Against All Odds

Chapter 12

STELLA

I blamed the grey sweatpants.

It was totally their fault.

Even now, my mind shut down- their effect debilitating, like a swift slap across my face that I hadn't seen coming.

Making me completely witless.

I stared at nothing, my laptop perched on my knees and the cursor blinking interminably after writing one, single, solitary word on the blank white document's page.

Fuck.

Which was apt.

Thankfully, with my headphones in, I was able to drown out the chatter in the kitchen this morning around me, knowing that I had come down to the lounge to pick up where I had left off last night- which was nowhere. I had literally written nothing despite encroaching deadlines.

Fuck.

And I couldn't snap out of it, couldn't drag my thoughts away from Killian Beckett and his abominably tight ass in those sweats, and the front...

It should be a criminal offence walking around in a pair of those. Making women across the planet shut down internally...

And Killian had made me shut down in all the wrong ways... my cheeks warmed at my behaviour; at what I had done the moment he had left my room- sensibly. As he should have.

But I had not been prepared for his humour, for his soft-worded admission, for the intimacy and the rush of feeling his body pressed so closely to mine again evoked. And when he had stood up to leave and I caught my first, full-frontal view of Killian Beckett in grey sweatpants, the prominent lines of his semi-erect dick impossible not to look at, it brought every recollection of our past intimacies to the forefront of my mind.

There was a reason I had playfully nicknamed it The Monster.

The grey matter between my ears seemed to have melted and then dissipated into steam at that point, and I believe any form of rational thought decided it was better to hang out on the beach than battle against the grey matter covering Killian's hips and muscly legs.

I had stared after him for several moments, feeling my jaw slacken and the cogs responsible for the functional processing of my brain creak and halt altogether, before I had scrambled from the bed.

It was a flutter, a quivering urgency, that drove me forward, that I couldn't ignore, that I didn't know if I could anymore. Outside my room, the landing was dark- silent. Below, the dim glow emanating from the kitchen and the sound of items quietly being shifted around.

I knew that was where he would be and I didn't pause to think, to allow myself to change my mind, and my feet took the steps almost frantically in their haste, the soft slaps of my skin hitting the tiles echoing against the glass walls.

I skidded to a stop in the arched entryway of the kitchen, my eyes landing on him easily where he had half-turned, a glass of milk in one hand, a banana in the other, a plain white t-shirt pulling tight over his chest, sweats riding low...

He didn't say anything, but I felt his eyes warm even in the shadows, a beckoning light entered them as he took in the obvious signs on my flushed face and heaving chest- the clear as day reason why I had barrelled into the kitchen to join him.

His gaze dropped to my lips, flaring imperceptibly, and my pitiful excuse for self-control shattered like crystal in the air around us.

I careened into him.

My arms flew around his shoulders as my body slammed into his. The banana fell to the floor in a soft thump, his arm sweeping across my waist and pulling me hard against his chest.