He had to untangle that to find the flaw in the logic. “But they’d be headless and therefore unable to rate me.”
She wheezed out a laugh and he tucked it close into his sandbox of perfect sounds he’d heard.
“I don’t understand whether you’re trying to convince me or you that you’re going to behead me.”
He narrowed his eyes at her joking, but that made the floor difficult to see in the dark. “You don’t know me,” he insisted. He didn’t know why he was so determined to chase her out, when she was the only reliable thing in his life right now. Right now in general, because she always came when he called, and right now in particular, because she was the only thing keeping him from face-planting.
And wasn’t that so sad, on both accounts?
He didn’t trust reliability, not really. If you got used to someone, it would hurt a billion times more when they left.
“I know you’re a decent man. You wouldn’t hurt any woman.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it again. Truth. He adored women, for all that he was incapable of committing to one.
They stumbled through the dark hallway, her phone’s flashlight guiding them. He could turn on one of the overhead lights, but it would only make his eyes hurt, and she seemed fine with this.
They made it into his bedroom, and he toed his shoes off while she held his arm, and then it seemed like whatever had been powering his body abruptly shut off. He could no longer control his arms and legs fully. He looked down at his bed, knowing the sequence of events that had to follow. Remove his arm from around her, get on the bed, under the covers.
Instead, he simply... toppled. Without grace or ease or anything that would lend itself to a remotely not-silly-looking fall.
He didn’t realize he hadn’t taken his arm off her first until he found himself on top of her, their bodies pressed together, hips, legs, and chest.
Oh no.
The bill of her cap jammed into his forehead and he nudged it up, but his nose was smushed against hers, so it was hard. He tried to hoist himself up, but his biceps felt like they’d been carved from jelly.
Fuck. He’d wondered now and then what his driver looked like. Finally, he was in a position to see her whole face, not in puzzle pieces but as a perfect picture, but it was too dark to properly see anything. Except her eyes. They were dark and wide, the whites around her pupils brilliant in the room lit by moonlight.
“This seems to be a weird way to start the beheading process.”
Oh my God. “I’d never... So, so sorry,” he said. Or he thought he said that. He wasn’t sure anymore. “I didn’t mean... Let me...” He tried to lift himself off her again, but this time it was her hands that stopped him.
They were small and cool, moving over his heated face, around to the back of his neck. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “Stay here for a minute.”
“You... sure?” he confirmed. He was the drunk one. She was not.
She relaxed underneath him, yielding to his larger body. Her legs shifted, and his pelvis slipped easily into the cradle of hers. “I like it. You’re heavy.”
“Too heavy.”
“No. Perfect.”
He wanted to argue with her. He was not perfect, and she should not be here, and yes, he could totally still be a murderer intent on decapitating her.
But her body was so soft, and he could feel every inch of it. The only good thing about his alcohol-soaked brain was he was too drunk to have an erection, thank God. How embarrassing would this be if he was poking her belly?
Her breasts were plump and round under his chest, smushed against him. Eve. She felt like what he imagined Eve might feel like.
Jesus Christ. How could he suddenly be interested in one woman because she reminded him, in the vaguest of ways, of another?
Except... he was. And she was here, and real, and not the fantasy Eve was. “Go out with me.”
Her hands faltered on his shoulders, but then they resumed that calming, stroking motion. “Go to sleep.”
It was like she’d said the magic words. His eyes closed, his body relaxing. With his last conscious thought, he turned his head, his lips brushing her hood aside so they could scrape over her ear. Her curvy body shivered, and he filed that reaction away as best he could. When he was sober, when he was capable of thought again, he was going to do that to her while they sat on his couch. He’d peel every layer of her clothes away and kiss his way down her chest and stomach too, but he’d be sure to pay some attention to Eve’s ears.
Anne’s.Anne’s ears.
