I reached out, arms flapping to gain purchase on something that would stop my descent and fall from grace. My fingers grazed fabric and reflexively curled, pulling.
But I kept falling, my balance now completely abandoning me. I squealed as my back hit the pile of blankets and sank beneath the surface into I-didn’t-know-how-many layers. A second later, my sea of pillow-soft landing undulated, and a deepoomphemanated beside me.
I blinked, my canvas shoes outlined in front of the superstore’s fluorescent lights. A groan I felt instead of heard rumbled against my ribs. I might as well have died of embarrassment, because slogging my body out of the plush coffin would be impossible.
The rolled blanket by my head moved. I looked over and sucked in a sharp breath. Drew’s face lay only inches away. The intimacy of lying this closely beside him caused my pulse to thrum harder.
Hearts, as I’d always suspected, lacked any sense of logic. No matter our vicinity, we were two people who’d fallen into a store’s display while playing a schoolyard game. No reason for racing pulses.
“Mrs. Applegate.” Drew’s spicy breath fanned over my face, the wisps of hair around my temple tickling my cheek with his every word. “I don’t know what kind of man you think I am, but I don’t go around letting women pull me under the covers with them.”
And that grin, the one that had infuriated me before, now caused my insides to shift, making me strangely…at ease.
Which, given our predicament, didn’t make any sense at all.
Blankets around us moved, and I was thankful to be buried under fleece instead of rubble. A blanket near my face was taken away and revealed Sierra’s huge grin.
“That wassofunny.”
Drew sat up, looked back at me, and offered me his hand. He had a firm and steady grip, but instead of releasing me when I once more sat in a vertical position, he squeezed.
A woman walked by, her eyes bugging at us in the display. Usually on the other end of those disapproving tsks, I squirmed and tucked my chin. I needed to get out of those blankets. Getting kicked out and banned from a store where some people didn’t even bother throwing on a bra or changing from their pajamas to shop wasn’t on my bucket list.
I shifted my weight, but the unstable cushion beneath me only rearranged to make more room, and I sank further. I gritted my teeth and hefted one leg forward. Blankets threatened to swallow me. All of my childhood fears of quicksand—I still suffered trauma from Artax and the Swamp of Sadness, thank you very muchNever Ending Story—came back to me. Instead of sand, I’d eventually sink to the bottom of a pit of fleece.
Drew gripped the lip of the metal box-like thing that currently jailed us and hauled his body over the side with the grace of a stag. Meanwhile, I managed to shuffle forward only to lose my balance again, flail my arms like windmills, and fall on my bum.
Drew chuckled.
I glared at him. “This was your bright idea. Are you going to help me out or just laugh at me?”
“Can’t I do both?” His hands encased my wrists and pulled me forward.
I stood in front of him in my lake of fleece. “No.”
He placed my hands behind his neck and let go of my wrists. A second later, his palms skidded across my hips, causing my stomach to dip to my toes. His gaze delved into mine, catching me off guard and probing deeper than I expected.
I was a zombie. Not in the eating brains sense but in the undead sense. Or was I both dead and alive? Or alive again? The state of zombies confused me…just like the swirl of desire that hit me low in my gut.
We probably only stood there seconds, but time had lost its grip on my reality. Unlike Drew’s fingers that pressed into the swell of flesh that rounded over my hip bone.
“Are you ready?” he muttered, that invisible line connecting our gazes so taut that it reached into my core and anchored all the unsettled feelings there.
Ready for what? Somehow I knew his question meant more than a simple readiness to have my feet back on solid ground.
Not waiting for me to answer—and good thing, because we could have been there until the second coming otherwise—he hoisted me over the edge of the bin as if I weighed nothing, attempting to make a liar out of the scale.
My chest pressed against his, and like so many moments in the last few minutes, time slowed as if a Hollywood director had control over effects. My body slid down his front, friction creating unseen sparks at every point where our bodies touched.
By the time my feet hit the ground, my lungs were heaving oxygen like I’d attempted to climb Everest instead of simply being lifted a couple feet and returned to standing.
“Will you have dinner with me?” The confident, almost cocky expression he usually wore had been replaced with a hesitant vulnerability.
Sierra moved in my peripheral vision, finally snapping the cord tying me to Drew. I stepped away from him, and cleared my throat.
Drew glanced her way, a wry smile tugging at his lips. “What good are all the blankets without pillows? Would you mind grabbing some, princess?”
Her gaze bounced between us, her too-intelligent eyes sparkling. “Sure.”
