“What else would it be?”
She cringed at that.
Scrabbled for a reply.
“Nothing, I just—” she started to say, head full of a thousand things he could have been assuming. That she was daft enough to imagine he meant the hand on the door and the seat belt and the singing. That there was something soft behind them, instead of steely. Or worse: that shelikedthe idea that there was.
I want us to be more, she imagined him thinking she thought and almost died of relief when he cut her off with something that assumed the opposite. “You feel like it’s too much,” he said. Though, of course, that came with its own problems.
She couldn’t let him think any of this was overwhelming her, either.
“No. No, no, of course not.”
“It’s bothering you. It feels weird.”
“Not at all. Not even a little bit.”
“So I could go harder and you’d be fine.”
Fuck, she thought.Went and trapped yourself there.
But there was nothing she could do about it now. Say no, and it would seem like she wasn’t fine at all. Say yes, and god only knew what he was going to do next.Knee deep in the passenger seat, Roan sang, and this time it didn’t just make her cheeks heat. It made herwhole bodyheat.
Of course it did.
She pictured it then.
Just a flash of it—her hand splayed on the window, the curve of his denim-clad back, that dark shaggy hair between her legs. But a flash was enough to fill her with some very horrifying feelings. She had to think of a bunch of ex-boyfriends fumbling and bumbling and forcing her to do things she didn’t really want to, to make it fade. And just in time, too, because he was looking at her now.
He was waiting for the only answer she could give.
“Absolutely. Do whatever you want. Say whatever you want. Be however you want. It won’t matter to me,” she said, far too loud and cheery about it. False seeming, it felt to her. But he didn’t seem to take it that way.
He took it like it was a done deal.
Doing whatever he wanted to her from now on—no matter how affectionate or tender seeming—was how it was going to be. Just as tender affection from him felt like the end of her fucking world.
Then
She had no idea what made Christian say it. Because sure, yes, she had mentioned Miller’s outburst a few times now. And true, there had been that weird incident when Miller answered a question on vampires in film in the exact same way she had, five minutes before Miller showed up. Oh, and the being-forced-to-sit-together thing had probably looked a little weird.
Every time his arm had brushed hers she knew she had blushed.
She suspected he had blushed when she’d pushed her thigh against his.
But those things didn’t mean anything. They were just clumsiness, awkwardness, a byproduct of that strange reaction he’d had to her calling his words phony. Obviously things were going to be more charged between them after an argument like that. It didn’t mean she wanted to fuck him, for god’s sake.
Yet that was what Christian had said.
Even her laughing didn’t seem to put him off.
In fact he doubled down. His face sunk into a sullen pout;he crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m not even talking about you fucking finishing each other’s sentences, or about the sitting together, or any of that,” he sneered. “You should have just heard him at the bar then.”
Though she hadn’t known Miller was even there.
She glanced up as soon as the words were out, searching for some sign of him.
And sure enough, there was that broad back. The usual denim shirt pulled taut over it as he leant tensely over the bar. One boot behind the other. Dark hair tousled like always. No sign at all that anything significant had passed between him and Christian—a fact that Christian bizarrely confirmed.
