“Fuck, you smell good.” She says it like a complaint, almost a protest, like it isn’t fair.
Can’t help but to press my nose into her hair, breathe her in as I hold her close, just for this moment, and remember every single sense I can about it. Her closeness, how we’re lined up, legs, to hips, to torsos, fully pressed up against one another. The way she smells, like something flowery, and something unmistakably sweet. Something I smelled back home a lot growing up—I think it’s a honeysuckle? How her body feels underneath my arms, my hands. The way her soft breaths sound as they hit my skin, my shirt. That little groan she made when she smelled me. The way it vibrated through me. How she looks from just above, peering down at her, all over me like this. I wish I could get a taste of her, complete the memory, really round it out with that fifth sense, but this’ll have to do for now.
I pull back, stepping toward the wall I’d been leaning on, dragging her with me, making sure she’s good on her feet.
Her hands trail up my stomach, over my chest, and settle on my shoulders. My stomach swoops, fuckingswoops, at the sight of her like this, the feel of her. I can read the intention in her eyes, the desire there, and I could kick the wall behind me at the unfairness of it all. This woman, all to myself for the night, just like I dreamed. Looking at me like I hardly even dared to wish she would one day, so much sooner than I’d let myself hope she might. But it’s not right. I know it isn’t, not like this.
I lay a hand on her cheek, softly, tracing the skin there, push my fingers back into her silky ponytail and cup her head. “We should get you home,” I tell her quietly.
She gulps, swallows, my eyes watching the movement of her throat bobbing. Hers fall down to my mouth, and I lick my lips on instinct.
She sucks a breath in, bites the tiniest corner of her lower lip in between her teeth there, and stares at me.
Fuck, if this isn’t undoing me. My heart beats in my throat, I hear it in my ears, my dick pulsing in a matching rhythm, the blood flow syncing my entire body, every part of me attuned to this woman, marching to the beat of what she’s doing to me without a single word.
I place both hands on her shoulders and squeeze them there to ground us both. “Let’s go take care of the check and I’ll take you home, okay?”
Her face falls, and something inside me dies. I want to give this woman every reason to smile, to glow like she does when she’s in her element, give her the kind of life she imbues in everyone around her from the simplest things. I never want to be the reason she frowns, doesn’t grace the world with one of her radiant smiles.
But she definitelywon’tbe smiling tomorrow if I take this night where we both seem to want it to go. I think? I can’t be sure she’d regret it, actually, but that’s a chance I’m not willing to take.
I grab her hand and lead her back to the table, where our check is waiting (might need to work on my telepathy and miming combo). I try to pay, but Ellie refuses to let me. “You’re driving,” she tells me, dropping a credit card down and flapping a hand in my face.
I snort a half a laugh. “I’m drivingyourcar,” I tell her. “At least let me pitch in for gas or something.”
“It’s a Tesla,” she reminds me, and I think I fall for her harder.
To be honest, the day I saw her dancing on her way to work, I was so transfixed by watchingherthat I didn’t even register what she was driving. I think it was black? My attention wasnoton the metal caging her in, but on the life, the soul that was coming out of her in her happy place like that.
My dream girl? In one of my dream cars?
I decide to reserve judgment. I mean, all Teslas are cool, but if she has the Model 3 or the Model Y… Best not get too excited too early here.
But nope, when we get to the parking lot and she leads me to her car, it’s a sleek, sexy, black Model S with two-tone, black and white interior to die for. If I hadn’t already been fighting a boner over this woman all night, it might be happening right now, for this moment alone.
This girl just gets better and better.
Now I just need to get her home safely, make sure she doesn’t have an absolute meltdown over this after the fact, and convince her to do it again, on purpose.
Should be easy, right?
SEVENTEEN
ELLIE
I’ve blacked out most of the memories from Friday night. Not from drinking. Just from pure humiliation, mortification, utter, incomparable embarrassment unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.
I don’t need to refresh you, I’m sure you knowexactlywhat I mean.
Every time the finer details swim back into my mind, a random memory from any time that night floats by my consciousness, I vaguely contemplate whether I can hold my breath until it’s no longer a problem.
I might be able to drop a curling wand or my Dyson AirWrap into my bathtub, but I’d need to find an extension cord that would reach; modern building codes aresorestrictive on outlets within reach of a shower these days. Fairly certain when I renovated the bungalow that all got brought up to code. Drats. And I don’t know where an extension cord might even be after my move.
Hmm… Maybe I can just inject bleach into my brain, for selective memory erasure? If that works, can I do it in Asher’s brain, too?
No, you know what, I can solve this. Let me consult my friend, logic, whoabandonedme the other afternoon.
See what happens when I go off of emotion instead of logic? Terrible, terrible things, people.
