To have his solid body contain theirs. To push and shove against him and not get anywhere with it but to try anyway. To have his fingers lock tight around their wrists and?—
Kevin raised a brow at me, then aimed a pointed, smug look down at my groin.
I glared at him. “Did you get Jasper hard, too?” I asked sweetly.
“Probably,” he said. “You’d have to ask him. I didn’t look.”
I attempted to heave myself upright, but as Kevin still had my wrists and I still had substandard core muscles, I didn’t get anywhere with it.
Kevin, I couldn’t help but notice, was enjoying my feeble efforts to get free as much as I was.
If I played up the writhing a bit, I was pretty sure I could redirect his attention from photos of my miserable past to my infinitely preferable present.
I twisted another couple of times with a breathy gasp, and bit my lip while I did it, sending him a sultry look.
He laughed. It wasn’t quite the reaction I’d been shooting for. “All right,” he said. “You don’t want me to look, I won’t. I did have a quick peek already, I’m not gonna lie. I thought you’d be interested, not upset.”
I stopped my apparently shit attempts at being seductive and slumped. “I’m not upset.” I was a little upset. “I just…I like where I am now.”
“Yeah?” He let go of my wrists and put the photo album down with a thump on the table beside me, then slid me closer to the edge.
“I’m sure there are nostalgia-loving people out there who love nothing more than to go through old albums and notebooks and journals and—oh no.”
“What?”
I sat up, fisted Kevin’s t-shirt, and hauled him in until we were nose to nose. “Tell me you didn’t read my journals.”
He angled his head and said against my lips, “I didn’t read your journals.”
I shifted my grip to his cheeks.
“Um, ow,” he said, reaching up to hold my wrists again. Lightly, this time. His thumbs stroked soothingly up and down. “I said I didn’t. No need to claw my face off.”
“Sorry.” I eased my desperate clutch and stared up into his dark eyes.
“Charlie,” he said with a hint of laughter but mostly sympathy. “I didn’t read your journals. Well. Apart from the front covers, which all had things like PRIVATE! and KEEP OUT!! and NO!!! written on them. They were very clear.”
“Okay. Phew. Thank god.”
He shifted closer. “What’s in them that’s got you panicking, anyway?”
“The usual desperate nonsense any self-obsessed unhappy insecure kid writes in their journals,” I said. Nothing that youwant the man of your dreams to be reading. “It’s silly. Sorry for overreacting. I should have tossed the lot years ago.”
“You didn’t overreact,” he said comfortably. “I only brought the box in because I thought you’d like it.” He touched my chin. “I didn’t know you were that unhappy. If I had known, I’d wouldn’t even have mentioned it.”
To be honest, until recently—until Kevin—Ihadn’t known quite how unhappy I was. I’d thought it was my nature. I’d heard it often enough.
Ignore Charlie, he’s having another one of his moods.
Leave Charlie alone, he’s a born grump.
Forget about Charlie, he’ll get over himself.
I had a life before Kevin. As an adult, I’d even managed to build a measure of happiness—especially once I had my house and Phil. That’s what I’d thought, anyway.
I’d recently realised that it was close, but it wasn’t happiness. It was contentment.
Because with Kevin, life was different.