Page 52 of Reckless
“I hate you.”
“No you don’t.”He was right, and he didn’t remove the hand.
Old wishes for kisses surfaced.
“What now?”I asked too breathy for my usual tone.
“Like we already know each other’s breathing patterns.”
I was never more hyper aware of him in my life.
He leaned in, not enough to touch anywhere else, enough that the illusion sharpened.If anyone glanced our way now, they would see intimacy.
He was close and whispered, “Eye contact.”
God.I trembled.He noticed that too.
“Kelly.”He whispered.
I held him closer and asked, “What.”
“Look at me like you know what I taste like.”
The air changed completely.
Everything in me slammed into the same wall at once, anger, humiliation, attraction, panic, something darker and meaner and so much less manageable than I wanted it to be.
“That,” he said quietly, “works.”
I stepped back so fast his hand dropped away.
I snatched the pen off the table and nearly stabbed the legal pad with it out of pure self-defense.
“We need to add kissing to the list.”
He sat back down as if he had not nearly short-circuited my central nervous system on a public patio in broad daylight.
I stayed standing for another second because sitting felt too much like defeat.Then I sat too.
I drank half of my glass.
Xerses watched me over the rim of his own glass and said nothing.
That was somehow worse than if he’d smirked.
I could still feel the ghost of his hand at my back like my nerves had decided to become sentimental.
He watched me and I wrote in the margin of the legal pad.
NO PRACTICE IF I AM UNPREPARED
Then I crossed out if I am unprepared because that sounded like there might be a version I would be prepared for, and I refused to admit that to myself on paper.
Xerses saw the words I wrote and stared at them and back at me.
I put my hand over the page.“No.Don’t think too much on that.”
He lifted one shoulder.
