“Surprised?”
I shrugged. “I suppose I just wasn’t expecting you to say all that.”
I met AJ’s gaze, immediately regretting making eye contact with him at all when I got trapped in his stare and that devilishly sexy smile of his.
“You don’t feel it, too?” He asked.
He already knew the answer to that, but wanted me to own it. I smiled back and shook my head at him, being both coy and cautious when I asked, “Feel what?”
The smile on his lips turned into a sultry laugh that intensified the surge of heat between my legs. He had no intention of answering as he looked me over from head to toe, not bothering to hide it this time. The stove timer went off and I snapped out of his trance.
“I should get that,” I said, rushing off to the kitchen, clumsily – bumped my knee on the coffee table and everything. When I was alone, I paced a small section of floor that was out of AJ’s line of sight from the living room. Fanning myself, I tried to keep my head clear. It wasn’t like we were about to pursue these feelings, but by acknowledging that they existed, AJ opened a can of worms that was notoriously hard for the two of us to close. The sound of his footsteps at the entrance of the kitchen made me look up. It was too late to pretend like I wasn’t in there trying to recover from the things he’d said; I was practically wringing my hands together while I wore a path in the floor.
AJ leaned against the archway and stared. “Listen, if I said something wrong, I apologize. I didn’t mean to make you feel awkward around me. I’m not looking for anything to come out of us spending time together. I just meant to say that I enjoy it – having you around again.”
That actually was not all he said, but clearly he was trying to backtrack his statement, dial it down a notch because he thought he’d scared me off. In fact, his admission had the exact opposite effect. He hadn’t scared me off; if anything, I now felt the pull toward him intensify tenfold.
“You didn’t say anything wrong. I’m just…thinking,” was all I offered up in response. I forced my feet to stop moving and turned to open the oven, trying to calm my nerves a bit. I grabbed the mitt and started setting the food out on the counter.
My head was all over the place, making it hard to focus on what I was doing. When I grabbed the pan of chicken clumsily, it almost slipped right out of my shaky grasp. AJ moved in closer just as I set it on the stovetop, thinking I’d need his help. I turned in his direction to say that I was fine, but when I did, we were standing face to face, with only an inch or two between us. A breath hitched in my throat. He froze too, staring down from the nine inches of height that he had over me.
“I-I think I have it,” I managed to breathe, praying that he’d back up. When he didn’t, my brain tried to instruct my feet to step away, but they weren’t cooperating either. We were close. Too close. AJ made this realization certain when his eyes drifted down to my lips, causing mine to literally throb with anticipation of what it would feel like to kiss him after all this time. The sound of his phone ringing on the coffee table where he’d left it snatched me back to reality and I was finally able to take that step away from him.
“You should probably get that,” I said in a low voice.
AJ stared down on me for a few seconds, as if he’d ignore the call altogether. I watched, panting as he finally left me to go answer. While I caught my breath, I finished removing the rest of the food from the oven and tried to force my heart into submission.
You can’t have him Sam. You can’t have him…
I listened to AJ on the phone in the other room while reciting these words in my head on a loop.
“Hello?” he answered. “A little. Why what’s up?” There was a pause and then he laughed. “You’re relentless, you know that?”