Something Reckless(65)

“Come on,” he whispers, sliding his hand around my waist and dipping his mouth to my ear. “I don’t think I can handle another one of these dinners without you next to me.”

“And how will I help?” I ask, but I already know I’m going to go with him. “What difference will it make having me by your side?”

“I’ll get to spend it thinking of all the filthy things I’m going to do to you after.”





Chapter Seventeen





Sam



I’m nervous. Fucking nervous about taking a woman to dinner. This isn’t like me. Being so damn distracted I can’t work isn’t like me. Wanting to bring her home and hold her all night isn’t like me.

If only it wasn’t so complicated.

I slap my steering wheel. “Fuck you, Connor.”

Because the things Liz makes me feel don’t come easily for me, but her history with my brother-in-law makes them that much more difficult. I couldn’t even take Ryann’s very simple advice to ask Liz on a date that wasn’t an already-scheduled obligation. Liz isn’t ready for that yet. She’s too busy putting up her walls, and I don’t know what it is about me that makes her do that. We touch, we fuck, it’s so damn good, and then she’s guarded all over again.

When she steps onto her front porch, all that noise melts away. God, she’s beautiful.

She’s wearing a little black dress, a short thing that shows her long, toned legs and hugs her hips. It highlights every curve and reminds me of all of my favorite places to touch and taste.

I climb out of the car and walk around to her side to open her door. “You look amazing,” I tell her as she steps in front of me.

A blush creeps up her cheeks. “Thank you.”

Then, because I can’t resist and because I want her to know she’s mine tonight, I slide my hand behind her neck and lower my mouth to hers. When I slip my tongue between her lips, the taste of her slingshots me back in time to the first time we kissed. She feels so soft and nervous that for a moment I contemplate what I’d do if I had a second chance at the night she came to Notre Dame. Maybe I’d crawl into bed after her and hold her while she slept. Maybe when she turned to me in the middle of the night and offered me something I knew I didn’t deserve, I’d take it anyway.

When she climbed on my lap that night, I knew what she wanted. She wanted me to take her virginity when I already believed it to be mine. She was already mine. I just had to wait another year, maybe two. I had to make sure she was ready. I had to make sure I didn’t hurt her or scare her away.

That she gave herself to Connor that first time, I could forgive. I had no business expecting her to wait for me. But when I found her in his bed last summer . . .

Yes, if life gave second chances, I would do that night in college differently. I would do a lot of things differently. The first kiss, the first night we had sex, and the way I handled it when Asia showed up in my living room and told me she would keep the baby.

Liz has always been there. This fixture in my life that always felt out of my reach. And I helped put her there. She stayed beyond my grasp because she was scared to trust me with her heart. I see that now. I don’t know how to make her trust me, and I don’t know how to trust her, but I want to figure it out.

I don’t know how to tell her that, how to explain that I don’t really like the man I’ve become but I’m not sure I can be anyone else. I don’t know how to warn her that having her on my arm tonight started as a political move intended to make my father look good, but already means more to me than that. So I slant my mouth over hers and kiss her deeper, and she softens under me and moans into my mouth.

When I pull back, her tongue sneaks out to her lip, as if she must collect the memory of the kiss there, and I feel myself fall down a couple of rungs on a precariously tall ladder. I’m terrified of what I might find if I fall all the way to the bottom, but for her maybe the risk is worth it.



* * *





Liz


“What was that for?” I ask.

“Do I need a reason to kiss the most beautiful woman I’ve seen all day?”

Don’t say things like that. I’ve already spent the last two days reminding myself that this date with Sam is a matter of convenience for him. He needs a date, and I’m handy. But when he makes me feel so much more precious than that, it’s hard to remember. If he keeps putting on the charm, I’m going to be in trouble. “Thank you.” I climb into the car self-consciously, and he closes the door behind me before coming around to his side and getting in the driver’s seat.

Sam’s broad shoulders seem to overwhelm the small space inside the car, and for a moment I think about what I might do if we were a real couple. Maybe I’d lean my head against his shoulder or we’d hold hands between our seats.