I look up at him, chuckling at his guilty expression. “That’s not creepy.”
He arches a brow.
I laugh harder. “Okay, maybe a little creepy, but with you, I don’t mind.”
“Why’s that?” he asks.
“Because you don’t have a creepy bone in your body. You’re all good guy.” I link my arms at the small of his back, wiggling closer as I add in a whisper, “Sexy-as-hell good guy.”
He arches a brow. “Does this mean you don’t want me to spank you later?”
Excitement zipping across my skin, I bite my lip. “Oh, no, I want a spanking later. Good guy spankings are the best spankings.”
“Yeah?” He grins, a dimple popping in his right cheek, which I’ve never noticed before, but it’s yet another adorable thing on an already extensive list of endearing qualities. “Because good guys know when to say ‘when’?”
I shake my head. “Because good guys make the spanking about you. Not them. They want to please, not be pleased.”
“I’m all about pleasing you,” he says in a raspy voice that makes the well-loved place between my legs begin to pulse all over again. “I can’t wait to be inside you again. It’s all I can think about.”
“Not surprising, considering the way we left things,” I murmur, skimming my nails up and down his back through his T-shirt. “We can always start conserving sperm at a later date, you know.”
Unexpectedly, he laughs. “Hell, no. Give me all the delayed gratification you can dish out, woman. I just had the best writing session of my career. Bar none.”
I pull back, grinning up at him. “Seriously?”
“If I didn’t write something that’ll go on my greatest hits album, I’ll donate my fingers to science.”
“No, don’t say that. You need your fingers,” I say with a laugh, his giddy energy infectious. “But that’s amazing! I’m so happy for you.” I press my lips together and wrinkle my nose, but in the end, I can’t help but ask, “So do you really think stopping in the middle was…inspirational?”
His lips quirk as he shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe. Or maybe it’s just you.” He pulls in a breath, letting it out as he nods toward the house. “Or this place. It has a reputation in the industry for giving good creative vibes.”
I glance to my left, shivering as a breeze sweeps in and sends a few fallen leaves tumbling across the lawn. “It kind of looks like a face from back here, doesn’t it? I didn’t realize it before. The windows on the third floor are the eyes and the—”
“Shit,” Zack cuts in, his voice hushed. “Do you see that? Fourth floor. The window on the far right.”
I shift my gaze, catching what looks like the flutter of dress fabric and black hair blown by the wind. My throat goes tight, and adrenaline dumps into my bloodstream. I’m on the verge of telling Zack that we should rethink the whole “sleeping in a haunted house” thing when he laughs and asks, “What is it? An old toy or something?”
I swallow hard, forcing myself to take a second look. When I do, I see the long brown face of a faded rocking horse, its yarn mane flopping in the breeze coming through the open attic window.
I exhale, shaking my head. “Yeah. It looks like a rocking horse. Though they could find a less eerie place to put it, couldn’t they?”
He hugs me to his side, his tone softening as he gazes down at my face. “You okay?”
“Fine.” I smile up at him, patting my belly. “Just hungry.”
“You sure?”
“Positive,” I lie, not wanting him to feel obligated to sleep with me in my room tonight. He needs his rest, and I’m a grown woman, not a child who doesn’t know the difference between a real threat and an imaginary one.
There’s probably no such thing as ghosts.
Probably…
Still, I can’t help but cling a little tighter to his hand as we start toward the house for dinner. I try to look on the bright side—I’ll have plenty of time to finish my book if I’m up all night unable to sleep—but I can’t help wishing I was going to be curled up with Zack in his bed.
He just makes me feel so…safe.
Which is also odd. People I don’t know well don’t usually make me feel safe—I don’t let them—but with every passing moment, Zack is feeling less and less like a stranger. We’re barely one day into our adventure, and already he feels like someone I can trust, a port in a storm, a good luck charm that wards off ghosts and all the other things that do their best to haunt a person.
Especially at the beginning of a new relationship.
This isn’t a relationship, I remind myself.
It isn’t, but that doesn’t keep me from enjoying Zack’s hand in mine and hoping that the next two weeks pass very, very slowly, ghosts and all.