The Love Coupon (Stubborn Hearts 2)

“And...”

“We’d talk about world events and uncomfortable family relationships and tomato balls.”

She laughed. “You got jealous.”

He screwed up his face. “Yes. You wore that dress, picked this place for me. You’re mine tonight. I have a coupon and I intend to max out on it.”

She might’ve melted except the next course arrived. Alaskan king crab with lemon mint for Tom, and English pea ricotta with olive oil and lavender for her. For the distraction value, she slipped off her shoe and bumped his shin with her toes. He moved his leg.

She almost laughed. She’d never played footsie before, wasn’t exactly sure how it was supposed to work, but probably chasing your partner’s leg around under the table while he ate crab wasn’t it. She tried again, touching the point of her toe to his ankle.

His brows jumped, but he kept eating. She dragged the arch of her foot from his ankle to mid-calf and he looked up from his plate. “You’re doing that deliberately.”

“I am.” That was an invitation to work her toes under the cuff of his trousers to touch his skin above his sock.

“You should probably know I don’t want to talk about hypothetical dates and future timelines,” he said.

She could settle her instep against the curve of his leg, but go no farther inside his trouser leg. “I’ll change the topic.”

“Figured it was better to be straight about that.”

She changed the position of her foot, skimming his ankle, calf, tapping his knee, and when he wet his lips she pushed her foot between his legs against his thigh. He shifted, but to open his legs, sit forward in his chair, not away, forward so with a bit of slumping she could touch her toes to his lap. “You’re a very straight-up guy.”

He wrapped a warm hand around her foot, held it. “I try.”

She was too short to work out if this had made him hard. “It’s in your DNA.”

“You don’t have to seduce me, Flick. I’m a sure thing.”

Maybe it had.

He pushed his thumb into the middle of her foot, an impromptu under-the-table massage that was hygienically ill-advised but a lifetime top-ten turn-on that made her sigh and close her eyes. Oh, the chemistry was every letter in the alphabet, and the alphabet was freezing, melting, burning, giving off vapor, reducing, expanding and fusing.

While he was eating bay scallops and she tackled white asparagus, she faced an uncomfortable truth. Somewhere between becoming his temporary tenant and a TV marathon, she’d discovered he was the one.

During her pear-banana finger limes and his cashew-cocoa crème fraîche it became obvious she’d fallen in love for real with Tom.

That could not be more inconvenient.

Least of all because he didn’t believe in it.

“Do you want to marry, have a family?”

“I want you to try this.” He held out a forkful of his dessert.

She leaned forward and let him feed her. The taste explosion was nothing on the way she hung off his answer, or the way his eyes settled on her lips.

“Since we’re talking about things I don’t want to talk about, I think marriage is an outdated institution. Childless couples are a rising demographic. Look at South Korea and Japan, shrinking populations. And I don’t even want to own a goldfish. I’ve never spent any time thinking about having a kid.”

There it was, sanity restored. Tom was her temporary roommate, couponing partner and the hottest lover she’d ever had, her soon-to-be long-distance friend and maybe lifelong regret. But not tonight. Tonight, he was as much hers as she was his, no future considerations need get in the way of that.

“Would you like a tas

te of mine?” He leaned forward and she forked a generous mouthful, ready to feed him.

He stopped her hand. “I would like to taste you all over. Start at your toes, move up your legs, pay serious, sustained attention to the honeyed space between them. I’d like to suck on your nipples till they’re hard candy in my mouth and nibble on your lips till you’re desperate for one of those kisses that wipes out history and changes the world.” He brought her trembling hand to his mouth and ate the portion. “And then, I’d like to do it all over again.”

She’d meant her chocolate with grapefruit, chartreuse and celery heart, but his idea was infinitesimally better and for now—for now, it would paper over the cracks in her own blood-and-tissue heart.