Page 45

“Felicity?” He gently pinches my calf, and I think all the blood in my body rushes straight to my head.

I blink at the endless sea of corn.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing is clicking right now. I could be looking at the surface of the sun for all I know. I mean there’s…stuff there. I can kind of make out a general path, but then I look down at the back of his neck and hairline so close to my stomach, his fingers still rubbing those reassuring circles…

Is my mouth numb? What is happening?

“Just tell me what you see, all right?”

“Um…” I stretch the word as far as it will go. “Corn?”

His laugh vibrates against my jeans, and dear God, I cannot stay up here any longer if I want my only two working brain cells to do their job.

“Yeah, I gathered that.” He adjusts his stance, which means his grip on my legs tightens, just slightly, but enough for my brain to short-circuit. All electricity, no thought.

“Can you see any paths?” he asks.

Paths, right. Those.

I force myself to look around, but all I can focus on is the drag of his fingertips through the denim of my jeans, warm and grounding and distracting and—

“Felicity?”

“Yep!” I squeak. “Paths. So many. At least…two.”

His laugh rumbles through his chest and up into my legs. “You’re not really looking, are you? You know this isn’t considered cheating? I feel like after thirty minutes, bending the rules is more than allowed.”

“I, um, I am trying! It’s just—your hands—are…there.”

Knox freezes for half a second, his whole body rigid below me.

“Do you want me to put you down?” There’s fear in his voice, as if he’s that worried his touch is unwelcome.

The fingers that were high up on my thigh go back down to my knee, and I shout, “No!”

He huffs out a nervous little laugh, gently bringing them back up. Maybe I should be embarrassed, but it’s just…his touch right there feels so nice, and if this were a real date, I don’t think I’d want him to stop.

“Okay then. One more try, yeah?”

I look again. I genuinely try for the sake of…I don’t know, geography. But all the corn blends together, and his hands are warm, and I can feel the strength in his shoulders beneath my thighs, and the sun catches in his hair when I glance down, and if I could just run my hands down the collar of his shirt and feel the steadiness of his pulse—

Nope. Not happening.

After a beat too long, I sigh. “Okay, I think I’ve got it, you can, uh…put me down.”

He lowers me slowly—carefully—like I’m one of Ada’s fragile glass antiques. When my boots hit the dirt, he keeps his hands on my waist for a second longer than necessary.

I huff a whoosh of breath and he turns me to face him. Our eyes lock, and I don’t know what my face could possibly look like right now, but I know that Knox looks like he just ran a marathon. He looks…winded and a little desperate and a little like the puppies at the shelter when I dangle a treat in front of them. His chest heaves up and down, and something tells me it has nothing to do with how much I weighed on his shoulders, but is more about how my thighs were wrapped around his strong throat.

We don’t say anything. Do words even exist right now?

We stand there, both a little flushed, and I’m trying so hard to pretend it’s just the midday heat of the sun blaring down in this maze, but I know I’m lying. My eyes find his, and they’re like little pools of green and hazel that I could so easily find myself lost in, even more than this maze.

Finally he clears his throat. “So. We’re still lost, then.”

“Very.”

He smiles crookedly, soft and warm and dangerous. “Guess we better keep going, then.”