Our Little Love Story *NOW PUBLISHED ON AMAZON KINDLE!!*

chapter thirty four

I stood there in complete and total shock. Jared was here? I had to be imagining all of this. I tightly shut my eyes for a long moment. When I opened them, he was still there; his arms wrapped tightly around me. I took a deep breath, inhaling his long awaited, but so familiar scent. It seemed so real, but he couldn’t possibly be here. I was officially losing my mind. 

I slightly pulled back away from him, half expecting him to vanish into thin air when I did. I blinked a few times and stared up into his eyes. “Wh-what are you doing here?” I asked, stunned. Remembering that I was standing with him in the nude, I quickly bent down and picked up my towel from the floor and wrapped it around my body again.

A slow smile spread across his lips, and his eyes had that devilish twinkle in them. “Well, I guess I can leave…” he trailed off, winking at me.

“No, no, it’s not that. I just…” I paused for a second, trying to sort out my thoughts into some sort of sense, “I thought you weren’t going to be home…er--back in California, at least, for another week. We were supposed to go pick you up at the airport. I was going to ride along with your parents,” the words fell from my lips clumsily. 

He gave a little huff of a laugh, his smile widening even farther. “I kind of…fibbed…to you,” Jared informed me.

“Wh-what?” I asked. A million thoughts were flying through my mind at a thousand miles an hour.

“I may have…fibbed…a little,” he reiterated. I just stared at him blankly. With a small sigh, he grabbed my hand and pulled me over to my bed and sat with me. I turned sideways to look him in the eyes. “I knew that I was going to be home a week sooner than I told you. I mean, not right at first. But,” he paused, tilting his head to the side, eyeing me closely, “once I had been there for awhile, we got papers for when we were leaving, and I may have just told you that it was going to be a week later than it actually was,” he paused again.

“Oh,” I answered, processing everything.

“My parents did meet me at the airport. I just wanted to surprise you, I guess,” he smiled again, and wrapped me in his arms. I inhaled the familiar scent of his cologne through my nostrils, breathing deeply. Oh, how I had missed that smell. 

“Well,” I replied, sitting back to look into his eyes again, “I’m definitely surprised. So surprised, in fact, that I thought I was hallucinating you being here at first,” I glanced down at my hands in my lap and then back into Jared’s eyes. 

A chill ran down my spine, and I shivered; goose bumps springing up on my arms. 

“You better get some clothes on,” Jared remarked, brushing my arm softly with his fingers. “You’re going to catch cold sitting here in a wet towel,” he added, looking deeply into my eyes. I said nothing in response. Slowly, the small distance between us dissipated, and I was wrapped in his embrace once more, his lips pressed onto mine, moving from my lips to my jaw, then my ear, and down to my neck. I closed my eyes, taking in every tiny second of him being here, finally, in my arms. 

I had laid back on my bed, Jared towering above me. He raised his head and moved his eyes from mine to my lips and back again. 

“I have missed these lips,” Jared breathed, kissing my mouth between each word. I wrapped my arms around him, running my hands up his back to his shoulders and pulling him closer. 

“I’ve missed you,” I breathed, kissing him passionately. “All of you,” I added softly. He laid his head down between my shoulder and neck, and I turned and lifted my head to kiss his neck. 

Passion flowed through our veins, we intertwined ourselves, blocking out everything else…

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