Page 298 of Off Limits: The Firsts

“Why not?”

“Because you’re Emmy.” He brings his free hand up and runs a finger down the side of my cheek.

That touch, skin to skin, is like a mainline of electric current to charge that slow, sweet ache burning inside me. It only serves to make me want more.

“And you’re Phony Maloney.”

“Exactly.”

He steps back, and I tighten my hold on his hand and step forward with him. “Are you telling me there is nothing here? No lust? No attraction? No anything?”

He gives me that sly smile of his again, the one that lights up his eyes and does funny things to my insides. “I never said that.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“I’m saying . . . Christ, Em, I don’t know what I’m saying.” He runs a hand absently up and down the plane of my back.

“Maybe you’re saying we need to get each other out of our systems.” I utter the words before I think them and then feel ridiculous.

“What?” He laughs. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

His body is against mine. His cologne is in my nose. His laugh is in my ears. He’s everywhere all the time.

Too much talk right now. Too much saying. Not enough action.

“Yes.”

A few seconds pass as he gauges whether I’m serious, and I wonder if he’s going to take the bait. “And then what?” He angles his head to the side, silently asking a million questions my body wants to ignore.

“And then curiosity will be satisfied, and we’ll be out of each other’s systems.”

“You think that’s going to work? You think we’ve just met again after twenty years and it’ll be that easy?”

He has a point, and I don’t want to think about that or semantics or reality. I want to think about him. And me. And his mouth. And his hands.

So, I lean forward on my tiptoes and press my lips to his. “Enough talking, Malone.”

He laughs, his lips vibrating against mine, but I don’t relent. I want him. I want this. I know we’re both buzzed, but maybe that’s the best way for this to happen so I’m not nervous and overthinking and neither is he.

For a minute, I think he’s going to reject me. It’s in the way he stills for a brief moment, the way his lashes lower for just a second too long. Then he frames my face and leans back to look at me. Our breaths feather over each other’s lips as an unspoken conversation passes between us. I can’t put words to it, but somehow understand each and every syllable of it.

And then his mouth is on mine in a savage greeting of lips and tongues and hands on skin and history reconnected.

“Grant.”

“Shh.”

“Wait. I have rules.”

He laughs with exasperation, a man being denied what’s sitting at his fingertips. “Of course you do.”

“No sleeping over. I don’t do the sleeping together thing.”

“No one said anything about sleeping, Em.”

His smile sidelines me. The kiss he leans forward and brushes ever so tenderly against my lips makes me want to sag into him, even more so.

“No promises.”