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She unsnapped her seatbelt and turned toward me with a wide, fake smile. “Thankssomuch!”
My lip curled. “Maybe you’re on the right side of the camera after all.”
Her smile dropped into a glower, and I laughed out loud. Before I could stop myself, I reached out and ran my thumb over her full, scowling lips. Her eyes widened.
Fuck. What had I done? What was I stilldoing? My hand was still touching her face, thumb at the curve of her mouth, her soft hair brushing my wrist. I should pull away, but slowly, she was lifting her own hand. She was taking hold of my wrist, and she wasn’t throwing my hand back in my face, she was staring at me. Those green-gray eyes were turbulent, confused.
The jolt that had zapped me the first time I ever touched her came back in full force, but this time it didn’t stop at my elbow. It went all the way through my torso and ended at my cock. Before I could think better of it, or anything at all, I undid my seatbelt and slipped my other hand into her hair. Willow reached up and held onto that wrist, too, but she still wasn’t pushing me away. Her mobile mouth wasn’t scowling anymore either. I wondered if she could feel it, too, this humming, buzzing energy between us. It had been there since the moment we met. It was what ran underneath all of our interactions, fueling our disagreements, and now it was like a track of lighter fluid, guiding the heat we’d been trying to ignore.
Following the track, I pulled her closer, leaned in until my mouth was just above hers. Waited again for her to tell me to fuck off, for those eyes to spit out sparks again. But instead, she closed the distance herself. Her lips pressed against mine for an instant, and the humming, buzzing energy increased tenfold before she sank back, her eyes wider and more turbulent than ever, just inches from mine.
But I hadn’t gotten enough. I pulled her back to me, wishing the gearshift wasn’t between us. Grateful that it was. I took her mouth again, sweet, soft, pliant. A complete contradiction from our prickly, acidic encounters. Her personality might have been all thorns and spikes, but her hair was silk, and her skin was velvet, and she was kissing me back. Lips parting under mine, she let go of one wrist to curl her fingers in my shirtfront, pulling me closer.
I don’t know what would have happened if a train of cars on the road behind us hadn’t suddenly started laying on their horns. Hazy thoughts of dragging her onto my lap had only begun to form, underlined by a faint regret that my car didn’t have a backseat. But then a line of angry beeps laid down in succession, layering over each other, like voices climbing over top of one another, and the spell was broken.
Willow sprang back, nearly hitting the window behind her in her haste to put some distance between us. Her lips were still wet from our kiss, a flush still in her rose petal skin. When she pulled free, the hair I’d been running my hands through fell over her shoulder, and the ends rose and fell with the movement of her rapid breathing. Disoriented, I reached for her again. I could still feel her mouth on mine, the silk and velvet of her imprinted on my palms.
“No,” Willow gasped, pushing herself back against the door.
I pulled back like she’d brandished a blowtorch at me. Turned my hands palm out in the universal symbol of surrender.Willow tossed the camera at me like it was a grenade and scrambled out of the car, slamming it behind her.
Then, shooting one last disbelieving look through the windshield, she disappeared into the building.
11
WILLOW
Julian Lewis kissed me. That asshole actually put his hands on me and kissed me. And I had been too shocked to resist, to protest, to–
But even before I reached the stairs, my self-righteous mental diatribe petered out. Not even I believed it. Julian may have crossed the first line, but I’d pulled him over the next. I’d kissed him, and then I’d hung onto him like he was a raft in a stormy sea. I had been seconds away from sliding my hand down his chest to his abs, and then God knows what would have happened if LA traffic hadn’t intervened.
I’d only reached the first landing when I heard the lobby door open and heavy, determined footsteps start down the hall. Julian didn’t even hesitate at the elevator bank. He knew damn well I wasn’t going to put myself in another confined space. I froze, torn between the indignity of running up the stairs to get away from him and the horrifying possibility of having to confront him right here, right now.
I was still standing there when he appeared at the bottom of the stairs. I hated how good he looked. His golden hair still tousled from our day at the skatepark. His shirt still wrinkled from where I’d knotted my fingers in it. His blue eyes glittered with annoyance as they landed on me. “You can’t just run away, Laurier.”
“I’m not running,” I said with as much dignity as I could muster, though now I wish I had.
“Yeah, you are.” Julian took the stairs two at a time and was beside me before I was ready. “Let’s talk about this.”
I started to reply,hell no, but then we heard the sound of someone above us coming down. A woman, based on the sharp click of heels. There were a lot of aspiring actresses in this building, and any one of them would know Julian Lewis’s face. He’d be chum in a shark tank. They could eat him alive for all I cared, but if they found out I knew him, I’d have to move.
“Come on,” I hissed. “Keep your head down.” Against my better judgment, I hurried him to the second floor. The woman we passed threw him an interested, sidelong look, but I could tell by the way she kept descending the stairs that she didn’t recognizehimso much as she recognized an attractive, wealthy male when she saw one.
I breathed a sigh of relief when we were safely in my apartment, but it didn’t last long. I’d gotten us out of the frying pan and right into the fire. I locked the door and turned slowly around to see Julian’s broad shoulders filling my narrow hallway. I’d known that the place was small and shabby, but against his size and glow, it looked even more so.
“This is where you live?” he asked, his voice neutral.
I couldn’t do the same. My voice came out tetchy and defensive when I said, “Yeah,and?”
“And nothing.” He turned around. One stride took him out of the hallway and into the combo dining room/living room space that wasn’t big enough to swing Camper around in. Not that I’d ever tried. Camper was sprawled on the couch, and he’d somehow managed to stretch out his back legs and tail so that he took up most of the two cushions.
“You have a cat,” Julian observed, his voice still neutral.
“Yeah,and?” I went through the kitchen and came out into the living room right beside Camper. I shifted him to one cushion and sank down, my arms crossed.
“And nothing,” Julian repeated, a faint smile on his lips. Before I could protest, he gave himself the ten-cent tour. He made the loop that took him back down the hall and through the kitchen and then back into the living room. I didn’t shift to make an inch of room on the couch, so he kept going. He glanced in the open door of the bathroom and then toward the last door.
“Hey, that’s my–” but he’d twisted the knob, pushed it open, and was looking around my bedroom before I could finish my sentence. It was the nicest room in the apartment. My mom had insisted on painting a mural on the wall my bed sat against. Inky black with bruised-purple hibiscus and ghostly pale Cereus blooming across it. It was beautiful, but until now, I hadn’t realized how sensual it was. Especially since the bed was one of the only pieces of furniture in the room. I’d sacrificed floor space to fit a queen-sized, wrought-iron bed frame in. It was covered with a dark purple silk comforter, stacks of pillows against the scrolled metal headboard.
