“Wildflowers.”
Another eye roll. “Cute.”
“I’m being serious. They’ve always been my favorite. Wild, unconfined, bursting with color. You never know quite what you’ll find in a wildflower field. They’re sturdy, they come back year after year, and they don’t need too much, just sunlightand open land. Plus, they can take over an entire field. It’s why I picked the cottages facing the wildflower meadows to work on first.”
Tally licks her lips until finally, after another breath, she asks, “Aren’t you going to ask me mine?”
I shake my head. “A man who’s interested in you shouldn’t have to ask you these things, Tally. Your favorite color is whatever makes you feel pretty that day. Some days you love yellow, but it also hurts because the color reminds you of your father. Most days you prefer bright pink. Even if it’s just the strap of your bra, you’ve got pink somewhere on you.”
“You have an unfair advantage. You saw my underwear today.”
I don’t smile. I don’t want to flirt. I want Tally to know that this is about more than sex.
“You wear bright colors because you think that without them, you’ll go unnoticed. It’s a way to be loud without making a sound. But Tally, in every room, no matter what you’re wearing or what you’re saying, you have my attention. So, yes, I saw your underwear today and I’ll see them again on my bedroom floor within the hour, but I know the color of everything you have worn since the day you arrived because you have owned my attention since the first moment I saw you.”
She glances down at her unfinished dessert. “Can we get the check?”
We barely make it to my truck before she’s trying to push me up against it, though I throw her hands away.
“You told me what you wanted, and I’m going to give it to you,” I explain.
She blinks up at me with lust-filled eyes. “Right. Well,what I want is your dick inside me within the next three minutes or I’m going to explode.”
“No.” I reach around and unlock the door. Then I lean in close and press a gentle kiss to the spot right below her ear. “What you want is to be taken on a date, wooed, driven home, and then kissed on the porch.” I nip at her neck again. “I know you, Tally. Even if tonight is our first date,I know you.”
I say the last words slowly, making sure to enunciate each one, and the little puffs of air from my lips being so close to her ear has her breaking out in shivers. My fingers toy with the pink bra strap right beneath the stitching on her pretty dress. “And yet I can’t get enough of you. I want to know every thought that goes through your pretty head. Want to hear your every desire.” I press my lips to her cheek and then nod to the open door of the car. “But I can’t do that until you get in.”
Tally’s quiet for the ride home. I’m in my head, too. And as much as I tell her I’m trying to give her what she wants, I’m also doing this for me. I’m doing this for the boy who never felt he could go after something just for him. Who put everyone else first.
Tally is it for me. And I know she feels the same. I want this to be the best first date ever so it’s also her last first date. I’m not sure when it happened, or what I’ll do with myself if she leaves, but I’ve fallen for this woman. So hard that it sometimes feels impossible to walk out the door in the morning and start my day without her next to me.
“You going to get out of the car?” The soft lilt of her voice coaxes me back to the present. I’d hardly even registered that I’d parked.
She reaches for the handle and I growl. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
I make my way over to her side. She’s smiling when I open the door and hold out my hand to her.
“I had a really nice time tonight,” she tells me.
I swallow my nerves and lead her toward the porch. “Me, too.”
When she takes the first step, she grips the banister and then laughs as it wobbles beneath her hand. Glancing up at the sky, she shakes her head. “I know, you’ll get around to it.”
I frown. “Hmm?”
“My father.” She sighs. “He always had projects.”
She shakes the wooden structure again, showing me it’s loose, and then points to the rocking chair in the corner of the porch.
“I wouldn’t sit in that chair, either. Pretty sure the back leg wobbles under too much weight.”
It feels as though she’s only talking to fill the silence, and I smile as we step up to the front door, happy that we are both feeling whatever this is building between us.
My hand goes to her cheek, and I stroke her smooth skin with my thumb. Fuck, she’s beautiful.
“Hi,” she whispers nervously.
I swipe my thumb across her lips and lick my own. “Hi, Wildflower.”
