweater up, only high enough to untuck it from her pants and set his hands on the bare skin just above her waist. “Tell me when to stop,” he said, his hands tightening as he ground himself against her.

“Don’t stop,” Olivia replied, despite the small voice screaming at her that she was making a mistake. She didn’t want to stop at having Chris’s hands beneath her sweater. She didn’t want to stop when her body was on fire and the only thing that would ease the flames was him. “Please don’t stop.”

Chris drew back, his heavy-lidded eyes meeting her gaze. “Are you sure?”

She nodded, her palms resting on his sculpted chest, the material of his Henley doing nothing to hide the feel of his hard muscles. “I’m sure.”

A slight frown drew his brows together as his eyes searched her face. “What happened to moving slowly?”

“Fuck moving slowly,” she replied. “I want this.” Her hands moved up to his neck, and she sank her fingers into his hair. “I want you.”

Chris’s throat bobbed with a swallow, and he wet his lips with his tongue. “Fuck, Liv. You have no idea how badly I want you.”

She wrapped her legs loosely around his waist, and he agreed to her silent command by grinding into her again.

“Are you absolutely sure?” he asked, sounding pained.

Olivia nodded. She’d never been so sure of anything in her life. He might not have kissed her like a gentleman after walking her to her door, but he’d opened the car door for her. He’d placed a protective hand on her back when they’d walked from the car to the building that housed the escape room. He’d listened to all of her suggestions about the clues.

He’d treated her like an asset—as someone valuable—even when she’d turned out to be wrong about the cherries. He’d told her she’d looked beautiful when he’d picked her up. He’d teased her, but never to be mean. He’d shown her that he liked her for more than what her body could offer. He’d shown her that he liked her for her mind.

He’d remembered the yellow dress she’d worn that day she’d asked him if he would take her rock climbing.

He’d remembered that there was a time when she was a teenager when she used to smile often.

He’d planned a date around what she would enjoy.

He’d asked her twice if she was certain.

“I’m sure,” Olivia said again, but Chris didn’t move to kiss her or pull off her clothes.

“If you want to stop at any point, you tell me,” he said, his brown eyes unwaveringly locked on hers.

She nodded, a smile tipping up her lips. “I’ll tell you.”

“You’re sure?” he asked again, and this time, Olivia let out a light laugh.

“I’m sure.”

He lowered his head then, meeting her mouth with his in a slow dance of lips and tongues. This kiss held the sweetness of their pre-date kiss and the hunger of the ones they’d shared since. It wasn’t urgent, but the tug of his teeth on her bottom lip was a delicious promise of what was to come.

“Chris?” Olivia asked when his mouth started a slow path down her neck.

He hummed against her throat.

“I need you.”

Her words snapped the restraint he’d been showing, and he tugged her sweater off, pausing briefly to stare at her lace bra before he crushed his mouth against her lips with the urgent heat she was craving.