“Well,” she said, watching his index finger journey over her thumb, to her wrist, and back again. Her nerve endings felt like they were sparkling at the contact. “First of all, you wouldn’t call it ‘sex.’ You’d call it ‘making love.’”
It was clear to her that the disgusted sound he made in that moment was completely involuntary. He tried to school his expression back to what it was, but his lip stayed stubbornly curled.
“Any um… alternatives to that?”
Emmy tried to look contrite as she shook her head. “Sorry. I don’t make the rules.”
He let out a put-upon sigh. “Okay, how would I go about convincing the heroine of a romance novel to…” He paused, grimaced. “… make love with me.”
Her libido was all for putting the poor guy out of his misery and telling him she was already raring to go. But teasing him was proving to be fun, too. Decisions, decisions.
“Grand romantic gesture,” she said.
His expression turned speculative. “Like… I hire a band to stand outside and play Elton John songs while I shower you with rose petals?”
Emmy stared at him. Finally, she managed to say, “I have so many questions. Why Elton John? Why outside? Can the band not go indoors?”
Will shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s always outside in the movies, isn’t it? Kissing in the rain while the music swells or whatever.”
“What am I supposed to be doing while you’re dumping loose flower petals all over me?”
He contemplated the question. “Get naked, I guess. We can have sex… sorry,make loveon the lawn while the band watches. If they miss a single note, they don’t get paid.”
She laughed at the image he was putting inside her head, and playfully slapped his shoulder. It was a good shoulder. A sexy shoulder. All strong and supportive.
“That sounds fun and… inventive, but I meant something like the Scrabble picnic. You were supposed to bring up the Scrabble picnic, and then I was supposed to pretend I’d forgotten all about it, and then we were going to agree you’d already been romantic so we could have sex.” She pointed at him. “Don’t say it.”
“You were the one who told me I had to say it.”
“Well, don’t say it anymore. It’s weird hearing it out loud. I guess it sounds sexier when you’re reading it in a book.”
“Yeah, it must.” He ran his hand over her hair, stopped to tug gently at the ends. “Didn’t you say you only ever went on Scrabble picnics with your family?”
“Yeah. So?”
“So… I don’t think it counts as a romantic gesture. Not if you’ve been doing it with your family. Plus, it was your idea, not mine. I need to come up with my own thing.”
Was he serious?
“No, you don’t,” she said quickly. “You don’t need your own thing. The picnic was good. It was great. It can be our thing now. I’ll tell my family to suck eggs.”
“Nah, I can do better.”
How had this gone off the rails so quickly? Had she really ruined her own opportunity for hot sex by choosing banter over sincerity? Blasphemy!
“Just to be clear,” she said, “I am not asking you to do better.”
“It’s part of the rules. You said so yourself.”
“I was joking. Or flirting. I was flirt joking.” Emmy put her hand on his arm. His sexy, sexy arm. “You do not have to do anything to woo me, I promise. I’m wooed. I’m already there.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “You don’t think I can do it.”
“What?”
“You don’t think I can be romantic.”
“That is not true. You are so romantic,” she said, a little desperately.
