Not real. Not the lake spread out beneath them, shimmering under the noonday sun, not the trees spiking up straight from the soft, slippery ground, not the new smell of melt, and especially not that question.
“That what this is about?” Her index finger seesawed from his middle to hers, the move slow and playful. “The weirdness between us?”
If this was a dream, then he didn’t need to answer. And if it was real…he had no idea how to.
“Okay. What I’m trying to say to you, Elias, is…” She bit her lip and he almost lost it. “Are you attracted to me?”
“Yes.” She was every one of his fantasies, standing in front of him. Strong and soft, real in a way no woman had been before. What was the point in lying?
She made a silentohwith her mouth and then followed it up with a businesslike, “All right then. You know that saying about catching more flies with honey?” She edged closer. “Spoonful of sugar. All that?”
He grunted. It was the closest thing she’d get to a yes. He couldn’t for the life of him figure out where this rabbit hole was leading.
“I saw a TED Talk recently,” she said. “The speaker said that it’s…” At his blank look, she paused. “What?”
“You saw Ted talk?”
“A TED Talk. You don’t know what that is?” When did she get so close to him? Her head tilted back, her mouth suddenly so near her breath warmed his neck. It was light and sweet, and now he couldn’t stop thinking about honey.
“No,” he whispered, though he couldn’t remember her question.
“Oh, hm. Okay. Well, research says that the flies and honey thing is true. You want someone to do something, it’s better to sweeten the pot than to punish.” Her eyes made a slow circuit of his face. By the time they made it back to his, he was breathing hard and fast, and the want was front and center—bigger than the pain, the exhaustion, his mission. Anything.
“What’d you…” He cleared his desire-clogged throat. “Have in mind?”
“How about a kiss?”
His body leaned in fractionally, but she’d already backed up.
“Is this for real? I’m not sure—”
“A kiss. Yes or no, Elias?”
His “Yeah” was a tight whisper, as if his entire being wasn’t screaming for it.
“Get on the ground, then. And let me dress your wound properly.”
He was hard as a rock now, his cock throbbing like it hadn’t done in ages. And it wasn’t just from the promise of a kiss. It was the game he liked—this quid pro quo thing. And maybe also the danger of it all. Like she’d dug into his psyche and pulled out some kinks he didn’t even know existed.
“A kiss.” He breathed it like a secret password.
She nodded. He couldn’t pull his eyes from her lips—the bow-tie curve at the top, the more pronounced pout below. They were pink in the middle, like her tongue. Like maybe other places that he didn’t dare think about.
“You’ll kiss me.” It was incomprehensible. The whole thing.
“Yes.” She was all business, her lips tight, her brows up, without a hint of that closeness they’d just had. “Now, come on.”
Chapter 21
Slowly, he lowered himself to the ground, full of the smell of rotting leaves and mud, fresh green growth in there somewhere, poised and ready, though it had yet to pop. She followed him down, pointedly ignoring the way he watched her—like if he blinked, she’d disappear—and got to work.
Instead of shutting his eyes through the painful application of antiseptic, he kept them wide-open, losing focus in the treetops halfway through the bandaging process.
“Lift.”
He obeyed, held himself up while she wrapped a bandage around his middle, and settled back down, waiting for her to finish.
Which took forever. Her hands smoothed the tape, her fingers tested the edges, lingered…
