LOVE BUG

CHAPTER 34: TASTING

Anastasia takes in the pale beige exposed beams above her, her eyes slowly adjusting after the multicolored stars she has just seen, and when she turns her head, she finds another celestial light in a pair of dark brown eyes. Her gaze focuses on the blissful intensity there, while her brain is still too dazed to comprehend, or even acknowledge, the somersault of her racing heart.

She lazily lets her eyes wander higher to the glistening forehead hid by a few damp, wild curls falling over, before her gaze halts on the rosy lips parting to let out heavy, recovering breaths matching hers. She doesn't need to gaze lower; she has already explored carefully every inch of the velvety skin there, and her hammering heart wouldn't survive it.

"Wow!" she finally manages to breathe out, making a wide smile stretch the puffy lips she has been staring at as Nathaniel chuckles breathlessly.

"How do you say? Oh ma...?"

"Mon dieu."

He props up on his elbow. "Say it again."

His gaze is shining at her, dazzling her, and it is tickling her warmly inside.

"Make me." She lifts a defiant eyebrow.

"Is that a challenge?" He imitates the arch of her eyebrow, and from the dark twinkling in his eyes to the drop in his voice, the brightness switches to a dark promise in less than a second, leaving her to wriggle her legs as tingles are climbing them quickly.

Though these delicious tickles aren't only in her legs when his lips are finding back the soft, reddened skin of her neck, reawakening her senses that she has thought already saturated in pleasure. His mouth is seizing fully the challenge, and she feels there is no way she can win this.

But a loud ring interrupts the game.

"Oh mon dieu!" She sits up abruptly, her breath already lost in a way Nathaniel surely hasn't imagined as she is grabbing her phone in her bag beside the bed.

Yet he doesn't appear like a sore loser when he bursts into laughter. "I wasn't expecting this!"

She can't help but smile, although it quickly falls down as she checks the time on her phone and starts to gather her things.

"I gotta go! I'm sorry. I totally forgot that I have the cake tasting for the wedding."

Nate keeps the groan threatening to escape his chest locked in his throat, where there is also the bitter taste of the word 'wedding'. He knows this will happen. This is part of the agreement to 'let it be and stop worrying', yet it feels like the ticking of a bomb that will blow in his face.

"No problem." His voice comes out strained and hoarse as he watches her slip away from his fingers with each piece of clothing she puts back on, and the cold is reaching his skin from inside out.

When she finishes putting her top on, he's shivering, and with his attentive eyes still following all her movements, he now focuses on her flushed face, and the crease deepening slowly between her eyebrows. 

He's starting to know these little nuances in her frown, and as her gaze gets lost, and her teeth sink in her plump bottom lip, it leaves no doubt: she is thinking, yet he still has no idea about what. The only thing crossing his mind is to draw her back in the sheets.

"Come with me?" She pulls him out of his thoughts. "I mean, if you want... I'm going alone: Fergus can't come and I have no one... You may have more experience with that kind of stuff than me, but it's okay if you don't want, or if you got better things to do..."

He smiles. When she is nervously and adorably rambling, she's making him even weaker.

"Cakes and you? Of course, I'm coming!" He gets up, his grin turning voracious.