Quietly, I close my eyes, trying to pretend we’re just dating, have never had sex, are just watching a movie. I force my muscles to relax and watch the TV, and I sense him relax gradually too. He stretches his big body suddenly down the length of the couch and pulls me up against him. Oh my. I hate how he assumes control of things that pertain to me, but I love it too.
I feel his gaze on the top of my head. Pretending to watch the movie, I weave my fingers in his hair and bring his arm around me, complaining, “Your elbow’s digging into my rib cage.”
His chuckle—I can’t even explain how much I love the sound of his chuckle—tells me he knows I just want to get more comfortable. And I do.
“Better?” he asks, shifting that lean, hard, long body of his underneath me.
“Shh. I like it when he fights with the Spaniard.”
I’m pretending to watch, but really, I’m struggling with how much I want to give him a second chance. But what if I fall? What if it gets out of control, and not only do I fall, but plunge into him?
That night with him?
It was incredible. He was incredible. He still feels, smells, sounds incredible.
His muscles flex and I fear he will pull away, but he doesn’t. He tucks me closer, cocooning me in his arms. I breathe softly in a nearly overwhelming sense of contentment, engulfed by the feeling of security he gives me, and I finally succumb to the urge to set my cheek on his chest. “This feels good,” I murmur. Beyond good.
Suddenly nothing feels righter than this. On my couch. With this man. His spicy, comforting scent is like a drug, and I can’t help but take deeper, more conscious breaths of him.
“Princess,” he says in my ear, conspiratorially.
A shiver runs through me as I close my eyes. “What?”
“I wasn’t going to call.”
“I know, douche bag. Why did you?”
Westley and my Spaniard are at it with swords but it feels like the real action is in my ear, in his whisper: “You need me.”
I scoff and sit up to glare at him. “I don’t need you.”
He sits up too and his eyes flash in challenge. “Maybe I need you.”
When I only stare, he shoots me an adorable grin that’s cocky but also sad. “Do you know what it feels like to carry the weight of a dead heart with you your whole life, like you’re just looking for your grave?” He waits for me to answer, but I’m speechless. “I live the moments I’m with you. I live a lie, but this isn’t a lie, watching this stupid movie with you.”
“Stupid!” I gasp.
He laughs and stands, and says, “When I go out, lock up. I’ll be back with food.”
“If I fall asleep, I’ll be too tired to come open it again,” I warn, but the truth is, I just don’t want him to leave!
“I can open your lock without you so much as waking,” he says easily, then he comes back and slides his gloved hand under my camisole. “But lock up anyway.”
“You’re bossy.”
“And you’re fucking sexy in what you’re wearing right now.” His thumb traces the underside of my breast and my breath snags when our eyes meet, and there’s no shutter in his eyes, no filter. What I see galvanizes me, the roiling tumult in the very depths of his gaze taking me for a spin.
“I’ve been told I have a photographic memory. That some images just stick with me with extreme clarity . . . but that night, Melanie, I remember everything about that night more clearly than any other moment in my life.” He grasps the back of my neck in a big, square hand and gives a little squeeze. “Your red thong. Your perky little nipples. The way you looked at me like a princess and told me your name was Melanie. I remember it too well.”
I’m transported there for a moment. It’s all a haze of passion and desire and teeth, tongues, hands. I ache, but I don’t want to be his toy. I don’t want to be his booty call. My throat hurts when I take his hand, pry it off my neck, and start guiding him to the front door.
“I think . . . Greyson, I think you should leave. I can’t think when you’re around. I don’t know what you want from me but I can’t play these games with you . . . not with you . . .”
He looks at me when we reach the door, almost as if he wants me to kick him out. Almost as if he wants ME to be the one to tell him I never want to see him again. Will he feel relieved? Well, he won’t be! I can’t even begin to explain what that touch of gold tan does for his looks. How I can’t stop admiring the intriguing angles and planes of his face. How long I’ve waited in my life to feel something, a sparkle, a tingle, like this.
“My best friend gets married in two weeks,” I whisper, then I tell him the church as I start pushing him out, all the while holding his gaze. It’s hot, hungry. THE LOOK. “If you want one more chance, if you’re serious about this, you can come to church,” I tell him, then I lean over and kiss his lips, very softly, hearing his low, rumbling groan, then I step back and close the door.
I lean on it, squeezing my eyes shut as I struggle to breathe. God that kiss was nothing and yet it made every inch of my body shudder.
After a minute, I hear him growl “Fuck” on the other side of the door. Did it take him that long to recover from that kiss too? Then I swear I can feel him lean on the door. I close my eyes and breathe slowly. When he whispers, “Melanie,” it’s right where I have my cheek pressed against the door. I tremble down to my toes, struggling to get my voice level.
“Yes?” I say.
“I’ll be there.”
I hear the elevator a good while later. I lift my fingers and touch the door, and for the first time in my life, I’m terribly afraid about meeting him, the one man I’ve been waiting for.
Suddenly every fiber in my body, my sober body, tells me he is the one.
He is the one.
The one who’s going to wreck me. Hurt me. Demolish me. The one who is going to remove every inch of the girl in me. He will be the memory I will never forget, and good or bad, he will be THE one I dream of.
Except he’s all wrong.
There’s something exciting and alarming about him.