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“I can say it again for you, would you like that?” he offered, and then, instead of waiting for my answer—Yes please, sir, and can you record it, too, so I can play it for years to come?—he leaned in. Close. Really, really freaking close. Until his mouth fell on the shell of my ear.“Dulce de leche.”
If I could have evaporated into a cloud of steam, I would have.
That was how hot this man made me with nothing more than three words that weren’t even supposed to be arousing. But I was, my God. I was so aroused.
“Was that good?” he asked, keeping his mouth right where it was, the touch of his lips on my skin sending wave after wave of shivers down my arms. “More?”
To my utter surprise, I nodded my head and said, “Please.”
I heard him inhale deeply, slowly, then he said,“Eres preciosa. Me recuerdas a una flor. A una rosa.”
My lips parted. My whole body churned now. “What does that mean?”
Lucas’s voice was impossibly low when he answered, “You’re stunning. You remind me of a flower. A beautiful rose.” My breath caught. “You blush like one, too, Rosie. It’s so fitting. So… goddamn gorgeous.”
And I… I wasn’t okay.
The way this felt wasn’t normal. The way my heart raced and my body pulsed with need, longing, yearning for him, couldn’t possibly be normal.
It couldn’t be. And if it was, I didn’t think I could take it. It was too much.
But Lucas had said that; he had called me beautiful. Said I was stunning. In two different languages, and I… knew he’d meant it. I knew it in my bones.
The way I feel has never been more real, I thought.
But I couldn’t allow myself to acknowledge that out loud. Because tonight was supposed to be research, an experiment—our last experimental date—and now I knew I was at risk of having my heart broken. It could happen tomorrow, when I returned to my apartment, and I wouldn’t see him every day. Or it could happen in a matter of weeks, when he went back to Spain.
I let out a breath, the sound rocky, unsteady. “Thank you.”
Lucas’s head reared back slowly. “Thank you?”
I averted my eyes, and as much as I didn’t want to stop looking at him, I did. “Yeah. That was very deserving of a grand gesture kind of night.”
Because that was what tonight was about. Phase four, the grand gesture.
Usually, in novels, it came after a black moment, after feelings are put to the test. But in this case—being this was nothing but an experiment—that hadn’t made sense. So, we’d jumped ahead.
Lucas didn’t answer, not for a while. He just looked at me, his lips curled into the smallest smile he’d ever given me.
Reaching for my glass of wine, I mused over what to say, finallysettling for something that had crossed my mind, but I had never asked. “Can I ask you something, Lucas?”
“You know you can ask me anything.”
“You never talk about Spain.” I was trying my luck here. He didn’t want to talk about his injury, or whatever had happened to him, I knew that much. But I couldn’t stop thinking about him going back. “You’ve only talked about Abuela. Or Taco.” I paused. “You know, the plan had been to fly your grandma here. With Taco. But she said she’d had enough of New York when she visited Lina a couple of years ago. She said everything’s so big here it gives herchicken skin? Charo wasn’t able to translate that.”
“Piel de gallina. Goosebumps. That just means that it gives her goosebumps.” Lucas let out a chuckle, but his heart wasn’t in it. Then, he said, “What do you want to know, beautiful Rosie?”
Everything. “Do you miss home?”
“Yes and no.”
I shifted to the edge of the stool, my knees moving into the space between his. “What do you miss about it?”
He seemed to deflate at the question, so I placed a hand on his knee. Encouraging him. He pressed his thigh against mine in response. “I miss… my life. How my life was before. Some days I wake up thinking I’m back in time, and my head starts pondering what beach I can drive to before the crowd gets in. Then I remember.”
“You remember what?”
His gaze zeroed in on my fingers as they rested on his knee. “That I’m not there anymore. That I’m no longer myself.”
