Stardust (Peaches Monroe #1)(44)
Author: Mimi Strong

“It’s a guest room now, but my old bed is still in there.”

He gave me a wolfish look. “Pink? Four poster, with one of those frilly pink canopies?”

“Every little girl’s fantasy.”

“Every big boy’s fantasy.”

I bit my lip. Something was definitely happening in my body. The return of a kittenish, youthful lust. Miss Kitty was wide awake and feeling awfully curious.

I was still pissed at him for whatever he’d implied the night he drove me home, about how a “girl like me” could still get hurt. Whatever the f**kity-fuck that meant.

He started toward the back stairs, the second set that ran up to the second floor from the kitchen. My parents had debated for years removing them and gaining extra pantry space, but my mother hadn’t gotten her way just yet.

Adrian disappeared, his footfalls quick on the carpeted stairs. I couldn’t just let him go up there unattended, so I patted my front quickly with a dishtowel and followed him.

When I got to the second floor hallway, I couldn’t hear or see him.

“Adrian?”

I sniffed the air, surprised to find I did detect his scent. He was wearing cologne, plus he had a musky Adrian smell. I crossed the hall to the front stairs and sniffed again. No, he didn’t seem to have run back down again.

I called out, “Are you hiding?”

No answer.

My heart started to pound. Hide-n-seek always made me so nervous. The anticipation of someone jumping out of a closet at you was so much worse than the actual event.

The door to Kyle’s room was closed. I turned the handle and pushed it open slowly. This was the smallest of the upstairs rooms, and had been his nursery as a baby. My parents had always planned to move him into my old room when he got older, but whenever they broached the topic, he’d get upset. He and I went for a long walk one night to talk about it, and he told me that if he moved out of the baby room, a new baby would come. He had no reason to worry, I said, but he started to cry. That was when I delicately tried to explain what a hysterectomy was, and accidentally got myself into explaining Where Babies Come From.

The floor creaked. Was someone behind me?

“Adrian?” My voice sounded small and scared, which triggered my irritation. “Don’t you f**king jump out and scare me. You do not want a big girl punching you in the face.”

Silence.

Pulse racing, palms damp, I whipped open the bifold doors of Kyle’s closet.

Nothing but a row of little shirts and a row of little jeans. My heart briefly squeezed at the cuteness of all his plaid button-down shirts in a row. They dressed him like a mini version of my father.

I turned around, checked under the bed, and stepped softly out of Kyle’s bedroom.

I was able to check the main bathroom from the doorway, then I paused at the door to my parents’ room. There was something sacred about the room where someone’s parents made love, and Adrian wouldn’t violate that by hiding in there, would he? He wasn’t a bad boy, was he? My soaking-wet tits said otherwise. Adrian was not the good boy he once was.

I stepped into my parents’ room carefully, moving from hardwood to plush carpet. The master bedroom was the only carpeted room in the house—a low-pile pale mushroom carpet, two shades lighter than the brown paint on the walls. The king-sized bed was covered in twenty-six pillows of various sizes and fabrics. My father had grumbled about the pillows for a while, until my mother explained there was one for every year of marriage. Then he decided it was romantic and awesome, and he helped her pick out a new one the next year for their anniversary.

The floor nearby creaked again.

I froze in place, staring at the doors of my parents’ walk-in closet. Was the sound behind me or inside the room?

I reached for the doorknob, my hand shaking.

What was that sound? Was that my heavy breathing, or someone else’s?

My fingertips touched the doorknob, slippery with perspiration. I flung open the doors, expecting to see Adrian’s lanky body amidst my mother’s dresses and my father’s full-size plaid shirts.

For a second, he was there, right in front of me, but it was just my mind playing tricks on me, using a pair of my father’s loafers at the floor of the closet plus a shadow to create an Adrian-like form.

So, he was in my old room.

“You f**ker,” I muttered.

And then he grabbed me. From behind. His long arms wrapping around me like boa constrictors.

Screaming hadn’t occurred to me—not until a big hand landed over my mouth.

As he held me tight, I struggled against my muscled restraints and did the only thing I could. I bit his fingers.

Adrian released me immediately, chuckling and shaking his hand. “I win this round,” he said.

“I’m going to kick your ass!”

I came at him, fists flailing at his chest area. My boy cousins used to terrorize me and Shayla all the time, and beating them up for it seemed more logical than stopping playing with them entirely.

He backpedaled, and I kept coming at him, until he reached the foot of my parents’ bed and fell backward, but not before hooking me around the back and toppling me down on top of him.

Pillows of various sizes flew everywhere in the kerfuffle.

I struggled to get away, but Adrian wrapped his arms and legs around me, laughing.

“Lemme go, spider legs!” I yelled.

“I’ve got you in my web.” His blue eyes shone fiercely bright as he grinned up at me.

His body was solid beneath me, and all the squirming was exciting something not just in me, but in him, by the feel of it. A long, thick something. Miss Kitty got very interested.

I stopped struggling and rested with my forearms against Adrian Storm’s chest, so broad like a pleasant lawn in his green T-shirt. His hands moved up my back to my shoulders, then slid down to my bu**ocks.

And then, for the first time in my life, I did something daring and fun with Adrian Storm.

I said, “Kiss me like I’m dangerous. Kiss me like I’m bad for you.”

He moved his hands up from my ass, to either side of my face, and pulled me down to him.

My lips got closer and closer to his. The heat between our bodies grew stronger, like a campfire between gusts of wind. His lips parted, and his eyelids fluttered closed.

I didn’t just want to kiss Adrian Storm. I wanted to grind my h*ps against his, and feel his lips, his tongue, his teeth on my flesh. I wanted to reach down into his jeans and grab hold of the beast hardening beneath my thigh.

One of the turquoise pillows near my face caught my attention and broke the spell. I was on my parents’ bed. And why was I about to kiss Adrian Storm when I was already involved with someone?