But with every day, every hour spent with Holland, that truth kept getting pushed farther and farther away.
28
HOLLAND
Apparently, I fell asleep, because the next thing I remembered, I was on my back, stirred awake by the sound of my bedroom door clicking open.
I blinked a few times, my eyelids heavy as I registered that disorienting, middle-of-the-night feeling. I didn’t know what time it was, but my lamp was still on and as I turned my head on my mattress, I felt paper crinkling under me.
My notebook.
Oh.
I knew what happened.
I’d done this almost every night growing up—fall asleep while journaling in bed.
With my old vision board right in front of me, it felt surreal for a second. Warm and familiar, especially with my gel pen still dangling loosely in my hand, and the stories of Iain freshly scribbled into the pages of my notebook. So vividly, it felt like my childhood bedroom, like any night out of high school.
Down to the middle-of-the-night fantasy of Iain sneaking into my room.
I felt my resting heart rate pick up a little as I turned my bleary eyes to him. Realizing I was awake, he frowned.
That gorgeous frown.
“Go back to sleep, Holland,” he murmured, setting his phone gently on the nightstand.
I shook my head, yawning as I stretched. “I want to stay up,” I said sleepily, eyeing the outline of his half-hard dick under those sweats as he stood next to my bed. I sucked my bottom lip in as I looked up at him. But as I reached up to touch it, he gently caught my hand and set it back down on the bed.
“It’s late. You have to get up early.”
I frowned. “But I’m already up and this won’t take long,” I said. “In fact I think I need it to fall back asleep.”
He smirked. “Nice try. Just go back to sleep.”
I frowned. “Please?” I pleaded softly as I pulled my shirt up over my breasts, holding it bunched against my lips as I watched Iain look reluctantly down at my body.
He clenched his jaw, but since it didn’t work to make him touch, I lifted my butt off my bed, pushing my shorts and my panties halfway down my thighs till he could see my pussy.
My perfectly smooth, freshly waxed pussy that he’d yet to see in anything but pictures.
I could see his will to resist fade as he stared.
“Goddammit, Holland,” Iain groaned as I pushed the ring of cotton all the way down to my ankles, kicking them off so I could spread my legs nice and wide to show him just how touchable I was down there. “Fuck, baby,” he murmured, stroking his dick over his sweats as he leaned over a little, tilting his head to look at how soft and wet I was. His jaw was tight and he was shaking his head by the time he looked back at me. “It’s like I make rules just for you to break them.”
“Well, I got this done before you made the rule,” I said of my wax. Then I opted to add a little truth just to guilt him. “And it hurt really bad.”
An instant line etched between his eyebrows as he looked at me, and I could barely hold my fake little pout, wanting so bad to smile for how much Iain hated when I was hurting. Even when it was over something silly that I’d elected to get for superficial reasons. It was yet another reminder of how he was wired.
Always to feel for me. Always to protect me.
Writhing in bed, I watched as Iain stepped all the way forward, right up against the side of the mattress. He wet his lips as he eyed my pussy again.
“Would it feel better if I rubbed it?”
The gentle murmur of his question went straight to my clit and eagerly, I nodded, lifting my hips slightly off the mattress as he reached between my thighs, his brow furrowing as he rumbled from deep in his chest, stroking my length and murmuring about how soft I was.
And as he touched me there I turned my head, gazing longingly as his free hand pulled his swollen dick out of his sweats, and closing my eyes as he leaned forward, sliding it slowly between my lips.