“Oh, crap.” She whips around to look at my back. “Oh no, Ridge, I’m so sorry.”
She puts the glass down, then dives for a stack of cocktail napkins on the nearest table. She comes back clutching a handful and starts blotting at my shirt between my shoulder blades.
“I can’t believe I did that. I’m such a klutz.”
She dabs at my back. Her lower lip is caught between her teeth.
“I ruined your shirt,” she says. “It’s white. It’s going to stain. Ridge, I’m so sorry. Please let me buy you a new one.”
“It’s a shirt. It’ll wash out.”
She keeps blotting, and I let her. Her hair brushes my shoulder.
I catch her wrist and lower it gently. The napkin is a soggy pink ball between her fingers.
“Robyn.”
“Yes?”
“Do you want to get out of here?”
She goes very still. Her pupils are huge. Her cheeks have gone a shade past pink, heading for red.
“I’d like to go back to your place,” I tell her. “If you’ve decided. No pressure if you haven’t. No pressure whatsoever.”
She lets out a small breath. She looks at the napkin in her hand like she’s forgotten what it is, then at my chest, then up at my face. Something passes across her face, nerves, want, a little flare of something brave.
“Follow me,” she says.
That’s all I needed.
She tosses the napkin on the table and grabs her bag. We push through the door and out into the warm island night.
The street is quieter than the bar. The air smells like the ocean and frangipani and the grease from a takeout place down the block. I breathe it in, and under all of it, I can still smell her.
I take her hand. Her fingers are small and cool inside mine. She glances down at our joined hands and then up at me, and there’s a tiny, surprised smile at the corner of her mouth.
“Want me to grab a cab?” I ask.
“It’s two blocks. I think we’ll manage.”
We walk, and I shorten my stride so she doesn’t have to jog to keep up. The breeze lifts her hair off her shoulders, and I catch another waft of her scent, and my dragon purrs under my skin.
“I really am sorry about the shirt,” she says.
“Don’t be. It was worth it.”
“Hmm.” Her hand tightens on mine. “Can I say something really embarrassing?” she asks.
“Go for it.”
“I’ve never been with a shifter before.” She says it fast, like ripping off a bandage, then clamps her mouth shut. Her cheeks flush again. “I mean, to be sure, you are coming back to my placeto have sex with me…right? You haven’t changed your mind after the spill?”
I like how straight she is.
“I most definitely have not changed my mind, and so yes, I am going back to your place for sex. For the record, I’ve never been with a human before.”
She stops walking.
