He didn’t want to give it to her and then leave. “Can I come in?”
He’d done worse.
“Of course,” she said, turning from the door to flip on the light in the vestibule. And then bent to turn on a lamp as they entered the living room.
His gaze immediately homed in on the bottle of wine. The half-empty glass.
He hadn’t figured her for a wine drinker. Or much of a drinker at all, in spite of the fact that she’d worked in a bar. “You got an extra glass?” he asked. The bottle was more than half-full. It would do.
She didn’t answer that time, but she left the room and came back a few seconds later with a second glass. Poured wine into it. Held it up to him.
All good signs.
And reason to put down the suitcase. Take off his coat. Settle back into the couch as though he’d been hanging out there all his life.
“This is good,” he said, sipping the wine. Needing a gulp.
“I get it at a winery up north,” she said, settling on the other end of the couch, those long, luscious legs tucked underneath her. “Gram introduced me to it years ago.”
She didn’t question his presence. Or call him out on his rude departure at the prison. She just...accepted that he’d come.
If he hadn’t already been head over heels in love with her, he’d have fallen right then. Maybe he fell a little more anyway.
Maybe he’d be falling further and further for the rest of his life.
He could live with that.
“I have something to show you,” he said, standing up. He wasn’t going to wait and let wine do his talking. He reached for his belt buckle, pulled the strap through the latch, unhooked the latch...
“Clarke...” She’d taken a sip of wine. Put the glass down. But hadn’t stopped staring at his fly. Of course, he was growing rapidly, so there was plenty for her to see.
But his penis wasn’t the star of this show.
He undid the button on the top of the pants. Found it fascinating, and way too fun, that she didn’t tell him to stop.
He wasn’t even sure she felt the same away about him yet and she was welcoming him into her home, letting him get inappropriate without even offering an explanation.
Or a promise.
But he needed a promise from her. There’d be no more one and done.
No sex, period, until he knew the score. Knew that she knew. That they both wanted the same thing—one another, forever.
With his belt out of the way and the button on the top of his jeans undone, he’d completed the easy part. The rest...was way more tender than he’d expected.
Which was stupid of him, really, knowing, as he had, what the plan had entailed.
Lifting his jeans out away from his skin, he lowered them down to the middle of his hip.
It hurt like hell, but he got it all done. He had a plan, and nothing was getting in his way. It was how he rolled. How he’d always rolled.
When he knew something was the right thing for him to do.
“What did you do...?” Everleigh stared at the raw skin he’d exposed, leaning forward to get a closer look.
He waited.
“What...?” She leaned in even closer. Then looked up at him.