“Cos?” He’s stroking my face, his palm and finger pads rough with calluses, dark under his fingernails. Car oil, probably. College student, car mechanic, sex god and boy next door rolled into one.
“I have to go,” I mumble, and roll away before I embarrass myself anymore. “It’s late.”
He’s standing at the bathroom door as I wash my face, scrubbing the tears away. Useless, stupid tears over… what exactly?
Something I can’t have, something I keep hoping for that never happens, something I want so much it breaks my heart, but should stop reaching for.
Something in those pretty blue eyes of his as he screwed me into the mattress.
Yeah, I am that stupid sometimes.
Though I can’t ever remember being touched like this, held and kissed and taken like th—
“Was it something I said?” Merc stands at the bathroom door. Through the mirror, I can see him leaning against the doorjamb, buck naked, that perfectly sculpted body gleaming like a marble statue, flawless but for a long, faint scar on his forearm I hadn’t noticed earlier.
It had been hard to focus on such details as he’d nailed me to the bed over and over, that thick cock slipping in and out of me—
“No.” My cheeks are burning, my pussy clenching on nothing, pulsing pleasurably, hopefully, wanting more.
Why does he make me want more?
He nods. “So that’s it? You’re leaving.”
“Got to go home sometime.”
“Right. I just thought…”
“What?”
He doesn’t reply. He folds his arms over that muscular chest and looks away. So distracting, all those pretty muscles, the handsome face, the pale hair falling in his eyes.
That soft mouth, now pressed into a hard line.
“I, um. I need to feed the cat,” I whisper.
That brings his gaze back to me. “The cat.”
“Yeah.”
“You fucking with me?”
I lick my dry lips. “The cat is real.”
“And so is the fact you’re running away.”
“I’m not…” I turn around and pull my hair back, snap the elastic around it, fluff up my ponytail. Stalling techniques. “Not running.”
I didn’t run. Proof? I am still here, in St. Louis. In his apartment. At his door, true, but still on the inside.
He
’s staring at me.
“Look,” I say, “I barely know you.”
“And do you want to?”
“Want to what?”