He smirked his signature smile at me and said, “I asked you before. I’ll ask you again. Want to have dinner with me?”
“I don’t think you asked last time.”
“And yet, dinner still didn’t happen.”
I sighed. “I don’t think dinner’s a good idea.”
He conceded for about a second. “Fine. Why don’t you walk me around, show me some of the best of this college town? First stop can be a drugstore to clean you up.”
“I don’t think …”
His brow furrowed like he couldn’t take another rejection from me. “Humor me, huh?”
The words rolled off his tongue the exact way they did when he’d bring me tea, and I found myself nodding the way I did when he’d hand it over.
We walked in the direction of a drugstore as I tried to clear my head.
Nothing could shake the kiss. Nothing could move it from my memory.
He pulled me over by my waist in the Walgreens, and the same charge as that of his kiss shot exactly where he touched me. I glanced at him to see if he felt it, too, but he was looking at the Band-Aids.
When his fingers wrapped around my wrist, I eyed him warily. He just nodded at my closed hand. “Open.”
I did.
Then he nodded again and went back to looking at the first aid items on the shelves. Instead of letting go of my wrist though, he pulled my hand to his lips and brushed more than one kiss over the back of it.
It was probably muscle memory to him.
He’d always taken his time with me. Years ago, I’d have expected it.
Now, my whole body seized up. We were too close, and I was too weak.
I snatched my hand back.
He didn’t look over at me. He just smiled to himself and grabbed some bandage wrap.
When I pulled a small cardholder out of my sports bra while we stood in line, his smirk turned wolfish, “What else are you hiding in there?”
I glanced around. “Shut up.”
He sidled closer to me. “Come on. Let me see.” He peered down my cleavage.
I shoved him. “Grow up, perv.”
“Name calling now, are we?” His eyebrows raised a little but he kept peering where he wasn’t supposed to.
When I pursed my lips, he shrugged. “Can’t knock a guy for trying.”
Then, he pivoted in front of me to pay for the bandaging. There was no point in arguing, I mumbled a thank you. No Stonewood man had ever let me pay for a thing.
Once outside, he led us over to a cement wall that came up a little past my hips. He set down the bandaging and I went to open it. “I don’t think I even need this.”
“Right, Whitfield. Do everything by the book except when it comes to you getting an infection.”
I stopped opening the bandaging and glared at him. “I don’t do everything by the book.”
He tilted his head slightly. “Really?” He leaned his hip onto the fence. “Enlighten me then. What are you doing that isn’t by the book?”