First Comes Marriage (Aster Bay #3)

Chapter Eleven

In all the years Baz had lived in his condo, he’d never had a guest in his guest room. He knew that was the room’s purpose, had furnished it accordingly, and yet there was something unsettling about hearing the muted sounds of movement on the other side of his bedroom wall. When he’d toured the condo before buying it, the bed in the master had been on the opposite wall, and now he knew why. With his headboard up against the wall he shared with the guest room, he could hear every time Sabrina tossed and turned in bed, and he had no doubt she could hear each of his frustrated exhales in return.

This wasn’t working.

He reached above his head and rapped his knuckles against their shared wall. The movement on the other side stilled. “You up?” he asked, barely raising his voice.

Another frustrated harrumph through the wall.

“I can’t sleep.” Then, quieter, to herself, “Stupid nap.”

“On the couch?”

“Yes! Why is that thing so comfortable? A couch has no right to be that comfortable.”

He chuckled to himself and climbed out of bed. A moment later, he was knocking on her door. At her startled gasp, he leaned his shoulder against the wall beside her door, crossing his arms over his chest, and waited through the shuffling and muffled curse when she tripped over something before she pulled the door to her room open.

She wore black bike shorts that made her legs seem even longer than he’d thought possible and a worn Rhode Island School of Design t-shirt that was two sizes too big. Her hair was pulled up in a messy bun on the top of her head and her face was clean, her usual eye makeup washed away. He let his gaze trace the long lines of her legs, over each toe dug into his carpet, over the flared curve of her hips. As beautiful as she was in pencil skirts and heels, Baz thought this might be his favorite version of her—a little undone, a little less polished, a little more...her.

As she made her own perusal of his body in the gray sweatpants that left little to the imagination, he bit back the irrational burst of satisfaction at the awareness in her eyes taking in the sight of him.

With a tilt of his head, he said, “Come on,” and led her into the kitchen.

“It’s two o’clock in the morning,” she protested, but she padded after him.

In the kitchen, he dug through his silverware drawer until he located the good ice cream scoop that Tessa had bought him for Christmas last year and used it to gesture to a seat at the marble island. She huffed but sat, and he turned away before she could see his smile.

“What are you doing?”

He opened the freezer and pulled out two pints of ice cream in plain white containers. “Strawberry or mint chocolate chip?”

“You want to have ice cream? Now?” He eyed the containers and then looked back at her, waiting for her to realize what a ridiculous question that was. Finally, she said, “Strawberry.”

He nodded, placing both pints on the counter. He filled a white ceramic bowl with strawberry before filling his own bowl with mint chocolate chip and returning the pints to the freezer. “It’s local,” he said, as he retrieved a jar of Tessa’s homemade chocolate sauce from the fridge. He held it up for her to see and she nodded enthusiastically. “Made with local strawberries. And mint.” Each of their bowls topped with a suitable amount of chocolate sauce, he returned the jar to the fridge and brought the bowls over to the island. He slid onto the seat opposite Sabrina and set her bowl in front of her. “I’m out of whipped cream.”

Sabrina brought a scoop of her ice cream to her mouth, her eyes falling closed as her lips wrapped around her spoon. “God, that’s good,” she moaned. “You can really taste the strawberry. I wouldn’t have taken you for a fancy ice cream kind of guy.”

“Strawberry’s not fancy.”

“Local strawberry is.” She leaned towards him, her spoon hovering near the edge of his bowl. “Can I?” she asked, gesturing towards his bowl.

He nodded and watched with rapt attention as she scooped up a bite of his mint chocolate chip and slid it into her mouth.

“Oh, fuck,” she groaned, her tongue darting out to wipe away a drop of chocolate from her lip.

He forced his eyes back to his bowl of ice cream and shifted in his seat, willing his cock to stand down. Had it been that long since he’d been with a woman that he was getting hard watching Sabrina eat ice cream?

“That’s a freaking religious experience in a bowl.” Another bite. Another moan that his cock definitely noticed. “That’s it. You’ve ruined me. I am ruined. I can never eat grocery store ice cream again.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Where would one get local ice cream? You know, if one were to run out and need to restock the freezer,” she asked between bites.

He bit the inside of his cheeks to keep from smiling. “There’s a stand at the farmer’s market.”

She stared at him. “ You go to the farmer’s market?”

“Fuck, no. Jamie gets it delivered to the restaurant. He always gets a few extra pints for me.”

“That’s Tessa’s husband?”

He nodded. “She made the chocolate sauce.”

“I’ll have to thank her next time I see her then.”

Right, because Sabrina was friends with Tessa now. He wondered how their girls’ night had been, Knowing Tessa and Kyla, they would have welcomed Sabrina with open arms into their little club of wives and girlfriends, the newest addition to his group of friends. He wasn’t ready to examine how much he liked the idea of including Sabrina in that group.

The sound of their spoons scraping their bowls filled the silence between them. After a while, Baz chanced a glance at her to find her dancing happily in her seat as she spooned bites of ice cream into her mouth. She licked the last of the chocolate sauce off her spoon and set it down, resting her forearms on the countertop as she leaned forward.

“You seem like you’re feeling better,” he said, his voice turning up at the end like he wasn’t quite sure if it was a question.

“Oh, that.” She took her time gathering another bite of ice cream, and for a minute he thought she might not say anything else. “I have PCOS.” She glanced at him, and his lack of understanding must have been written all over his face, because she smiled wryly and continued. “It means my ovary creates cysts when they shouldn’t. Sometimes they’re really big.”

“Your reproductive organs are overachievers?”

She huffed out a laugh. “Pretty much the exact opposite actually. When the cysts get too big, the ovary twists under its weight.”

He knew he was staring, but he couldn’t look away. One of her organs was twisting and she hadn’t seen a doctor because somehow, despite being the youngest daughter of an insanely wealthy family, she couldn’t afford health insurance. He hated everything about this.

“Sounds serious.”

“It can be.” She wouldn’t look at him, her gaze focused on the last bits of her melting ice cream, and he gripped his bowl harder to keep himself from going to her. “Most of the time it’s no worse than what you’ve seen this past week.”

“And the rest of the time?”

“The rest of the time I get real friendly with the nurses in the ER.” His shoulders went stiff, his jaw clenched, and her face softened. “That hasn’t been necessary in a while.”

“But it could be.”

“It could. But there are drugs that can help lessen the symptoms. Birth control,” she said, her false brightness chafing at his skin. “Which, thanks to you and your handy-dandy insurance, I’ll be able to get back on soon. So, thanks for that.”

“Lessen but not cure.”

She sighed and, for the first time that night, she looked tired. “There is no cure. Not unless the thing twists long enough to require surgical removal. But that’s the worst case scenario.”

“How close have you come to that worst case scenario?”

She smiled a sad sort of smile. “Lately? Not that close.”

“And that,” he gestured back towards the guest room where he’d last seen her wincing in pain, “was—what? A medium case scenario?”

She chuckled and shrugged one shoulder. ‘That was a Monday.”

“Jesus.” He scraped his hand over his jaw. She was so cavalier about it, so accepting that she was going to be in pain.

“It’s not always like that. I have plenty of days where I’m not in pain at all.”

“And then you have others where you land in the ER.”

She tilted her head in agreement.

“How will I know? When it’s just a Monday versus when I should take you to the ER?”

She cocked her head to the side, her face scrunched up in question. “It’s not something you need to worry about, Sebastian.”

“But I do. Worry about it.” He hadn’t realized he’d taken a step closer to her, and it suddenly felt too close, even though there was half a room between them. He forced himself to ease back towards the safety of the counter.

She studied him for a minute, the surprise on her face melting into something shy. A retreat. The back of his neck itched with the suppressed desire to tear down all her walls. But that wasn’t what they were doing here. A few weeks together didn’t make them the kinds of friends who had to let each other all the way in, even though the glimpse of herself she’d given him was enough to make him want to bust down the door. It was a reminder of how little they actually knew of each other.

“Why couldn’t you sleep tonight?”

He busied himself with scraping up the last of his ice cream, gathering the melted bits into a final bite, and tried to brush off the lingering sense that he’d let her down somehow. “Just couldn’t.”

He could feel her eyes on him and, for a moment, he wished he had more to say. She’d shared so much, and he knew he should be able to offer her something in return. But he didn’t know why he hadn’t been able to sleep—other than the new noises coming through his wall, that is. All he knew was he had a ball of knotted up…something…lodged behind his sternum. Gavin had called it emotional constipation, but that wasn’t an image he particularly wanted in his brain.

“I haven’t slept well since I was a kid. My mom’s house is old. Half the floorboards creek and in the winter you can hear the air in the pipes.” She looked at him as though she were eagerly awaiting his next words, and despite himself, he found himself telling her more. “I used to lie awake and wait until Mom went to bed, too, and the noises stopped. ”

“Why?”

He shrugged one shoulder. He didn’t like being on the receiving end of the questions. “I don’t think I could relax until I knew she was safe.”

“And tonight you could hear me.”

He shrugged again.

She looked as though she were about to ask something else, but no good could come from continuing this game of twenty questions with Sabrina in the middle of the night. He wasn’t even sure why he had initiated this midnight snack in the first place. It was better if he maintained at least some semblance of distance. This was a practical arrangement. Nothing more.

Liar.

He swept up their bowls and moved them to the counter by the sink. “Do you want any more?” he asked, his back to her as he rinsed out his bowl.

“No. One bowl of ice cream is probably enough for now. But don’t hold me to that later. Especially if all the other flavors are as good as the strawberry.”

He chanced a glance at her over his shoulder for a second to catch the way the corner of her lips quirked up in a smile. “Noted.” He set the rinsed bowls in the sink and washed his hands, taking an inordinate amount of time to scrub the dish soap into his skin. “I heard you on the phone with your mom again earlier. How’d that go?”

“Awful,” she said with a huffed laugh. “But no worse than I expected. She didn’t really want to talk about us. She just wanted another excuse to remind me how important this party is. She only ever calls this often when she wants something.” She paused, but he kept his attention on carefully drying the space between each of his fingers with a dishtowel. “I’m going to drive up Friday evening, stay the extra night. She can get the worst of her questions out of her system before all the guests arrive on Saturday. ”

He nodded, turning around to face her as he leaned against the counter, keeping the kitchen island between them. “What time are we leaving?”

“You don’t have to do that, Sebastian. Really. I appreciate the offer, but—”

“Will it make it easier for you if I’m there?” She paused, opened her mouth as though she might speak, and then pressed her lips together and nodded. “What time are we leaving?”

“Six? We’ll get there with enough time to talk, but not too much before we can excuse ourselves to go to bed.”

Heat flared in her cheeks at the mention of a bed and he wondered if she was remembering the way they’d slept curled around each other in Vegas, if she knew he’d woken harder than stone and dying to kiss her again. He had the strangest desire to press his lips to that pretty blush climbing up her throat, to see if her skin tasted different because of it.

Her voice was thready when she continued. “They’ll expect us to share a room. Since we’re married.”

“I figured.”

“And to act like a couple.”

“Since we’re married.”

“Right. Since we’re married.”

He pushed off from the counter and moved around the island, stopping in front of her. Her eyes widened as she tilted her chin up to meet his gaze. “And how would a married couple act?”

Her eyes dipped to his lips. “Maybe we could hold hands, or do that thing where you put your hand on my back when we’re walking.”

He hummed in thought, noting the way her breathing grew heavier in response, and for a moment the wondered what it would feel like to have her pressed against him when she breathed like that, to feel the rise and fall of her chest against his. “Maybe I could kiss you when you come into a room. Or before you leave. ”

“That is something a married couple would do.” Her eyes flickered to his lips. “Or you could kiss me just because. Since we’re married.”

“We are that.”

Without thinking it through, he tugged the elastic from her bun, her hair falling in messy waves around her face. He set the elastic on the counter, covering it with his palm as he leaned forward until they were eye to eye. Her breathing stuttered, but still she held his gaze.

He fucking loved it.

“Time for bed, wife.”

She sucked in a breath, her little gasp shooting like an electrical current down his spine.

What the fuck am I doing?

He stepped away from her and scrubbed a hand over his jaw. Christ, he’d almost kissed her. The memory of the last time he’d kissed her, of her little sighs and his hands in her hair and her nails on the nape of his neck, mingled with the vision of hauling her onto his pristine marble countertop and burying his face between her thighs.

“Sebastian?”

Her breathing was still shaky, her ample chest rising and falling visibly with each breath, even as her eyes searched his for answers he didn’t have.

He broke their staring contest and moved down the hall, only pausing once he’d reached the safety of his bedroom door. When he glanced back at her, still sitting at his kitchen island, her brows pulled low in confusion, that lump behind his sternum grew and twisted.

“Goodnight, wildflower.”