“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” It was partly true. I hated the way my body was craving his touch. And I hated the way I was apparently incapable of resisting him.
“Can I let you in on a little secret?” Parker continued.
“No.”
But he grinned and told me anyway. “I don’t hate this either.”
When he slightly shifted his hands once again, the heattrailing across my skin where he gripped me flared bolder and brighter. His touch didn’t just spark, it ignited like a wildfire, burning hot and spreading quickly. If he kept this up, I was going to do something stupid, and I knew the only thing that could douse the sensation was distance.
“I think I’m good now.” I quickly dropped my leg from his grasp and got to my feet. But before I could move toward the door, Parker reached out to stop me.
“We’re going to be late for school,” I told him.
“I think we have a much bigger problem than that.”
“I told you my leg’s good.”
“I’m not talking about your leg.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
“This.” He gestured at the space between us.
“What’s ‘this’?” I waved at the space too.
“Us.” He took a step nearer. “You’re telling me you don’t feel something when we’re this close?”
“Uh, I don’t know, disgust?”
“No.” He edged toward me again, making me back up.
“Anger, then.”
“You’re really saying that when I touched you just now, you didn’t feel sparks?” I backed up another step and bumped against the wall. Parker stopped mere inches away.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
It was another lie. Of course I’d felt sparks, and they only grew stronger when I realized he was feeling them too. I couldn’t work out when the energy surging between us had suddenly changed from anger to attraction. When the desire to pull him close had started to challenge the urge to pushhim away. I could have kneed him in the balls and left three questions ago. I should just move past him and storm from the room. And yet I didn’t do either.
“There’s a way to stop all this,” Parker said.
“And that is?”
He leaned his head down toward me. “We get it out of our system.”
My chest rose and fell with shallow breaths as I looked up into his impossibly blue eyes.
“My offer still stands,” he murmured.
His gaze fell to my lips and my heart pounded wildly in reply. He’d joked about us kissing again the night he climbed into my bedroom, and I’d quickly shrugged it off. But, right now, he looked serious, and I wasn’t finding it quite so easy to argue with him.
“That didn’t work out so well for either of us last time.”
“There’s no one here this time,” he replied. “Just you and me, and whatever this is between us.”
“There is nothing between us.” Yet my heart continued to beat hard against my chest like it was trying to cross the short distance that separated us.
