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Like when he’d go on too long about books or music until people made that uncomfortable face they always eventually made. The face that meant they’d stop inviting him to coffee or their club or anywhere at all. Or the way he’d follow rules exactly until it annoyed even his teachers or bosses—or completely ignore the rules when they made no sense, which somehow also annoyed the same teachers and bosses. And worrying. Preston was a full-time worrier. If worries were bought at the store, Preston would come home with a Costco-sized pallet of them.
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Bullies. That was the problem. And nobody doing anything about it. It started with stealing sandwiches without consequences, and then they grew up to try to tell everyone in town what they weren’t allowed to read.
Looking for a relationship was way down his to-do list, as much as he might have wanted to find someone. Someone who might want to curl up and discuss what they were reading. Someone kind, like he’d said. Though he wasn’t against a little hair-pulling among consenting adults.
And yeah, maybe he spent too many of his slivers of free time retreating into books. But autistic burnout was no joke. He couldn’t afford to fall back into more sensitivity and meltdowns and trouble communicating, less able to take care of himself, let alone Lacey. He had to work to be accepted, to be masked, to be useful—sometimes he wished he could just be. Or be someone else, who didn’t have to work so hard at it all. Books gave him that. So, he’d have to settle for reading love stories for the time being. He knew their solace was mostly fantasy, but it was enough to blot out for a while
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“It’s for people who like books. You’re a person, you like books.” “Maybe too much.” You would hardly know it, the way he was picking at the ragged spine of a book on the nearest shelf, where he’d turned his stare away. “Anything I like, I like too much. So I have rules, two comments, then stop.” “Preston, that sounds exhausting.” And lonely. As lonely as the way her chatterbox habit of smoothing her path to anything she needed sometimes felt. Like a wall of talk between her and everyone else, everyone she was using. “It is.” He ran a hand over his hair. “But it’s better than people wandering
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“You take care of everyone,” she told him, seizing hold of his wrist to lead him toward the stairs. “But sometimes you gotta take what you want.” He twisted under her grip, mouth set as if he’d made his choice, and she thought he was going to pull away—but he spun her around by the hand and pinned it against the shelf suddenly at her back. “What I want?” His voice had dropped an octave, almost strangled by need, and his eyes were on her now, so near and laden with electric desire. “Too much.” “Good.” She crashed her lips against his. His hand cradled her head, drawing the kiss deeper at once.
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At the library he had seemed like a starving man, desperate for each kiss before what he wanted could be snatched away. Now he savored her, sipping gentle kisses from her mouth, running his hand over her hair.
“Fuck,” Preston breathed over her skin. She managed to say, around her insides clenching and the instinct to gasp, “For a guy who works with books”—a shiver escaped her lungs—“your vocabulary’s awfully limited.” His lips twisted wryly. “Sorry, I left my thesaurus at home.” Then he applied that smirk to her skin and there were no words needed at all, none that might possibly describe the heaven of Preston’s mouth stroking over her breast, slowly, gradually, agonizingly honing in on her nipple.
She grazed her fingers over his back, up through his hair. “Do that more firmly.” He spoke into the wide hollow between her breasts. “It feels wrong unless—” “Autism thing?” “Mm-hm.” He had already moved his mouth to her other breast, and it was no problem at all for Harmony to dig her fingers into his back, to claw them through his curls, over his scalp. Preston slid back, hand still massaging her breast as he kissed down her side and sank to his knees. “Preston.” “Let’s see how articulate you are in a minute.” His fingers snared the lace and dragged it free from her hips. He shifted back on
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