That look went straight through me.
When I kissed her, I kept it slow because I knew exactly what would happen if I didn’t. The edge was too close already. Her mouth opened under mine, soft and sweet and sure, and my hand tightened at her neck before I made myself ease up.
We were outside.
People were around.
And this woman was making me forget the whole world had access to us.
She kissed me back like she knew it too. Like she felt the same pull and respected it enough not to rush straight into it. Her hand came to my chest, fingers spreading there for one breath, then curling just enough in my shirt to make my body remember every place I wanted that hand later.
I pulled back before I gave myself a reason not to.
Her eyes opened slowly.
Damn.
That scared me more than it should have. Not because I thought she would hurt me. Because wanting her was starting to feel less like appetite and more like invitation. Like if I kept stepping closer, I was going to find myself somewhere I couldn’t play off as chemistry anymore.
And still, all I wanted was more.
By the time we got back in the truck, the quiet between us had teeth. It wasn’t awkward. It wasn’t unsure.
It was full.
Full of the city behind us. Full of what we had not said. Full of her sitting beside me in bronze and gold, smelling like temptation, while I gripped the wheel and tried to act like the night had not just shifted under my feet.
I put Joe on low through the speakers, something fromAll That I Amwarm and aching enough to sit in the dark with us without trying to own the moment. The city moved outside in glints and shadows while I pulled us back through downtown,streetlights sliding over the windshield, bridges lit ahead of us, the river catching pieces of the night and breaking them apart.
Talia’s hand found my thigh again.
At first, it seemed absentminded. A light glide of her fingers over my denim while she looked out the window, her face turned toward the city like she didn’t know she was destroying my concentration one soft pass at a time.
I caught a breath and kept driving.
Her fingertips moved again. Slow. Barely there. Just enough pressure to make my dick swell hard behind my zipper.
The song kept rolling.
Joe in the speakers.
Her hand on my thigh.
My jaw doing everything it could not to tighten.
At the next light, she looked over at me and really saw my face. Then her gaze dropped.
I watched her realize it.
The set of her mouth changed. Her lips parted. Her hand stayed where it was, but the touch stopped being accidental. She let her fingers drift inward, quiet as sin, until the back of her knuckles brushed the hard length of me through my jeans.
“Fuck,” I said, low and immediate.
Her eyes lifted to mine.
There was surprise in them. Want too. A little reckless streak of it that matched what had already started happening in my body.
For a second, we just stared at each other while the light turned green and the car behind me gave one impatient tap of the horn.
