He shook his head, skimming his thumb back and forth along my bottom lip. “I’m not asking this time.”
Jesse grabbed the back of my head and crushed his lips to mine. I pressed my hands against his shoulders to push him back, but once he flicked the seam of my lips with his tongue, I stopped fighting and melted against him.
“So good,” he murmured against my lips, pressing me to him with one hand on the small of my back, while he wove his other into my hair, wrapping his fingers around a fistful. “Nothing ever compared to this.”
Nope. Nothing did, and it messed with my head for what seemed likemywhole goddamn life.
I poured all the love I didn’t want to feel, along with the anger of tonight, twenty years ago, and all the time in between, into that kiss. The kiss on his bed had been full of desperation from two people who’d always wanted to love each other but hadn’t known how.
It used to be so easy to love Jesse. The hard part came when I had to figure out how to stop.
But as it turned out, I never had.
Teeth scraped, tongues tangled, Jesse’s guttural moan egging me on as I ran my hands all over his body.
Time stopped, and the rest of the world faded away as it always had where Jesse was concerned. The parking lot had seemed empty, but that didn’t mean there weren’t eyes on us from somewhere. I didn’t and couldn’t care, and that was what scared me most of all being back in Jesse’s arms.
When we finally broke apart, I ran my hand over my swollen lips and the raw scrapes on my chin from his stubble.
“I’ll go,” he panted, framing my face. “I’m alone for the night. You can come to me, or I’ll meet you wherever you want.” He pressed his lips to my forehead and rained kisses over my eyelids and cheeks.
I dropped my head into my hands, taking easy breaths through my nostrils to slow the rapid thump of my heart.
I already felt bad for Alex. I was the world’s shittiest date, and I hadn’t even walked into the restaurant yet.
Heading back to my car on shaky legs, I stepped inside and pulled down the visor. I grabbed some fast-food napkins out ofmy glove compartment and wiped away my smeared lipstick. My lips were swollen and the skin around my chin was angry and irritated from beard burn, but I tried my best to cover it with powder and some gloss.
“Hey, sorry I’m late,” I said, breathless, when I spotted Alex at the table.
“No worries. You’re only five minutes late.” His easy smile as he pulled out my chair made the guilt twist that much harder in my gut.
“Oh, that’s not necessary,” I said, waving a hand as I sat down. “Thank you.”
“Beautiful women should be treated nicely.” He cocked a brow as he sat down.
“Thank you again.” My lips burned as I pushed a smile across my mouth. Burning from my ex-boyfriend shoving his tongue down my throat in the parking lot. This was a date that I had been put on the spot to accept from a guy I wasn’t that into, but shame washed over me anyway.
“I should be thanking you. I know it was spur-of-the-moment.”
“Well, maybe next time don’t have those moments in front of kids. Kids who love to talk like my players do. It’s not a big deal, but I don’t want the parents to get a bad impression, and your sister-in-law wouldn’t want that either. She’s little but scary.”
“We all know that.” He chuckled as the waitress brought the bread to the table.
The steam from the flaky crust wafted toward me as she poured the flavored olive oil into a shallow bowl next to the basket.Thank God.
“I had no idea you were in publishing.”
“Editing,” I corrected around a mouthful of bread. “The article highlighted the more well-known authors I work with, so it made it sound like I was in publishing. I did work for a largepublishing company out of college, but I like being on my own. What do you do for a living?”
“Finance. Stocks, that kind of thing. My book is about baseball, but I only have about twenty chapters. I’d love to have someone look at it, but I don’t know who I’d give it to.”
“Well,” I said, clearing my throat after I swallowed. “I’m slammed, and my schedule is booked for the next few months. I don’t even get the chance to read for pleasure lately. I can ask some friends if they could fit it in.”
“Sure, that sounds fine. The book was just my conversation starter. Asking you out to dinner on the field felt a little odd. Especially since Penny told me not to.”
I stopped swirling my second piece of bread in the puddle of olive oil.
“She told you not to?”
