“Good.” She steps closer, and the breeze ruffles her black hair and dress. Her eyes seem to glow. “How about you?”
I open my mouth to lie, and I have to swallow around a knot in my throat. Why can’t I lie to her, say everything is okay?
So of course I end up saying nothing. Her scent floats up at me—warm stone, warm grass, flowers and honey—and she’s so near I can touch her.
I want to touch her. Dying to.
“Erin told me you’re looking for a roommate.”
I blink. “Yeah, so…?”
“As it happens, I’m looking for a roommate, too. The girl I’m living with is moving in with her boyfriend, so...”
I blink again. She’s not asking…
“Want to be roommates?” She still isn’t looking at me. I can see her chest rising and falling rapidly.
“No.” Hell no. That would be a royal fuck-up. I don’t do relationships, don’t even bring chicks home, and to live next door to someone I want to fuck into the wall… Best recipe for disaster.
Because there can be no repeat performance once we screw. If we screw. No holding hands, and no plans for a future, or even a friendship. I’ve seen it a thousand times. It would mean I'd never see her again, and why that bothers me, I don’t know.
“Okay.” She bites her lip, and damn, I want to draw it into my mouth, taste her, make her moan.
“Okay,” I echo.
“Then the least you can do is ink me,” she whispers. “To make up for this.”
She has turned her head toward me, and her face is now in shadow. The flames illuminate her pale shoulder. The dark lines of a tattoo creep under her dress and wr
ap around her slim arm.
I lick my lips, my brain on pause. “Ink you?”
“The dragon tattoo I’ve been asking you for.”
Oh, that again. “I said no.”
“So you have.” She winks and I relax.
Familiar territory. Teasing. This is turning into a running joke between us. An insider thing nobody else understands but us. And it’s fine. She has no dark past, remember? She’s clean of misfortune, clear like crystal. Maybe that’s what draws me to her, this promise of pure calm and pleasure with no drama attached. No need to save her, like everyone else around me.
Call me selfish. I call it a sense of self-preservation. Give me one more fucked-up person to look after, and I’m going over the fucking deep end for good.
“Why do you always say no to me?” She’s closer all of a sudden. One more step, and she looks up at me. “Why, Zane?”
“I don’t…” It’s damn hard to think straight when she’s all but pressed against me. Even from the few inches separating us, she has to feel my hard dick making a bulge in my jeans.
“Then say yes.”
She’s so close, so damn close. But she isn’t touching me. I want her to touch me, and this hasn’t happened to me in a very long time. “Yes to what?”
“Just say yes,” she whispers and places her hands on my hips, closing the small gap, pressing on my straining erection.
I swear I see stars. “Yes. Yes.” I don’t even care what I’m agreeing to. It can’t be normal, to be so hard for so long just from staring at a girl. Something’s seriously wrong with me.
She lets out a breathless laugh. “Good.”
“So what did I just agree to?”