“Nothing.”
“Nothing, my ass. You’ve got to admit that was better than ‘nice.’”
“Sure it was. It was really nice.”
The edges of his mouth ticked up in a wicked grin. “You realize you’re asking for it, don’t you?”
Feigning innocence, I batted my eyelashes at him. Playing coy had never been my style. But I could see why some of my classmates had enjoyed it back in high school. “Asking for what exactly?”
He reached out, his hand going behind my neck. Pulling me toward him, he mumbled, “Really nice. I’ll show you really nice.”
Trying not to laugh, I let him pull me close. But when his lips touched mine, the gentleness disappeared. His mouth claimed mine in a hot, deep, hungry kiss. I responded with an urgency of my own. His hands ran over my shirt, tangled in my hair. I lifted myself up and over the console, eager to get my hands on him.
My skin burned in the wake of his lips. More, more, more. My entire body aligned in a singular purpose. I wanted him, no, needed him. Before I could tell him, he pulled back, practically ripping his mouth away from mine.
“Was that really nice?” The look in his eyes scared me a bit but also sparked something deep down inside. He looked tormented, like a man who bordered on the cusp between pleasure and pain . . . a line I was all too familiar with.
“Alex . . .” I placed my palm on his chest. “I don’t know what we’re doing here.”
He wrapped his hand around mine and brought it to his lips. Kissing my fingertips, one by one, he listed off what exactly we were doing. “We’re having fun. We’re getting to know each other. We’re working toward a common goal. We’re helping each other.” Only my pinkie remained. He held my gaze as he lowered his mouth toward the tip of my pinkie finger. “We might just be falling in love.”
CHAPTER 24
ALEX
Love.I’d saidlove. Not in the three-little-word sense, but in the “we’re moving toward three little words” sense. She hadn’t been expecting it. I could tell by the way she gulped in a breath and coughed, choking on air.
“You okay?” I squeezed her hand.
“Um, yeah.” She righted herself on her side of the cab.
“You sure?” I pushed a chunk of hair back over her shoulder. “Did I say something wrong?”
“No.” Her head shook back and forth. “I think you just caught me by surprise.”
“Do you disagree with me?” I could drop it right there. Leave it sitting between us like an oversized elephant on the center console. But if I’d learned one thing from my parents, it was that things left unsaid did far more harm than the shit that sat out in the open.
Her gaze met mine. Those brown eyes held a world of hope. But something else mingled with it. Fear. I shouldn’t have said anything. Maybe my parents had been right to keep secrets, even if it had torn the whole damn family apart in the end.
“I don’t disagree with you.” She turned to glance out the window. “But you’re leaving soon and I guess I’d rather not open myself up to something that’s not even an option.”
Yeah, I could see that. “I get it.” I did, too. No sense gearing up for something that wouldn’t be. “But we can have a good time in the meantime, right?”
“I thought that’s all this was.”
“It is.”
“But you said . . .”
“Hey, we’re in charge here, right? We can call this whatever we want.”
She nodded, her head moving up and down so slowly that I wondered if I’d imagined it. “Okay.”
“Does this mean I can stop sleeping on the couch?”
Her laugh immediately lightened the mood. “We’ll see about that.”
“You ready for that burger?”
