Part 14 (1/2)
This time, both Novak and Joey busted out laughing.
The absolute silence brought Angel up from the depths of dreamless sleep, and she stirred against the pillows with a sigh. It had been a fun night with Joey and Novak as they finally managed to prop up their new barbecue long enough to grill some steaks that had been swimming in a Worcesters.h.i.+re-garlic marinade for hours. Then they invited her to watch a movie with them but she politely declined, wanting to text Twist in private to explain she was sorry for her bad timing and lack of foresight. He didn't respond, which didn't surprise her, but it did worry her. Grimly she told herself not to borrow trouble until she knew for a fact that she had something to worry about.
Then she saw the news broadcast, and she was certain she did.
As she waited through the other big headlines of the day-a murdered teenage girl in Garfield Park, a potential explosive device at the Wrigley building and a possible trade for a wide receiver for the Chicago Bears-her tension ratcheted up with each pa.s.sing second. By the time the familiar House Of Payne logo flashed onscreen, she was ready to climb the walls.
Luckily, Payne was the focus of the camera's attention. She kept her eyes on Twist in the background, and she cringed a little when he fished his phone out to clearly silence the text chime. But he didn't put it away after doing so, and all things considered, that was probably a mistake on his part. By the time the news piece was over, Twist had turned his back completely on the media, and there was a tension in his shoulders that didn't bode well at all.
When she'd gone to bed soon after, she hadn't expected to fall asleep straight away, especially with Twist weighing so heavily on her mind. But she'd been exhausted after such a full day, and now with the silence wrapping cozily around her senses, she was ready to drift off again when several things. .h.i.t her at once.
It was silent in the room. The familiar ticking of her bedside clock had vanished.
The soft weight of the comforter and sheet had been carefully peeled back, and gentle hands were sliding up her thighs.
She started. ”What-”
”It's me, Angel,” came Twist's rumble-quiet voice, reaching out to her through the dark like a velvet caress. ”Sorry I startled you, baby. You okay?”
”Yeah, I'm... yeah.” The caressing hands skimmed under her nightie and pulled her panties off, his lips and tongue coming to savor a line from above her knee to the sensitive skin of her inner thigh. Her heart began to pound for another reason entirely. ”The, uh... the clock not ticking woke me.”
”It's back in the freezer where I can't hear it. That reminds me... how do you feel about digital alarms, or using your phone as an alarm?”
”They're not aesthetically appealing.”
”But they get the job done.”
”True.”
”Does that mean you're willing to make the transition?”
”Sure.” Her breath caught when he moved up her leg, his hands hooking under her knees to spread her thighs wide apart. ”Ah... I take it you're not mad at me, then?”
”Oh, I am. Can't you tell?”
Angel pulled in a breath to inform him that if this was how he displayed anger, she'd be happy to p.i.s.s him off on a regular basis. But the remark got drowned in a ragged gasp that whispered into the darkness when his fingers reached the juncture of her thighs.
”Let's see now.” With his free hand, he pushed up her chemise so that he could skim his mouth up her leg to her hip bone. ”What was it that you said you liked? First on that list was licking, as I recall, right? Yeah, I think I'm right about that.”
Oh, my goodness.
A s.h.i.+ver rippled her spine when his long hair tickled her inner thigh. His hand teased her, easing apart the heated folds of her s.e.x before gliding over the sensitized nub. Her body jumped with the shock of pleasure, and she whimpered. The sound turned into a low moan that was his name, while he stroked her with a determined yet oddly cheris.h.i.+ng relentlessness.
”You're the most exciting thing in the world to touch, did you know that?” His breath whispered over her bared skin, and his words were so low she almost missed them as he built the sensual tension inside her until every nerve screamed with it. ”I'm addicted to it. Addicted to your sounds, your responsiveness, the way your whole body clenches and tells me it likes what I'm doing. Even the way you breathe gets me off. The way it hitches in that crazy, sweet way. You've become my favorite thing to do.”
”Prove it.” Her breathing was shallow, and heat throbbed so urgently in her cleft her intimate tissues ached with it. ”Put your money where your mouth is.”
”Don't you mean, put my mouth... here?” For as long as he could, he kept his eyes on her as he slowly lowered his head, and the antic.i.p.ation was so exquisite she stopped breathing. Then at last his gaze was lost to her a scant second before his tongue slid along her channel. Pleasure blazed through her, mingling with pulsing excitement to create an intoxicating mix that flooded every corner of her world.
No way was she going to survive this.
s.h.i.+very delight ebbed and flowed through her-consuming her in eddies of blissful madness. At some point she reached down to tangle her fingers in his hair and hold him to her like her life depended on it. That was what it felt like. If he stopped now, she'd die.
He didn't stop, beautiful man that he was. He made love to her with his mouth until her hips pumped to his rhythm and every breath carried his name. He kept her dancing on the edge of insanity, before he closed his lips on her and gave her what she wanted.
He sucked her in.
Her head dug into the pillow while her back bowed off the bed, and a breathless scream ripped its way out of her throat. Blood rushed to the surface of her skin where he administered to her, intensifying the throbbing sensation all the more as he toyed with her with his tongue. It was too much to endure for more than a second or two, and then the tension inside her snapped. She slipped off the edge of control and into a wild o.r.g.a.s.m that blew her mind so totally apart she knew she'd never be put back together the exact same way again.
Her release was still going strong when he rose above her, applied protection and drove hard into her. His groans of completion soon joined hers, but it wasn't until several minutes later, when he'd half-collapsed on her and buried his face into her neck, that her brain refocused on reality.
”What's grdmwla?”
His head came up so he could stare at her through the dark. ”What?”
”Grdmwla. It was the last thing you texted. I figured I'd made you so angry you were texting in Tongues. Here, look.” Stretching, she reached for her phone charging on the nightstand, flicked a couple of b.u.t.tons, and handed it to him. ”See? Grdmwla.”
He stared at the screen, clearly baffled, before he began to grin. ”I couldn't handle what you were doing to me, so I just shoved my phone into my back pocket so I wouldn't see any more messages. Obviously you had me so worked up I forgot to close out the texting app.”
”Aha. So this was a b.u.t.t text. I've never received one of those before.”
”You're lucky that's all I could send you. I wanted to crawl through the phone and wring your d.a.m.n neck. And then kiss you. Then f.u.c.k your brains out.”
”Now you've done it, my beautiful man.” Smiling, she set aside her phone and rolled back to hover her lips over his. ”Whenever I hear grdmwla I'm going to think it's your personal code for 'let's f.u.c.k our brains out.' Not that I'm going to ever hear it again, mind you.”
”Grdmwla.” Smiling, he kissed her slow and deep, then rolled on top of her while sliding his hand between them. ”Definitely, we need to grdmwla again.”
With a laugh, she let him grdmwla her until she thought it might actually be a real word.
Chapter Fifteen.
”This shouldn't take too long.”
In response, Angel nodded sleepily. Twist smiled to himself and steered her up the neat, flower-lined walkway to the front door of his house, a two-story red brick bungalow with a steeply pitched gable roof. He'd kept her up until the wee hours of the morning, so it wasn't all that surprising she was operating on a zombie-shuffle level. But as far as he was concerned, she deserved it. After what she'd put him through yesterday, she was lucky she still had the ability to walk.
”Flowers?” As he dug out his keys, he glanced over at her and saw she was staring at the snapdragons and pansies on either side of the walk. ”Huh. Weird.”
”What's weird?”
”You've never struck me as the gardening type.”
”I'm not. My mother is.” Absurdly pleased that she now knew him so well she could spot the one thing around that wasn't a part of him, he pushed open the door and hauled her in over the threshold. ”I just need to change my clothes and pack up a couple extra things. Then we can be on our way to your parents' place.”
”Take your time,” Angel mumbled around a yawn. As Twist headed toward his bedroom he tried imagining what it was like to see his place through her eyes. Unlike her place, which was girly and had bits and pieces of her love of Alice in Wonderland scattered throughout, his s.p.a.ce was well-lived in, not overly messy, but otherwise not that interesting. His living room was kind of a mancave, with an overstuffed brown leather sectional focused on the entertainment center that had a comfortable layer of dust on it. A sixty-inch smart TV held the place of honor, surrounded by the latest gaming system that he hadn't yet had time to break in. His collection of movies and vinyl also had a fine layer of dust on them, and the air itself had a stale smell to it-the scent of neglect. Ever since Angel had gotten her head rammed into her car almost a week ago, he'd barely been home.
Considering how he'd been spending his time, he hadn't missed it a bit.