“Not on purpose.” I grit my teeth and tug his shirt down, though I don’t back up. “You had a spinal injury too?”
“Fracture at the bottom somewhere. It’s fine now unless I sit down too long. That’s why I work at standing desks.”
“I thought you were just trendy.”
“Really?” Tam’s brows knit together in a dry frown. “I wouldn’t know trendy if it bit me in the arse.”
“Don’t put biting you in my head.”
I’m joking. Mostly. Or, not at all as Tam stares me down. Knowing how bad he was hurt isn’t easy, but if there’s one thing that can pull me out of picturing him half-dead on a hospital bed, it’s imagining how the hot skin of his throat would feel beneath my lips. How he’d taste. How?—
Stop.
I try, I do, but Tam doesn’t play ball. He just keeps staring, and we’re drawn together with the same voracity as all bad ideas. The same compulsive thrill. Our lips brush. Once. Twice.A third time that cranks up the heat to a dangerous swelter as his hands come to my face and mine return to his perfectly imperfect torso.
I’m knee-deep in tugging him against me before I get a hold of myself. “Shit. Sorry.”
Tam rumbles that low sound again. Then lets me go. “I’m not fucking sorry.”
“No?”
“Why would I be sorry?”
“Because—” Actually, I have no idea. About anything, save the fact that it’s probably time I left.
“Come and have a cup of tea with me.”
Say no.Go home.
Doesn’t happen. We wind up on Tam’s couch. He breaks out the Mr Kipling I brought him earlier and goads me into eating them too.
“I’m not sorry I kissed you upstairs.” He leans back on the couch, shifting a little in a way I now recognise as someone with a grumpy lumbar spine. “But I won’t ever do it again if it makes you uncomfortable.”
“The only uncomfortable thing is my jeans.”
His gaze darts to my groin.
I flick his knee. “Made you look.”
He laughs and it breaks any lingering tension. Not that there was much, and I realise I’m not sorry either.
I correct the record.
Tam laughs some more and I feel myself relax in ways I didn’t the whole time I was with Skylar.
You were never with Skylar. And you’ll never be with Tam either.
Because he doesn’t do relationships, and I’ve sworn offthem for good, even if the mere thought of it turns the sugar coursing through my veins to scratchy dust particles. So I don’t think about it. I think about something else—about what people who don’t commit to relationships do instead.
I think aboutsex, and it’s a mistake. A hard one, pushing against the zip of my jeans.
Jesus Christ.
Tam nudges me. “You okay?”
“Yep.”
“Really? You look stressed.”
