“So?” I say, tone casual, like there isn’t something thick and tangible settling between us. “What’s your review?”
Boone presses his lips together, thinking. Then, after a beat, “Well, you got a pretty voice. So that was nice.”
I narrow my eyes. “Wow. That’s all you got out of that? Why did you even let me rope you into reading it?”
He shrugs. “Maybe I want your favorite things to be my favorite things too.”
And it hits me in the chest like he wound up and aimed for the center.
It’s such a simple sentence. Casual, tossed out like it means nothing. But it lands hard—right in that place I’ve been trying to ignore. The soft spot that still remembers what it was like to love him when things were easy.
He tilts his head slightly, gaze still locked on mine, something teasing but unmistakably heated behind it. “I also figured you wouldn’t want to hear what else I was thinking.”
My stomach flips, my pulse kicks up.
I should look away. I should roll my eyes, push him off, shove a pillow between us and remind him that we aren’t doing this.
Instead, my lips curve into a small smile.
“Well, now I’m curious,” I say, arching a brow and crossing my arms. “And since I’m the one who just spent the last few minutes enriching your mind, I think I deserve to know.”
Boone hums, dragging his fingers slightly up. “That so?”
I nod, swallowing against the heat creeping up my spine. “That’s so.”
Boone grins, and his stupid damn dimples pop out, deep and devastating.
The low light catches on the sharp cut of his jawline, the slope of his nose, the dark stubble dusting his skin. His hair is shoved back from where he raked his fingers through it earlier, a little too messy, like he’s been pulling at it without realizing.
Like maybe sitting here with me is fraying his patience just as much as it’s fraying mine.
The corner of his mouth tugs higher as he tips his head slightly, like he’s considering something. Like he’s figuring out just how much he wants to give away.
“Well,” he says, voice low, slow, dragging. “I was thinking about how I never noticed before that you do this little thing with your lips when you’re concentrating.”
I blink, heat curling low in my stomach. “What thing?”
His fingers trace a slow, lazy circle against the inside of my knee.
“The way you press them together when you’re trying not to react to something.”
His grin turns lazy, slow, like he’s enjoying this way too much. His fingers trace another idle pattern on my skin.
“I was thinking,” he says, “about how pretty you look when you’re lost in something.”
My breath hitches, barely noticeable, but Boone’s watching too closely to miss it.
His hand shifts slightly, fingertips grazing the inside of my thigh. “Was thinking about how soft your mouth looks when you read.”
A slow exhale leaves me, but I don’t break eye contact. “And?”
His lips twitch, eyes darkening.
“And how bad I wanted to pull that book out of your hands, push you back against this couch, and taste how soft it actually is.”
Heat pools deep in my belly, a slow, insistent ache that I try to ignore. His hand stays where it is, firm but unmoving, waiting.
I swallow hard, my voice steady, even if my pulse isn’t. “That’s quite the review.”
