Page 81 of Reckless
I met her gaze.“And yet you haven’t asked me to leave.”
“Yet,” she said.
“You’re in charge of this decision.”
“Stop saying that like it means something.”
“It does mean something.”
The words sat between us like an unfinished sentence.
Then she looked at the clock on the wall and made a face.“We should go back.”
I knew she was right.
I stood.“Yes.”
Neither of us moved.
If she kept looking at me like she did then in another five minutes, I was no longer willing to make promises about my self-control.
Kelly seemed to sense that because she moved.She grabbed the dress bag from the chair by the door, then paused with her hand on the knob.
When she looked back at me, her face had settled into something calmer than before.
“I’m glad you came up,” she said.
There was no easy answer to that.
Not one that would leave either of us intact.
So I gave her the simplest true thing I had.“Me too.”
Then she opened the door.
We went back to the compound together, and the whole drive I could still feel being near her made me physically certain whatever was happening between us was the beginning.
Nine
The Wrong Kind of Care
Kelly
I woke up in the guest room at the compound with the sharp, humiliating awareness that I had slept better after almost kissing Xerses Norouzi than I had after fighting with him.
I should not have felt comfortable here and that was the problem.
But I did.
When I opened my eyes and smelled black tea and sea air, my body softened.
I rolled onto my back and groaned into the pillow.I had also somehow was at ease near
him.Last night replayed in my mind.
I’d stood in my apartment with him and he’d noticed me.He saw my books, my couch, and my tea.
And instead of acting like those things were quaint or messy or beneath him, he acted like they were proof of me.And that he might like me.I shoved the blanket off and sat up.
