Heating Up the Holidays 3-Story Bundle(75)

Then he says, “Say something, say something else,” but he smiles, like he knows this negotiation between us, before we do something more than almost kiss, is almost the best part.

“Will you get in trouble?” I can’t believe I just said that.

My question swoops through me, live.

It’s not what I meant to ask, exactly.

But as soon as I do, both of us lean in a little more.

He smiles, he’s so close I can imagine that smile against my mouth. “You should know I already talked to my supervisor about you. Before I even went to the lab with you, that day.”

“Oh.”

“Before we even did that exercise in the lobby.”

Oh.

“I talked to her because I was pretty sure I was going to kiss you sooner rather than later.”

“That is”—I take a breath—“a really strange reaction to a difficult client.”

“It’s probably not the difficult-client part that got me thinking about kissing, exactly.” He puts his hand over mine on the table, and I feel it between my legs, over my thighs.

It starts to ache when he traces my knuckles. “Do you remember the day you came in with that huge strawberry milk shake?”

“It was a smoothie, and I think it was pomegranate.” I don’t even know if I’m speaking out loud, it’s all I can do not to let my eyes roll to the back of my head from all this delicious anticipation.

“There was like three gallons of whatever it was.”

“You would know, since all of it ended up in your lap.”

“You were using that giant cup to kind of gesture at me, while you yelled about night-vision goggles.”

“I don’t remember yelling, exactly.” I think I was kind of yelling.

I had just failed a test concerning my night blindness that put me in a more serious category for my diagnosis, and he had completely gone after using the night-vision glasses, which were awkward and pinchy and huge and I decided I would just never go anywhere in the dark, basically.

“You were yelling. And then the lid came off your drink, and then I was dripping with cold, pink goo.”

“Yeah. Not one of my finer moments.”

He strums over my knuckles and the lust is just bolting right through my middle, hard and sweet.

“Except, that it was. Because you went from yelling to helping, and laughing at yourself and you were even tearing pages out of this lab book from your bag to try to clean up the smoothie and it was like you didn’t even know where you were rubbing. I realized that even though this was serious, your pain and your diagnosis, you didn’t take yourself seriously. In the best way, I mean. There was this incredible, massive grief and you still drank giant pink smoothies and yelled and tried to be helpful and kind. Not like you were noble, just like”—he looked up to find the words—“you were the kind of person that was nice to have around, in this life, in this fucked-up life, in general. The kind of person that made everything mostly bearable.

“After that is when I talked to my supervisor.”

I smile, let myself enjoy really looking into his eyes. “I totally realized later that I had been rubbing lab graphs on your junk and it took three beers before I was over it”—I captured his finger with my thumb—“by the way.”

We sat like that, my thumb over his finger, looking down at our hands. Then his other hand is under my jaw, and he tips my face up to look at him.

His big hand at my cheek, his thumb under my jaw—God. I let myself blink slowly, to recover, to enjoy the lush high coming over me.

“I really want to kiss you,” he says.

None of the kisses in my experience have enjoyed so much premeditation, and I think all this talking about almost kisses and wanting to kiss someone has made everything completely unbearable, in a way that feels like nothing, nothing he could do to me could relieve the ache.

He’ll try and try and I’ll just ache more.

I can’t help looking at his mouth, which is in one of those almost smiles, but now I can see the curve under his lower lip and the patch of bristles there and God, that would feel so amazing against my tongue if I just licked right over that lip, halfway into those bristles with one of those kisses that’s about tasting and trying not to bite and biting a little, anyway.

“I want to kiss you more, when you look like that,” he whispers.

“You have this great mouth,” my horniness says.

“You almost killed me in your lab locker room.”

“Yeah? Was it my clogs? The safety goggles?”

“Yes.”

I laugh, and so he looks at my mouth, again, and then he leans the rest of the way over and I was wrong about his mouth, because it doesn’t feel amazing, it feels like I’m being rubbed with heat from something deeply radiant, magnetized.