“I’m convinced you have no spatial awareness. It’s a miracle you haven’t been mugged before. They would probably take your purse, and you still wouldn’t notice anyone was around you.”
I was still laughing. “That’s not true. I’m not the problem. It’s you. You don’t make a sound when you walk. You’re like a declawed cat. You slink.”
“I do not slink.”
“You one hundred percent slink.” I pulled back to examine the wound again. “You’re probably a serial killer.”
“Hey, you literally almost killed me. With your keys. That makes you the killer, Ade.”
“In self-defense!”
“If I was actually sneaking up on you, you shouldn’t throw your keys at me. They’re your only weapon. I thought you were good at this shit?”
Usually, I was. “I don’t know, Charlie. Something about you just always catches me off guard.”
The air between us shifted with those words. I hadn’t meant them to be a pickup line, but they were somehow more charged than the rest of our conversation. More valuable. If the rest of my words were like paying with dollar bills. Those words were hundies.
“Is that so?”
I leaned across him and wet another paper towel, then tapped his chin with my free pointer finger. “I’m going to wipe your hand off. Keep your eyes up here, okay?”
He visibly swallowed. It might have had something to do with my voice finding some kind of soft, sexy tone. Like one you’d call an nine-hundred number to listen to if you were lonely some time.
“Okay,” he murmured, keeping his gaze on my face.
I was in the middle of giving him a flirty smile when I remembered I looked like hot trash. I’d been moving all day. I was covered in cardboard dust and debris. I wasn’t wearing makeup. And my hair had been tied back at one point today but had recently sprung free and was currently sticking up all over my head.
So maybe not the sexiest version of myself.
Picking up his hand, I wiped it clean of blood, paying attention to every finger in a very thorough way. His hands were rough and callused beneath mine. Strong and dexterous. It seemed each of his fingers was almost twice the length of mine.
I’d never paid attention to his hands this closely before. Honestly, I’d never paid attention to anyone’s hands this closely before.
But something was surprisingly intimate about rubbing a wet paper towel down the insides of someone’s fingers while you stood between their legs.
Blood was a tricky thing. It was hard to get off. But I didn’t want to hurt him more than I already had, so I kept to my gentle ministrations until I was sure every drop of blood was gone.
He kept his gaze on my face, staring at me with an intensity that felt like it could burn.
We were so close I could smell him, so close I could feel him all over me. It wasn’t that I was standing over him to inspect his injury. It was more that I had plastered my body against his.
But he felt unbelievably warm and strong and safe. And I wanted to wrap my entire body around his and let him hold me like this forever.
I shook my head. That was crazy. I was crazy.
We needed to move past this weird moment and find solid ground again.
“Your hands belong to a giant. I don’t actually think they’re yours. They’re not human. They’re something other.”
“Something other?” he asked with a tone of amusement.
I grabbed his hand by the wrist and held it aloft. It flopped around because he wasn’t taking this seriously, but I had a point to prove.
I put my palm against his and straightened my fingers so he was forced to lengthen his too. He was supposed to start making fun of me for how small my hand was compared to his now. Then I would chime in with Bigfoot jokes. We’d laugh, push each other away, then go back to being normal.
But that was not what happened.
He stared at our pressed together palms like they hid the secrets to the universe between them. His skin was so warm against mine. I could feel his pulse beating beneath his skin. I could feel him alive and warm and so fucking close.
