“So is beer.”
Rami raided the bag on my wrist and retrieved a can of extra-strong beer. He read the label and his brows rose in a dark wave. “Trying to get me drunk?”
“Not on purpose. You might have to stay over if we finish those, though. I’ll be too drunk to walk you home.”
“I can walk myself home.”
“In the dark? Up a mountain you don’t know? Yeah…I’m not letting you do that.”
“Letting me?” Rami laughed again from deep in his belly, oblivious to the sweet shiver it sent down my spine. “Though I suppose you could stop me doing just about anything if you put your brawn to good use.”
“You don’t think hefting trees around is good use?”
“It’s not theonlygood use. That’s my point.” Rami’s gaze glittered with heat and I felt conflict rage inside me again, but I ignored it this time. Curbing the flirting when I’d already put my lips on him tonight seemed kind of pointless.
And I didn’t want to, so there was that.
I finished my chips and opened a beer, pointing it at him as if the sight of it would convince him that hiking up the mountain by himself was absolutely not happening. “Okay, let’s take the word ‘letting’ out of the equation, but you still can’t walk home in the dark, with or without me once I drink this, so it’s up to you…”
“In what sense?”
“Should I drink it or not?”
Rami stopped walking and caught my elbow, forcing me to do the same. “Are you asking me to stay the night?”
Am I? The literal answer was yes, but that wasn’t what he was asking me. “I am asking you to stay the night,” I said slowly, popping the top on my beer, though I didn’t drink any…yet. “And I don’t want you to sleep in the spare room.”
Rami tilted his head sideways. “Why do I sense a big fatbutin that sentence?”
He didn’t seem overly concerned. Maybe I was angsting about nothing. Either way, I was about to find out. “There’s nobut…exactly, I, uh, I’m not into one-night stands, so…”
A slow grin warmed Rami’s face. “So, you’re asking me to sleep with you but not sleep with you?”
“Something like that. I mean, I’m not sayingnothingwould happen, I’m just not into fucking around—I don’t enjoy it.”
“That’s the first time I’ve ever heard you say fuck.”
“That’s what you’re taking from what I said?”
Rami tipped beer down his throat, watching me as he swallowed, molten gaze sinking into me. “Mostly. The rest isn’t something you have to worry about. I’d be totally into fucking around if you were too, but I don’t need it. Shit, I haven’t shared a bed with an adult for more than a year and it’s not the sex I miss.”
“What is it then?”
He drank more beer and nudged my can to my lips, sealing our fate to spend the entire night together. “It’s the warmth,” he said, quiet and low. “That feeling when you know someone’s behind you, or you have your arms around them from behind—that skin-on-skin,man, I love that.”
“Me too. But just so you know, if you were sticking around longer than a couple of days? Yeah, I’d totally bang you.”
A silence fell over us that was so intense I could hardly breathe. Rami stared me down, and I sank into his addictive gaze like I was walking on quicksand. Something drew us together, one step, and then two, until we were nose to nose, and we should’ve been kissing, but we weren’t.
Yet.
Rami took a breath. “You make it hard to remember I have an entire life to get back to in Manchester. I feel like a different man up here.”
“A better man?”
“Who’s to say? All I know is I want to spend this night with you and not think about what comes next.”
There was good and bad in that statement, but I was tipsy enough to latch onto what I wanted to hear and ignore what I didn’t. I drank more beer, then I found his hand and tugged him in the direction of our long trek home. “Less thinking more walking then.”
