Crickitt blushed. She’d bet even the tips of her toes glowed pink.
“And you’d like to establish some ground rules?” he asked.
She resisted squirming and stared at her feet.
“I’ll take that as a yes. We could write it up if that would make you feel better. Like a contract? One we could both sign after agreeing on the particulars. Let’s start with frequency…”
Crickitt snapped her head up. Shane was grinning. She dropped her shoulders. “You’re teasing me.”
“Yes,” he said, “and frankly, I’m insulted you didn’t pick up on that sooner.”
She groaned, pressed her hands to her face. Stepping past him into the living room, she said, “I promised myself I’d be cool.” She dropped her hands, tucked them into her pockets. “Unaffected. Like you.”
Shane winced. “You think I’m unaffected?”
“Maybe that’s not the right word. But you probably know how to handle this.” She shrugged. “Since you’ve done it before.”
He moved to her, his face serious now. “I’ve never spent the night with you before.” His fingers wrapped around hers. “You are new to me, Crickitt.”
Tears of relief, or maybe joy, heated behind her eyes, and she blinked furiously, testing the weight of his hand in hers. Dangerous emotions, ones she refused to name and shouldn’t be having so soon for this man, tore at her chest. She repressed them.
She’d deal with them later.
“Since we’re rained in,” Shane said, “what would you like to do today?”
She knew what she wanted to do today. Mustering the courage to say it aloud proved impossible, so instead she said, “I—uh, what do you want?”
“I’m not sure if I’m lucky enough to get what I want,” he said with a self-effacing grin. He tipped her chin and kissed her as thunder rumbled long and low in the distance. His breath tickling her lips, he whispered, “Tell me, Crickitt. What do you want?”
* * *
Shane watched the emotions play across Crickitt’s face for several seconds. He held his casual smile and her hand in his, but inside, his mind raced to piece together the last twelve hours.
He wasn’t exaggerating when he said she was new to him. She was so far outside of what he knew how to handle he didn’t quite know how to behave. When he was with her, his professional barriers disintegrated into a blurry, hazy fog that left him exposed. Now, that was scary. And when he’d climbed out from under the covers it wasn’t to return to his own room. He’d been awake, but reluctant to leave, staying until just before the sun lit the sky.
He made himself a cup of coffee and sat on the front porch watching the clouds descend and a light drizzle blow in from the distant mountaintops. It wasn’t like he was a stranger to “the morning after.” Though, admittedly, he never stayed somewhere he couldn’t make a quick exit from before sunrise. With Crickitt, he’d made an exception. Where she was concerned, he’d made lots of exceptions. Around her he felt like a kite in the wind, helplessly tethered to her, following wherever she led.
The moment he laid eyes on her this morning, his three-part plan to act normal, focus on business, and keep his distance went the way of the dodo bird. Rather than go about his routine, which is what he should have done, he recited the numerable reasons why he shouldn’t ask her about last night. And then what had he done?
Tell me you don’t regret last night.
Could he be more insecure? And now, here he stood, unable to unsay the neediest words he’d ever spoken as he waited for her answer, his breath caught in his lungs. He cared about what she wanted. And, worse, he knew he’d give it to her, whatever it was.
Breakfast, a game of Scrabble, a foot rub…But no matter what happened between them, he wasn’t a man who could offer more than a little fun. Okay, a lot of fun.
This morning, she’d ducked into the shower without so much as poking her head out to say good morning. He told himself he should be relieved. Not so long ago, a past version of himself would have been relieved. Would have encouraged her in the general direction of “cool and unaffected.”
But he wasn’t relieved.
Ever since he spotted her rounded butt in those short shorts this morning, he’d been hit with a blast of longing like none he’d ever felt. And yes, part of it was physical. He wanted her again, wanted the promise her body held, the searing heat of her mouth on his. But he also wanted to make sure she knew that he, for one, was far from unaffected. Because she mattered, and not just in a general sense. She mattered to him. And last night, he’d watched her eyes soften as they’d bored into his, feeling the power of her emotions in the pit of his stomach. And he couldn’t have been more helpless than if she’d shot him with a stun gun.