Her face stilled, then softened. Oh my God! He’d said something right. At least, he thought so. But that cute, stubborn chin of hers raised a tad.
“Well, you want the truth?” There was the slightest tremble in her voice. Slight. Almost unnoticeable, but like she was gearing up to say something she was a bit insecure about. “You irritate me and you date people like Cinnamon and that’s fine. But I’m telling you, I can’t…”
He waited, hanging on the silence and hoping she’d tell him…well, anything to give him a clue as to how to make that unsure, sad look on her face go away.
She shook her head. “I just can’t deal with this right now on top of everything else.”
“I’m not asking you to deal with anything,” he offered.
He grabbed her hips gently and lifted her to sit on the counter. She let him.
“East, don’t. I can’t do this, and I can’t afford to wreck cupcakes trying to get you to shut up again.”
He smiled and leaned in. “I’m not looking to wreck anything. But I’ve come to find that this position”—he stepped between her legs and tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear—“makes you have to look me in the eye.” He took a gentle taste of her lips. “It takes some of your sass away, and I get some of the…” He kissed her softly again. “Mmm, sweet Natalie.”
And for the first time, Natalie didn’t look like she wanted to kill him for calling her sweet. Because she was. But that wasn’t a bad thing. Not to him. And judging by her expression and the way her body slowly eased toward him, as if silently begging him to stay near, she believed him.
“Sweet?” she whispered.
He nodded. “You’re a lot of things, and I hate to break it to you, baby, but sweet is one of them. And there’s not a damn thing wrong with it. Because I’ve learned there is way more than just sweetness hiding in you. And I have the marks on my back and arms to prove it.”
She smiled at him and he felt…warm. Like for the first time, he’d made a woman feel something good, and it had nothing to do with sex.
Not that he wasn’t also thinking about sex, because damn, he couldn’t not think about it when he was around her. He was already standing close to Natalie but he still felt too far away. He had to be closer, inside her. And when she opened up for him, and he got to experience every angle of her, he was in bliss for the rest of the day.
And he wanted a piece of bliss right now.
“You know, being as sweet as you are, it makes a man wonder where else you taste so sweet.”
His hands trailed up her thighs, scrunching up her loose skirt as he went.
“Easton,” she whispered. Fuck, he liked the sound of his name from her soft red lips. He liked the way she looked, the way she smelled, the way she felt, and he had to have more. Now.
To hell with the rest. He just needed the kind of sugar only she could offer. And he was going to take it.
Natalie was in between a cake and a hard place. Literally. And she couldn’t bring herself to complain. Yeah, she had been thinking of East way too much, especially after their little outdoor experience the other night.
But East was so good at what he did. Dating. Enjoying life effortlessly. It just came naturally to him, and she found that oddly appealing. But she just wasn’t as good at that as he was. And she’d almost just told him so. Almost told him about this weird warmth in her chest that only seemed to come around whenever he did. Almost told him that seeing him with another woman made that warmth turn to a blazing heat. She just didn’t know how to deal with this…this…
Unknown?
Yeah, unknown seemed right, since she didn’t seem to know a damn thing when it came to East—how to avoid him, how to want, how to handle him. She thought about him, thought about what this all meant, how to stop, how to continue. It was annoying. Like him.
But now, with his softer tone and his hands getting dangerously close to where she needed him the most, she couldn’t bring herself to think of anything but those hands, his mouth…just his body on hers. Because he gave her passion, made her feel heat, and that was enough. It was all it’d ever be, and that was fine. She could even use it to her advantage until she found a date she didn’t want to punch in the face. A relationship with East was definitely never going to happen—not that she wanted it to—but she could stock up on that passion he offered and try to figure out how to deal with these kinds of emotions so she could better understand them with the next man.
“What are you doing?” she asked with more rasp in her voice than she’d intended.
“Oh, baby, if you don’t know, then you need my help more than I thought.”
She needed to maintain her grip on reality somehow. Needed to stay strong, because deep in the back of her mind she knew he was breaking her down, slowly, like a melting sugar cube.
Sweet…
Just as his fingers skimmed her panties, she grabbed a fist full of his hair and tugged. He faced her with a hiss.
“Like I said,” she murmured, “I don’t need your help.”
“But you want it,” he said.