Page 25 of His to Cherish
Something I’d buy for the man because it fit him perfectly.
Country music blared through the speakers, and we didn’t speak while he pulled out into the street and began driving toward home.
The silence was our usual thing, and with the tension from earlier seeming to evaporate, I convinced myself that I’d imagined it all. Perhaps it’d been too long since I’d been with a man and I created it—along with his desire for me—in my head simply because I needed to get laid.
And I did need it. It’d been over a year since I’d had sex. It hadn’t been a problem until Aidan started spending evenings at my house, but now that he had been, it was all I could think about.
Wondering what his strong hands could do to me. What it would be like to have his body over me, thrusting inside me.
I shook visibly and watched Aidan turn a dial on the truck’s console.
“You cold?”
Horny,I thought. And it was the worst time to be feeling that way. Not with this man, not on this night, and not in these circumstances.
Wisely, I pressed my lips together. “No.”
He looked at me out of the corner of his eye but said no more.
By the time we pulled into my drive, I was a live wire, sparking with the need for physical contact.
Yet there was nothing I could do about it, because the only man I wanted just lost his son a month ago.
There was no way he’d want me.
Even on a good day, I was so much plainer, simpler, than the “vultures” who were apparently, based on previous conversations, circling his house with goodies and store-bought food.
Aidan talked about them occasionally and it never bothered me.
Now, for some strange reason, it did.
Perhaps because I could catalog my inadequacies compared to those women.
Smaller chest. Short. Simple. Ordinary.
Something that felt like heartbreak settled in my chest, and my earlier resolve to stop worrying disappeared as the thoughts grew louder and stronger inside my mind.
Aidan opened his door and climbed out, but I didn’t move. My body had become lethargic. The realization of my inadequacies weighed me down.
I jumped when he opened my door and held out his hand. “Need some help?”
Lots of it. Probably professional.
I took his hand and let him pull me out of the truck. He didn’t let go when my feet hit the driveway. When I flexed my fingers to suggest he do so, his grip only tightened.
Okay. So that was weird, but whatever.
We walked to my front door, and once we reached it, he let go so I could dig out my keys.
“Thank you,” I muttered, unable to look at him. I didn’t want him to see the pain that filled my eyes because I knew the rejection was going to happen. It had to. Everyone always left me anyway. I was used to it by now.
Or I should have been.
The sudden onslaught of sadness surprised even me. Aidan and I didn’t have anything to lose.
With my key in the door, I opened it and tried to step inside, but he blocked my path.
“Chelsea.”
