AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She felt a current run through his body; it tightened his hands on her ass, it got her squeezed closer, it put more force in his kiss and a shudder through his frame.
This thing they had was strong and it wasn’t near played out.
He was the one to stop things overheating. He tore his mouth away. “You need to eat. You have things to do. Tell me how to help.”
Words that were as lovely as his kisses. Restraint she knew he didn’t want to exercise. She called Cara while Reid got breakfast ready. And after they ate he took her back to the apartment on the bike. The building was stil
l cordoned off with police tape and closer set barricades, but without the engines and the army of fire fighters, cops and refugees, the devastation was easier to see.
Se Jong’s was a burned-out shell emitting an acrid smell onto the street front. The wall between the restaurant and the stairwell had collapsed in parts and water dripped from the ceiling.
“We’re not getting back in there anytime soon.”
He reached for her hand. He had both their helmets in his other one. “You’re not going to want back whatever you left inside either. It will be smoke and water damaged.”
There wasn’t much worth getting upset about. Her textbooks, which would hurt to replace, more clothes and shoes, old photographs and keepsakes. Cara had lost more. Her patterns, fabric and sewing machine. She’d been stoic on the call but she’d been hopeful. Zarley was going to need to give it to her straight.
“Did you have insurance?”
“No.” They’d had dreams and now they had starting again. He wouldn’t understand. “Can we go back to your place, please? I need to make some calls.”
They got back on the bike. But he took a different route back to his apartment. She wasn’t feeling a joyride and the streets he’d chosen weren’t exactly picturesque. But when he pulled over in front of a nondescript apartment building, it made sense.
He took his helmet off and waited for her to do the same. He jerked his chin toward the building. “That’s where I lived with Dev. Sixth floor. View of the back alley. We moved in after college. I lived there until two years ago. I didn’t have insurance either. Yeah, I have security now and more resources than I ever expected, but you and I are not that different.”
They were because he’d made it and could again, and she’d crashed out, and didn’t know where the hell she was going, but she appreciated the sentiment. “You and your mom were homeless once?”
“You read that.”
She propped her chin on his shoulder. “You give good Google.”
“You give pretty good Google yourself. I was a dumb kid. It was summer. I thought we were camping. I had no idea it was because we didn’t have an option. I thought it was fun. Mom got a new job and found a place to rent and we were fine.”
But he’d lived here when he could afford better and when he got better he lived like he was camping. She held him tighter on the way back to the apartment and thought about ditching her term paper for the pleasure of being eaten out on his dining room table.
That almost came off the agenda altogether because he tried to help. He took one look at her business statistics paper and told her she was doing it wrong.
“Wrong?”
He amended. “Inelegant.”
“You think numbers are elegant.” Of course he did.
“I think you’re elegant but your paper is a C at best.”
“If you wrote it for me it’d be an A.”
“Hell, yes.” He pulled her laptop around so he could access the keyboard.
“You’re not doing my paper for me.”
He laughed. “Okay, I get it.” He pushed the laptop back toward her. “Let me talk you through where you went wrong.”
She’d struggled with this subject. Gotten extra tutoring. Even had her essay outline assessed because she’d been nervous about it. “I don’t think I’ve gotten it wrong.”
“It could be better.”
“I’m happy with how it is.”
