Slowly We Trust (Fall and Rise #3)(36)
Author: Chelsea M. Cameron

A bell tinkled over the door, announcing our arrival.

“Hi, Bea,” I said, waving to her as she cut a slice of pie and put it on a plate. I’d been back here a few . . . hundred times since I’d had my truck issues. Bea was like the sassy Maine grandmother I wished I’d had.

“Will! Nice to see you again. And you brought a friend.”

“Hi,” Audrey said, also waving.

“Welcome, welcome, lovely lady. If you’ll just follow me over here,” Bea said, grabbing two menus and leading us to the back of the tiny restaurant. We had to squeeze in between the aisles and be careful not to knock into the other people eating here. For a tiny ass place, it was almost always packed.

“Can I get you kids something to drink?” Bea never wrote her orders down and from my experience, she never got them wrong.

“Um, I’ll have orange juice,” Aud said.

“The same,” I said. Bea smiled at us and then gave me a wink before heading to get our drinks.

“You come here a lot?”

I shrugged.

“Not too much.”

“Does Lottie know about this?”

I shook my head.

“Well, she probably does, but she doesn’t say anything about it. We share everything and I don’t know. This felt like my kind of place.” I felt my face heat with a blush. It sounded even more stupid when I said it out loud.

“No, I get it. I mean, I don’t have a twin, but I get it. Sometimes I go to the movies or dinner by myself. People always give me weird looks, but I don’t care. Sometimes you just want to be by yourself.”

“Yeah. But today I want to be by myself with you.” I reached under the table and took her hand.

“Me too.”

She studied her menu, but I already knew what I wanted.

“Wow, everything looks good. I don’t know what to get.”

“Everything is good. You can’t go wrong. Seriously.” Bea came back with our drinks, and I ordered a Denver omelet and a piece of Boston Crème pie. Aud took her time deciding and finally picked the fruit and cheese crepes and hash browns.

“Are you really going to eat an omelet and pie?”

“Yes. Yes I am. I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again.” She sipped her orange juice and shook her head at me.

“What?”

“You,” she said.

“What about me?”

“You’re adorable.” That was not exactly what I was going for.

“Can we just clarify what kind of adorable we’re talking about? Like adorable in a platonic, cuddly puppy way? Or adorable as in a guy you’d want to have sex with?” I hoped it was the second.

She gave me a wicked smile, which I wasn’t used to seeing on her face, but wanted to see much more of in the future. “Definitely the second. Haven’t I proven that already?”

“I was just checking.”

She giggled and looked down into her drink. How did I get so damn lucky?

The food was spectacular, as always, and I kept getting distracted from my own food by Aud’s exclamations of delight over her own. She moaned a few times, and it made me instantly hard, remembering how she’d moaned last night.

I was still congratulating myself on actually getting her to make those sounds. Kandy wasn’t very adventurous when it came to sex, and near the end of our relationship, she’d suggested that we “take a break” from having sex. Or she’d have a headache, or be on her period, or had just gotten her nails done, or hadn’t taken a shower, or a thousand other excuses that meant it was another night for me to have sex with my own hand.

But with Aud, it was like I could sense what she’d want. Where she’d like to be kissed, how she’d like to be touched. But there were still secrets of her body that I had yet to learn, and, as good as the pie was, I was ready to get started.

“This feels so forbidden. Skipping class and having crepes.”

“I think you need to work on your definition of forbidden, Aud.”

She nodded.

“Probably. But that’s why you’re here.”

“Exactly. I’m here to corrupt you.”

The smile faded from her face and she looked down. The flirty sexy energy was gone. I’d touched on her secret. Damn. It would be so much easier to not bring it up if I knew what it was. But I wouldn’t push her to tell me if she didn’t want to. I’d just gotten her to agree to be my girlfriend. No way I was going to screw things up this early by making her run.

I finished my piece of pie.

“Do you, um, want to get something to go?” I said tentatively. She finally looked up and I watched as her eyes came back into focus and she gave me a smile.

“Yeah, definitely.” I thanked Bea, who told us to come back soon, and gave Aud a piece of four berry pie, on the house. I also got another slice of Boston Crème, fantasies of eating it off Aud’s naked stomach flitting through my head.

“So what’s next in the Will Anders Experience?” I hadn’t, uh, planned that far beyond breakfast. I just assumed we’d go back to her place and be naked all day. My only plans had been for positions to try.

“Would you think I was an ass**le if I said all I want is to get you naked again and hear you say my name a million times in that sexy voice?”

I slipped my hand up her leg, hoping she wouldn’t slap it away.

“Actually, that sounds . . . nice. Really nice.” Thank God.

If skipping class and going out for breakfast had felt forbidden, lying in bed with Will felt decadent. I was also tired from the non-sleep I’d gotten the night before.

We put the pie in my small refrigerator before Will pushed me toward the bed and started undressing me slowly, kissing every scrap of skin he revealed, plus everything in between.

“I want to know what you taste like everywhere,” he said as he pulled my shirt over my head. My breath caught as he pulled my bra straps over my shoulders and then kneeled down to kiss my stomach. It had been flat once, but it wasn’t so much anymore. At least, other than my scar, there weren’t any other outward signs on my body.

Will kissed right above the line where my jeans ended and then flicked the button and slowly, painfully unzipped them.

“I never understood why my sister liked to take the clothes off her dolls, but now I’m seeing the appeal.” He licked my belly button, causing me to shiver and heat to pool in strategic areas in my body. I was almost past the point where I could speak and I wasn’t even naked yet.