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Lucas’s expression morphed, that intensity I’d gotten glimpses of in our first date swirling in. And just as I was about to retrieve my hand, his fingers closed around my wrist. He asked in a gravel-like tone, “You want me messy or cute, Rosie?”
My belly took a deep dive at the quality of his voice, of his gaze, of his words. I swallowed. “Both.”
Without breaking eye contact, Lucas leaned forward, towering over me with his flour-covered face and making me tilt my head back. “You can’t have both. Choose. What will inspire you tonight, Rosie?”
“Messy,” I breathed out.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched him stick his thumb in the tomato sauce container. Then, he was moving, shifting us so my back was against the counter, my wrist still in his hold.
Before I could fully process any of that, his thumb was sweeping over my nose, leaving a sticky trail behind. “Then I’ll make a mess of you, too.” I felt his breath on my mouth. His body coming closer. “Ever since I tied that apron around you, I’ve been stopping myself from doing exactly that, anyway.”
An uproar took place at the pit of my stomach at his confession, but just as I was about to answer, to ask him to please shred the apron to pieces if he had to, his thumb reached the corner of my mouth. It swept right and left.
“Have you ever felt this on a date before, Rosie?” His voice was low, barely a grumble, but it reached deep inside of me.
I shook my head. My pulse raced through my body, reaching areas that had been neglected and were now wide awake.
“Is this a strong enough spark for you?” His gaze dipped down to my lips, where I was smeared with tomato sauce. I watched his throat bob. “Because I can try harder. For you, I will.”
A shiver curled down my spine when his hand moved and cupped the back of my neck. Lucas leaned forward, pushing me softly against the counter at my back, his body heat now blanketing all around my front. My lips parted at the contact and his gaze moved to my mouth again.
The brown in his eyes flared like chocolate fire.
His brow furrowed.
His brow furrowed?
And then the smell hit us.
“¡Joder!”He released me and sprung backward with a trail of curses in Spanish.
I had to catch myself on the counter.
What the hell had just happened?
Regrouping, I tried to make sense of the pounding in my chest, the tomato sauce trickling down my face, the scent of smoke flooding Alessandro’s.
The scent of… smoke.
“Oh crap!” I snapped into action, joining Lucas at the oven and peeking at the charred remains of what had once been two pizzas.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Lucas
Sandro was going to have my head. Knock me out with one of his spatulas and fling my unconscious body into the East River, just like he’d threatened.
Maybe Rosie would help him. Because talk about ruining a date. I seemed to have a knack for that.
Something else I had a knack for? Getting distracted. Parking common sense at the curb and losing perspective of the lines that were drawn around me. The ones that had seemed to blur tonight. Or had they? Because that had been the whole point of the experiment. Jump-start her inspiration. Helping her forget about everything weighing on her and make her feel something else. That was all I wanted.
No, not all I wanted.The image of Rosie in my arms, all supple against me, ready to let me lick that goddamn tomato sauce off her lips, flashed behind my eyes.
Until today, I had been somewhat able to ignore the pull she’d had on me, to hide it beneath the fact that I genuinely enjoyed her company as a friend. That I truly, honestly, wanted to become even better friends than we were. But now? After tonight? After the lineshad blurred long enough for me to lose myself to that all-consumingspark?
Long enough for me to burn something? Not something, but food.
Por Dios. Now, pretending she didn’t have any effect on me didn’t look like something I’d be able to do.
