Would it be fucked of me to tell all of my staff not to let anyone off the property tomorrow unless a dire emergency rose?
Oh my god, listen to me. Gatekeeping this man from sex like he was my fucking boyfriend.
What the fuck was wrong with me?
I didn’t even know how to date, let alone keep a man like Marlow Knight entertained for longer than a twenty minute window.
He was high energy. Needed constant stimulation or it seemed like he’d implode.
How else was he going to blow off that much energy outside of exercise?
My hand itched to shove it into my pocket and pull out the sleeve I’d taken with me for that exact purpose. Yet, no matter how hard I willed myself to do so, my body wouldn’t move—frozen in place while Marlow headed into the kitchenette to wash out both our beer bottles.
It wasn’t my place to do this.
Plus, what was stopping him from saying ‘fuck it’ and hopping into bed with them anyway?
Literally nothing.
“You need a flashlight to get back?” he asked, turning around again. “I got this killer one that has 500,000 lumens.”
That snapped me out of my spiral almost instantly. “What the fuck are you doing with the power of the sun in your back pocket?”
“I heard it was good for bears.”
“To what, flash bang them?”
He laughed. “You want it or not, Blake?”
My stomach clenched. “All good. I’ve got my phone’s light.”
He shrugged. “Suit yourself. Maybe I’ll shine it up at the sky. Give you some sort of beacon to follow.”
“Do that and we’ll have the government showing up with a swat team, ready to apprehend the idiot who took out their satellites.”
“Can that actually happen?”
I shrugged, slowly forcing myself to inch toward the door to put my shoes on. “I don’t know. Don’t they work off lasers?”
“Dunno, I work in finance. Though, I did have one guy on my payroll who worked for the NSA. Maybe I can hit him up.”
I rolled my eyes. “Goodnight, Marlow.”
“Hey, I’m serious about that beacon offer.”
“I don’t doubt it.” Before he had an actual chance at fishing out that ridiculous flashlight, I quickly hurried out onto the porch, the blast of fresh air hitting me in the face and instantly clearing away any residual fuzziness that had collected in the corners of my brain.
Forcing myself not to turn around and look over my shoulder as I descended down the steps and onto the gravel path again was hard. Harder than I wanted it to be. For that want to be there, broiling just beneath the surface of my subconscious, of Marlow waiting on his porch and watching me go, long enough to make sure I got to where I needed to be, was kind of killing me.
I’d never experienced this deep of a draw to someone before and it was beginning to scare me.
I didn’t want to be caught up in the drama of having some kind of summer crush on someone, let alone letting it distract methisbadly. I couldn’t exactly kick him off the property and rid myself of these blossoming feelings, yet trying to deal with them was apparently only making them worse.
Avoiding him. That’s what I needed to do.
At all costs.
No matter what.
