Giving it to him freely…that scared me.
So much more than I could ever put into words.
Twenty-Three
Dahlia
“So.” I leaned back on the sofa, bag of the promised M&M’s on my lap, and rested my lower legs on Damien’s lap. And then, I forgot what the hell it was I was going to say.
“Hmm?” He peered at me sideways like he knew. He probably did—he knew everything else.
I sighed. “Never mind. I forgot.”
He reached over and snatched a handful of the candy-coated chocolate from the packet before I could protest against it.
Damn it. He was quick.
“Did you actually forget, or have you just decided that it’s a bad question?”
“You’re wasted as a business owner. You should be a cop.” I threw a lone candy into my mouth. “But for the record, I did actually forget. I’ve still forgotten. Hell, twenty minutes ago, I opened the fridge and stared at into it until you scared me into stopping. Is me forgetting really that unbelievable?”
“Not in the slightest. I was just keeping you on your toes….Like I was when I watched you looking at the fridge for five minutes.”
Hmph.
“I didn’t even need anything from the fridge,” I muttered.
Damien nodded toward the ice water on the coffee table in front of us. “You’re right. You needed the water from the dispenser in the door, which makes it all the more puzzling why you opened the thing at all.”
“All right, give it a break. You made me run today. Running makes me forgetful.”
“And here I was thinking I’d fucked the coherent thought out of you.”
“You probably could if you tried hard enough.”
“There’s no probably about it. I absolutely could. If I weren’t so good in bed, you wouldn’t have screamed my name.”
“Ah, the master of the motion of the ocean. You’re humble, too.”
He grinned. It was so wide and infectious that it made his eyes smile, too. “Humility is one of my better qualities. It’s right up there with modesty, the occasional bout of self-doubt.”
“Is that a yearly event? Can we buy tickets for it?”
“You can see it for free.” He traced light circles around my kneecap, his expression now solemn and almost apprehensive.
I twitched as his finger tickled me. “That sounds perilous.”
“Why? You think I don’t get any self-doubts like other people?”
“I didn’t say that, but all the things I know about you point to ‘no.’”
The sofa cushions shifted as he did, resting his head back comfortably. “Right now, I’m sitting here wondering what the hell I did to deserve sitting here with you.”
“Shower sex is a good place to start.” I started to smile, but when he didn’t move, I stopped. “What do you mean by that?”
“It means that you’re an incredible person, and I’m…not.”
That was the most cliché thing I’d ever heard. “I thought we agreed that you hadn’t killed any puppies.”
That made him crack a smile. A small smile, but a smile all the same. “I haven’t, and I have to admit it’s not on a bucket list.” He stopped circling my knee and stroked his hand up my leg until his fingers were curved around my thigh. “But I do wonder why I’m here. Why you’re here. Why you’ve gone from hating me so much to being in my company regularly.”
“The first answer is because you wouldn’t leave me alone,” I said honestly. “The second is because you’re not such a bad person after all. You’re just not so good at the first impressions.”
“Or in your case, the second, or the third, or the fourth…”
Laughter escaped me. “Or the fifth or sixth,” I continued, nodding my head. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t like you because I do.”
“But do you trust me?”
“Like I know you’d save me from a burning building kind of trust? Or I’d trust you to tell me that my skirt is caught in my underwear?”
He stared at me for a moment, blinking. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t they up there on the same level?”
“Well…Perhaps. There’s a chance.”
Slowly, he nodded, but he still didn’t elaborate. He stayed silent, holding my leg, looking at me. I didn’t know what he meant when he asked if I trusted him, mostly because I hadn’t exactly figured it out in the past few hours since I’d asked myself that.
“Do you trust me?” I asked, holding his intense gaze with one of my own.
“To save me from a burning building or to tell me if my fly is undone?” Mild humor peeked out from the restrained emotion that had filled his eyes.
“I’d call nine-one-one. Does that count? As for the other…eventually.”
“I trust you, Dahlia. Although, I’m not quite sure why.”
“You don’t trust anyone, do you?” My voice was soft. I didn’t need to ask—I knew the answer. It was plain to see thanks to the hurt that flashed in his eyes. “I mean, I know that, but I just…”