“I know,” Ward said. “Just that you look like you’re about to pass out.”
“I might,” I admitted. I hadn’t realized how fast my heart was beating, mostly because I’d lost feeling just about everywhere except my head and the hand Ward was holding. I couldn’t even feel my phone in the other one, dangling there uselessly.
“You’ll be okay,” Ward said, squeezing my fingers again. “Kids are waiting for you,” he added, nodding toward them. “Unless you wanna go home?”
Home.
Where was home? Was I going home to LA?
“I’m not about to disappoint them,” I said. “I’m okay. And between you and me, I’m having fun.”
“I know,” Ward said. “Right up until that call, you were the happiest I’ve seen you since we were their age.”
“Yeah?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Ward tugged on my hand, pulling me between his knees so I could feel the warmth of his body. “Kinda hot.”
“Only kinda?”
“If I told youhowhot it was,” Ward said, voice lowered to a murmur, fingers sliding up the inside of my wrist. “If I told you what I wanted todoto you because of it,” he added, brushing his thumb over the pulse and making me gasp.
He had no right to be able to do this to me just by touching my wrist.
But then I knew what his hands felt like all over me now, and there was nowhere I didn’t want them. I wished he had four extra so he could touch more of me at once.
“You’d be thinking aboutthatinstead of sharing the magic of the dramatic arts with those kids,” he finished, lifting my had to his mouth again and kissing my wrist this time.
A whimper escaped me as he licked a stripe up my wrist and I remembered everywhere else his tongue had been this morning in vivid detail, heat flooding to the pit of my stomach and the tips of my ears at the same time.
“How—” I squeaked, and then had to stop to clear my throat, ears thrumming with the sound of my own heartbeat. “How is this supposed to make me think about it less?”
Ward let my hand drop, shrugged, and grinned at me. In the little patch of sunlight he was sitting in, he glowed, eyes sparkling as they crinkled at the corners, barely containing the laughter I could see bouncing in them.
I loved him.
Ilovedhim.
Ilovedhim.
So much. So much more than I could afford to, so much more than I’d wanted to.
But now that I had it, I wanted to tuck it away in my heart and not ever let anyone else know I did in case they tried to take it away from me.
“Go,” Ward said, gesturing toward the class. “I’ll show you everything I’m thinking about after.”
“Is that a promise?” I asked, forcing myself to take a step away before it became impossible.
“Cross my heart,” Ward said, still grinning. No wonder Spike had a crush on him—who wouldn’t? “We can spit-shake on it if you want.”
I wrinkled my nose like I had last time, and Ward laughed at me.
“I’ve had my mouth all over you and you’re still grossed out by spitting in your hand?” he asked.
Now it was my turn to shrug. “I’m a study in contradictions,” I said.
“You are,” Ward agreed. “You’remystudy in contradictions, though.”
His.
