“We can go downstairs.”
“What and make out on the couch like teenagers?”
“We can go to my room if it makes you feel better.”
“No, it doesn’t make me feel better.” I pushed him away from me and jammed my foot into my shoe. “None of this makes me feel better.”
“I promise you I can.” His eyes were hot and his shirt was wrinkled. Oh, and another button had come free thanks to our little mauling makeout session against the frigging wall. The little bit of hair at the center of his chest arrowed down his hard abs that were now showing.
Yeah, I was so not looking. I pulled down my shirt and cursed my overstimulated body. Everything was hot and tingling and it was all so wrong.
I spun on my heel and silently sprinted down the hallway to the stairs. I heard him curse under his breath behind me, but I kept going.
Yeah, I was running. Sue me.
There was no way I could handle any of this today. Not emotionally and definitely not intellectually. I’d found out why Seth made all the girls come around.
Five more minutes and I would have come.
And that was five minutes I could never get back, nor live through over and over again.
He caught me at the door and jerked me to a stop before I could make it to the safety of the night. To the normalcy of my piece of shit car.
“Dammit, Al.” He turned me around and gripped both my upper arms. “Why are you running?”
“We can’t do this. Not now.”
His dark eyes fired. “Why not?”
My chest was heaving. My fight or flight instincts were in full-on escape route mode. “Please let me go.”
I don’t know if it was the please or something he saw in my eyes. Whatever it was, he dropped his hands and I stumbled back and out the door.
I didn’t look back to see if he followed. I could only pray he wouldn’t.
My breath returned to normal when I was inside my car. I finally dared a look and quickly returned my eyes to front and center. To the moonlit water off the bank of his property.
To the lake that had been the only home I’d ever truly known.
I had to.
I couldn’t watch him stand on that huge staircase and drive away from him. So I stared out the back window until I was on the road again, and I didn’t look into my rearview mirror.
Not even once.
6
Seth
Shaking off the rain on my hair, I stepped into the darkened, intimate atmosphere of the Sherman Inn. My stomach was roaring and my mind was in knots.
As for my dick, I wasn’t going there.
It had taken me days of wearing her down, but Ally had finally agreed to meet me for dinner and “some tim
e” in town on Friday night.
“Some time” probably being an hour or less, considering her skittish tone as we’d talked that afternoon. But hell, after Sunday’s kiss, I considered it huge progress that she was talking to me at all. She’d run awful damn fast the other day.