Page 45 of Hexed Up

“I know, we’ll say we bumped into each other on the Heath and got talking and realised we liked each other. It started off sort of casual but now it’s a bit more serious.”

“That’s lame,” he says. “How about you fell in the Heath pond and I happened to be walking by, spotted you, and heroically dived in and rescued you?”

“I’m actually a very good swimmer,” I say flatly. “We’re going with my idea.” I scribble it in the book.

He peers across at what I’m writing. “So we’ve only been dating three months?”

“Yes,” I say, repressing the urge to snort again because Mr Hottie rarely sees the same woman twice, let alone for three whole months.

“Then we’d definitely be in the can’t-keep-our-hands-off-each-other stage.”

I narrow my eyes at him, but once again his expression is deadly serious. Damn him and his poker face!

I flip back to my page of rules. “Number two, acceptable forms of physical contact.”

“I thought you said no dirty talk,” he teases.

I ignore him. “Hand holding. There.”

“Not enough. There need to be little signs of affection.”

“Like?”

He reaches over the table and strokes his hand lightly down my arm, waking up all the butterflies in my stomach. I swallow. “Okay, that is acceptable too.”

“And …” he adds, lifting his hand to my face and tucking a lock of my hair behind my ear, sending those butterflies wild.

“Anything else?” I ask, my voice a little more squeaky than I’d like.

“I can rest my hand on the small of your back.”

Thank goodness there is AC in this flat, or I’d be boiling over.

His hand lingers by my cheek, his eyes roaming over my face, and then he leans back across the table.

“How about you?” he asks.

“Pardon,” I say, because I’ve totally forgotten what we were talking about.

“How are you going to touch me?”

I try to force my brain to come up with a sensible answer but all it keeps doing is listing all the ways I would really like to touch him; for instance, running my hands down his bare chest, sinking my fingernails into his butt, wrapping my mouth around his–

“Molly?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I guess, similar?” I cough and make a note in my book of the things we’ve agreed on.

“We should cover boundaries,” Horatio says. “Things that are a definite no-no.”

“Right, yes, good idea.” I write ‘no-nos’ on the page. “Well, kissing,” I say, trying not to think about how good he is at kissing, and how much I’d happily jump into his lap now and kiss his face off. “No touching below the waist. No sex – and that includes oral and phone. No mutual masturbation and no strip-teases.”

I look up from the page and Mr Hottie’s blue eyes have darkened several shades. He looks like he’s considering leaping over the table and doing all those things to me. Which is why this contract is needed. I’ve slipped up once or twice before but having clear rules and boundaries is going to be a big help.

“Let me see, what else do we need to cover? Ahhh, yes. Nicknames.”

“Seriously?” he says with disgust. “I hate that. My stepdad used to call my mom Bunny and it made me want to puke every time.”

“Sorry, it’s necessary.”