“We haven’t really checked in on the dating thing,” she said, abruptly.
God, when was she going to have a thought and keep it to herself?
He arched both eyebrows at her the way he did sometimes.
“Well?”
“That wasn’t a question, lady,” he said.
A little of the tension she was carrying disappeared when he called her lady in that soft tone he used only when they were alone.
“Do you think it’s working?” she asked.
“Do you?”
“Ugh.”
“Ugh?”
“Conrad, stop doing that. I’m being serious.”
He stopped walking and pulled her into his arms. “I know.”
She put her arms around his neck and looked up at him. He was a big man with a muscly body who didn’t need anyone to protect him, and yet there were moments like this when she saw a flash of vulnerability and she wanted to defend him.
“So?”
“Do we have to discuss this?” he asked.
“I guess not. Did I force you to date me?”
He started laughing and lifted her off her feet. “Lady, you couldn’t force me to do anything. I’m here because I want to be here.”
Those words put her mind at ease and she wrapped her arms around him and kissed him as he held her. Not the little sweet kisses they’d shared through the night but a deep, passionate kiss, because she was very aware that he hadn’t answered her question and that there was a panic building inside her as she fell harder for him.
Was this going to last?
She’d been okay on her own, had planned out a life for herself where she accepted who she was and what was enough. Then Conrad came into it. To be fair, she’d drawn him here.
But all the same, this man who she was kissing with the kind of passion she thought she’d never experience again had changed something in her. Had made her start to dream of a future again and she didn’t want to give it up.
And the harder she worked to make sure he felt safe and not chained to her, the more she wanted to wrap him in them as a couple. The more she felt compelled to make him see that they were stronger as a couple. The more she wanted to find a way to make him stay by her side.
Or force him to tell her that he couldn’t. She knew that love took time, that she needed to be patient and let things unfold as they were meant to. But she wasn’t sure she could do that.
She loved him. She had been trying not to, but she did. And Conrad was... Conrad. She felt that deep well of caring inside him, but he’d had a decade of being on his own and had gotten so used to not caring that she feared if she didn’t push him to admit his feelings, he never would.
She’d risked everything on Conrad Gilbert, and she hadn’t meant to.
He set her on her feet and they finished the walk to her house in silence. Her mind was buzzing with questions and the need for answers and her body was buzzing for him.
Of the two, she chose the safer option and led him up the stairs to her bed.
Fourteen
Conrad leaned against the wall in the hall outside her bedroom. He didn’t want to be in her bed again. He needed to claim her but they were becoming too comfortable. Too much like a real couple. Tonight...well, tonight had been the moment where he had to face himself and admit that he’d let this go on too long.
He pulled her against him, so that her breasts rested against his chest and her hips were nestled against him. She leaned up on her tiptoes, her hands on his shoulders, and he put his hands under her butt and lifted her up so they could see each other eye to eye. Hers were still a bit bloodshot from the drinks earlier, but he saw the seriousness in them. Knew that they both didn’t have to say it out loud but were thinking the same thing.