If she knows what I’m doing, she’s not fighting me. Her eyes are narrowed, her lips quirked into that half-smile that makes me crave the rest of it like I’ve been starving for days. “Let’s say twice an outing for cheeks.”
“So one kiss on the lips per outing but two on the cheek? What constitutes an outing? Does a change of venue reset the outing?”
“What constitutes a venue?” she shoots back.
“One location.”
She purses her lips. “Is the stadium the same as my office?”
“No.”
“So a change of setting? What if we’re walking from the parking lot to the office and then down to the stadium?”
I grimace with a slow, exaggerated intake of breath. “Sorry, Boss. That sounds like three different settings to me.”
She laughs. “I didn’t realize you were going to be such a tough negotiator.”
“Hey, you’re the one who’s too alluring for her own good.”
“Oh, right,” she teases. “This mind with this body? Who could resist.”
“Exactly. You should have to register that combination with the state. It’s lethal.”
She rolls her eyes, but her arms are still around me, and mine are around her, and the longer this goes on, the less I want to stop.
“I’m just sayin’—show me another man in town who could work with these constraints. I’ll wait.”
“You poor thing,” she says with a low, throaty laugh that makes me want to put my lips on her neck just to feel it. “You drive a hard bargain.”
And then she kisses me.
The flash from her phone goes off instantly—and then she pulls back too soon. My lips haven’t adjusted to her presenceorabsence yet.
She looks at the picture, then tucks the phone in her back pocket. “That was for them,” she says. Then she doesn’t let me go. She doesn’t step back or shake my hand, confirming our arrangement or otherwise treating it like a business deal.
Instead, she wraps her arm back around my neck.
“Does that mean there’s one for us?” I say it like I’m teasing, because I don’t want her to hear me beg.
She pauses and then lifts her face up.
I close my eyes.
And when her lips press against my cheek—only a fraction of an inch away from my own mouth—my hands clench on her back, holding her, anchoring her to me. If I let go now, I think I’ll be sucked into space.
She holds her lips there for three, four, five seconds, before pulling back and whispering, “That was for us.”
When she releases me and steps back, I almost stumble forward, like I’m drunk on her smell. On the feel of her skin.
“I should get you back to your car. You’re probably exhausted after that game.”
We turn and walk out of the old diamond. “I won’t be able to sleep anytime soon,” I admit.
“Why not?” She unlocks the car and gets into the driver’s seat.
My mind races, wondering how honest I should be. Do I tell her that the memory of her lips is going to torture me all night? Do I let her know that feeling her in my arms was so distracting, I can’t think straight? “I gotta clear out my closet. Build some dressers. Scrub a toilet,” I say, wanting to punch myself for talking about a toilet. “You know, the usual stuff a bachelor does before getting married.”
She grins, her eyes fixed on the dark, winding road ahead, lightning bugs. “You think you can make room for me, do you?”
