Page 84 of Run
“Don’t you lock the door when you leave?”
“Eh, there’s nothing of value for someone to take. I only lock it when I’m sleeping, so no one takesme. Besides, Lars and Meg are upstairs.” As we enter the apartment, she grabs my side and keeps me close. “Can you help me over to the couch?”
“Of course.” I lead Ari to the couch where we both sit.
We’re on a quiet residential street, so I can’t hear any cars driving by, music from a nearby neighbor, or voices of peoplewalking by. But I sure as hell can hear my pulse behind my ears as my heart rate picks up.
Ari shifts next to me, slowly reaching for my hand, which I turn upward as her fingers reach it. She fans her fingers out and I do the same, until our hands are palm to palm, my fingers a full knuckle longer than hers. She’s looking at our hands, but I’m staring at her face while I swallow the dry lump in my throat.
Ari shifts her fingers so they slide between mine and we clasp our hands together. Bringing our fisted hands up to her cheek, she rests them there, cupping the other side of them with her free hand and closing her eyes.
My blood is pumping and my mind racing. “What’s going on in that head of yours, Red?”
“Honestly?”
“Honesty would be nice,” I repeat her words from earlier.
Opening her eyes, the bright green of them bore right through me. “It’s ironic.” I tilt my head to the side in question. “You’re one of the only men in my life who I know would never hurt me, and yet, right now, you’re the man I’m most terrified of.”
Another dry swallow as my heart constricts. “Why’s that?”
“Because you are the only person who could ever really destroy me.”
I feel something that teeters on the edge of love and heartbreak as the question I’m not sure I want the answer to materializes. “Did I destroy you?”
Ari stares at me as she considers my question, then shakes her head ever so slightly. “No.” She lets go of my hand and places hers flat against my chest. She’s closer now. I can feel her breath tickle my neck as she looks at her fingers spread wide against my shirt. “Because you came back.”
Ari crawls her fingertips up to my face and, like she did the night of our date, traces my lips and scar with them. The slow movement tickles the hairs on my face, and my breathing picksup as I say something she needs to hear. “Ari, I never really left you.”
Her eyes dart to mine as I snake a hand up her neck and cup her face, running my thumb over her jaw.
“I know that, now,” she says. “I think I might have known it all along.”
I pull her face closer to mine. “And I never will.”
Our lips barely touching, breaths choppy, I can feel her eyelashes flutter against mine as our foreheads rest against one another’s and I continue to trace her jaw.
“Prove it,” she says, my lips moving with her words.
Ari melts into me as I massage her lips with mine, sweeping my tongue inside her mouth.
And there’s that tornado of butterflies storming up my spine and around my stomach and down to my toes again—just like it did when we were teenagers.
Trailing kisses from the corner of her mouth to her cheek and jaw, I travel down the column of her neck to the little hollow spot at her clavicle where I lap at it and give it just a little suck before making my way back up to her lips. I’m rewarded with a whimper as I take and take and take.
When she pulls away and starts to shuffle, I take her face in both my hands. “What’s wrong? You want to stop? We can stop.”
Please, don’t stop.
“No. God, no. I never want you to stop. It’s just …” She kisses me.
“Yes?” Another kiss.
“God, this is so unsexy,” she says as I dip my head and suck on the skin of her neck.
I chuckle into her softness. “Well, now you’ve piqued my interest.”
“It’s just … Oh man, that feels so good …”
