Chewing on her bottom lip, she eyed her dark sedan with worry.
“Damn it,” I muttered under my breath and pocketed the phone. “Okay, fine.” Jesus, I couldn’t believe I was actually going to offer this. “Give me your keys, and I’ll drive you home.”
She whirled to me with hope on her face, even as she said, “But what about your car? How will you get home?”
Shaking my head, I tried not to be charmed over the fact she was still cognizant enough to think about me. “I’ll just stay the night with you.”
“What?” She stumbled sideways as her mouth fell open.
I snickered. “Kidding. I’ll call a cab from your place and have them bring me back here for my ride.”
Okay, so I was too embarrassed to tell her I didn’t have a set of wheels. Since I only lived eight blocks away, I’d planned on walking home. But I could always call a cab from her place if I had to.
She blinked, and the move made her look like an owl. Cutest damn owl I’d ever seen. Glancing away because she still held me under her homing spell with her prettied-up face and sexy clothes, I blew out a breath, half-hoping she’d decline and let me call her a cab, and half-hoping I could spend another few minutes in her company while she was like this.
“You would do that for me?” The way she slurred her words sounded foreign coming from her perfect mouth because her speech was always so succinct in class. It was as if she was a completely different person. A person I was allowed to desire.
“Why would you do that for me?” She stared at me, all lost and confused again. “You hate me.”
“I don’t—” When I shook my head, I had to shove my hair out of my eyes. “I don’t hate you,” I said, softer this time. Far, far from it.
Her lips parted and I wanted to bite them—especially the fuller, lower one—then suck it into my mouth and lick the sting away.
Silently, she held out her keys to me. A surge of awareness sparked through my system.
I shouldn’t do this. It was dangerous. Tempting. She still had one side of her hair pulled up, though after the past few hours in the heat of the bar and in between the press of so many people, it had started to sag in places. Still...it looked tempting, as if someone had had his hands in it.
If only they could be my hands.
Giving in to her draw, I took the keys and sucked in a breath when her fingers brushed mine. God, this was going to be bad. I could already tell.
CHAPTER TWELVE
"These are the times that try men's souls." - Thomas Paine
NOEL
“Don’t you love how the streetlights reflect through the windshield?” Aspen leaned forward in the passenger seat to stroke the glass above the dashboard of her car. But her safety belt caught before she could quite touch it, and she fell back into her seat with a sad sigh. “It’s so pretty,” she mumbled, eyeing the view longingly.
I shook my head in amusement as her navigation system told me to turn right at the corner. “Yeah, you’ve definitely had one too many to drink,” I said to myself more than to her, since she wasn’t even listening to me, too enrapt in the pretty lights to notice my presence.
“They look like carnival lights.” She sent me a sidelong glance. “Have you ever been to a carnival?”
I blinked. “Umm...sure.” Who’d never been to a carnival?
Whenever they’d come to my hometown, they’d always set up in the open lot not far from our trailer park. I used to sneak down and take Caroline, and Brandt too when he’d gotten old enough to go on the rides. I’d never gotten around to taking Colt, though, before I’d left for college. I hoped Caroline did that for me. Some of my happiest memories were of buying candy and tickets and watching my siblings when we’d gone on the rides. Colt needed a memory like that. Hell, everyone needed those kinds of memories.
“I’ve never been to a carnival,” Aspen said softly. I glanced across the quiet interior of her car to watch her face fill with even more longing. “My parents said carnivals were foolish and a waste of time.”
Damn. Her parents sounded like complete assholes.
“Do you think if my date had shown up, I would’ve gotten lucky tonight?” She paused and bit her lip. “I could be having sex right now. Wow, I can’t even remember when the last time I had sex was.”
Shit. Bad topic.
She’d been talking nonstop since I’d helped her into her car, changing subjects faster than I could change speeds. But we hadn’t dipped back into this taboo territory since she’d squeezed my bicep in the bar.
“But I do remember the last time I dreamed about having sex,” she kept on. “You were doing me on my desk at work and—”
What? She’d had that dream too? Unreal.