My steps slow.
Her smile falters. “I didn’t mean that.”
“I know.”
“Everyone should feel wanted.”
“I have people in my life who fulfill my emotional needs.”
“Drink your water.”
“I’m fine.”
“If you pass out on the trail, I’m going back to my car without you and leaving you to the mountain lions.”
“That jives with who you were in Hawaii.”
She stops fully and turns to face me. “I don’t date.”
That muscle in my chest squeezes and dips like I’m on a runaway train.
I don’t want another long-term relationship. I don’t want to date either.
Except I can’t get this woman out of my head, and the more I see her here, where she belongs, doing what she was born to do, the more I want to know everything there is to know about her.
She’s my new research project.
Fuck.
Fuck.
I need to get back to a lab. Give my brain something else to obsess over.
But the thought still hurts too much, whereas the idea of making somethingrightdoesn’t hurt.
Or it wouldn’t, if it wouldn’t hurt her too.
“I don’t either,” I assure her with a confidence I don’t feel. “We can be friends who not-date together. Maybe naked sometimes.”
Her pupils dilate, and she sucks in a quick breath.
My dick goes half-mast.
I would absolutely not-date this woman nonstop for the next week if we could do it naked.
And there’s the rest of my hard-on.
Go hike with Sabrina, my brain said.
So we can ask her to get naked, my other brain said.
She bites her lower lip.
I take a half step toward her, wanting to bite that lower lip myself, but she ducks her head and spins back to the trail. “C’mon, Jitter. Sun’s setting too soon.”
I subtly adjust myself, then follow along while Jitter happily leads again, clearly knowing where he’s going.
“This a private trail?” I ask Sabrina.
