“You’re fighting dirty,” I accused him, gasping for breath.
“Prove it.” He wasn’t even out of breath.
“You have a longer reach.” I didn’t let go of him.
He leaned over the towel of drying bricks like he was showing me that he had a longer everything. “You seem to be doing just fine.”
“You’re toying with me.”
“Yes, Clover.” He tugged me closer, and I had to let go of him to catch myself on his chest. There was no way I would fall, though. He wouldn’t let me. “I absolutely like toying with you.”
Our faces were inches apart, our mouths a breath away. It wouldn’t take much to kiss him. We’d already kissed. Just once. Since then, we’d used our tongues on each other a lot. Used our hands. But we hadn’t made out. We hadn’t done anything more intimate than a sizzling-hot orgasm. It’d been the one unspoken line we hadn’t crossed, or it’d make our late-night pillow-talk sessions more dangerous. It’d make what we were doing more alarming. More real.
“I like when you toy with me,” I said playfully, but my mouth had gone dry. We were so close. How easy would it be to feel his soft lips on mine again?
His gaze tracked over my face, dipping repeatedly to my mouth. “When we move…”
“I suppose we’ll have to quit.” My gut wrung out like a rag. One month left.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I guess you’ll be even more pregnant and probably not interested.”
“Actually, my sisters said they enjoyed sex almost to the end. Then it could get a little uncomfortable.” Was I supposed to tell him that? Did he think I was begging for us to continue?
He’d want to get on with his own life, right? He’d want to meet someone who wasn’t complicated from the beginning. Someone who could support him and his job beyond putting a roof over his head. Someone who didn’t need help raising her kid.
He didn’t move, but his muscles were taut underneath my hands. “That’s interesting.”
“Yes. But I suppose we should make a clean break.” The Tootsie Roll I’d had was going to launch itself back out of my stomach. “Hormones are one thing, but friends with benefits could get…”
“Messy.”
“Complicated.”
“You might fall head over heels in love with a buff geologist who isn’t a blatant nerd.”
I took the branch he held out, the offering to make our agreement casual with an end date, and swung on it. “Ew, yes. Nerds? Who needs them? I need a guy who rappels into volcanoes.”
“And I need a woman who can name at least a hundred Pokémon and rattle off Python in her sleep.”
“I feel like you’re not talking about a snake.”
“See? It’ll never work.”
I chuckled, but I couldn’t bring myself to agree. It couldn’t work. I had to be a good role model for this kid. No falling out of one relationship into another. No depending on someone else. No having it bad for its uncle.
Slowly, he released me, helping me straighten so I didn’t fall over on the Legos and get hurt.
His phone buzzed. Without taking his eyes off me, he dug it out of his pocket. Finally, he broke eye contact and read what was on his screen. Interest lit his face. “What are you doing at eleven tonight?”
Van
* * *
I brought several blankets with me in the pickup as we drove to the middle of the pasture closest to the house. The person leasing the land had moved their cattle out a few weeks ago, so I parked at the highest point on the four-wheeler trail running through the grass.
Shutting the engine off, I killed the lights. Silence fell. Clover had her face pressed to the window, and I peered through the windshield. My mind was not on our task for the evening.
One month. Then we were done.
