“Does it sound genteel?” I ask. “Usually, when something gets screwed up and he’s giving me hell for it, it just sounds shitty.”
“I wonder if we could get him to crack,” Eli muses. “Do something that makes him drop the act and go back to his carpetbagger accent. What?”
“Did you just say carpetbagger?” I ask, a hush puppy halfway to my mouth as I give Eli a look. “Are you ninety? Did you time travel here from the 1870s?”
“People say that,” he protests.
“They don’t,” I tell him, biting in.
“My granddad did.”
“I’m pretty sure that only proves my point,” I say around a mouthful of hush puppy.
“Fine, we do something that makes him reveal his yankee accent. Better?” he teases.
“Maybe we start talking with ridiculously over-exaggerated Brooklyn accents,” I muse. “See if that gets him to switch.”
Eli grins, laughing, and I can’t help but grin back. He’s handsome as hell even here, in a hole-in-the-wall with a dot of barbecue sauce on his chin.
“He’s going to think we’ve had strokes,” he says.
“Well, we have to study,” I say, like it’s obvious. “We’ll practice for a few months first, really nail it, and then one day —"
“I’ve got better things to do than practice a Brooklyn accent just to see if my boss is faking it,” he says.
“Like what?” I tease.
Eli’s sticks his thumb in his mouth, licking the last of the barbecue sauce from it.
“Take me home and I’ll show you,” he says, grinning, his dark hair flopping over his forehead, his eyes ablaze.
It’s unfair. He’s sitting here, at a tiny table in a hole-in-the-wall barbecue joint, eating off of paper plates, and he’s so sexy that if he wanted to bend me over and do it right here, I’d probably say yes.
Seven billion people in the world, and Eli Fucking Loveless is the one I can’t help myself around.
I lean forward, across the tiny table, and grab his wrist. I close my eyes and bring his fingers to my mouth, sucking the barbecue sauce off of them, running my tongue along the rough pads.
When I finish, he looks at me, that feral look that I’ve gotten so familiar with in the past few days. I flick my tongue over a fingerprint one more time, my core already heating up.
“That was weird,” he murmurs, his voice low and rough. There’s another couple on the far side of the room, but I don’t think they’re watching us. At any rate, I don’t know them, so who cares?
“You liked it, though,” I say, smiling.
He slips his hand into mine. Tingles rush over my skin because we’re in public, because I like the way everything he does feels, because Eli feels like driving a pickup truck too fast over a narrow bumpy road, like every swerve and jostle might be the one that does me in.
“You gonna take me home or what?” he asks, the pad of his thumb rubbing over the back of my hand, even that small amount of friction causes heat.
“You’re driving,” I point out.
“Think we can make it?”
The smile. The half-hitched one that makes his eyes light up, the one that makes him look rakish and dirty and everything I thought I didn’t like in men.
“I think we better,” I say, and stand up.
We toss our trash and tell the owner thanks. Eli opens the back door for me and we practically run across the gravel parking lot to his Bronco. When he opens the passenger door for me, his hand is already on my ass and he turns me around to face him.
“You should wear this skirt more often,” he says, pressing against me, my back against the seat, both of us standing between the open door and the side of the car.
“Don’t tell me what to wear,” I say.
He bends down, kisses me. It’s slow but rough, needy, his erection already throbbing against my hip. He pulls back and bites my lip as he does, leaving me breathless.
“It was just a suggestion,” he says lightly, his eyes sparking. “I know better than to tell you what to do.”
He kisses me again. Harder, his hand digging into my hip. Behind him are the lights of the Ace in the Hole, the road beyond that, this spot anything but private.
I kiss him back. I can’t help it. I slide one hand around his waist, feeling the warm muscles under his skin, and pull him into me.
One hand on my thigh, Eli tugs at my skirt, finding the hem, his fingers slip beneath it.
I put one hand on his chest and push him away.
“We should go,” I whisper.
He just grins, moving his hand higher.
“Eli.”
“Your house is forty minutes away,” he says. “That’s an awful long time.”
“So drive fast,” I say, sliding one finger beneath the waistband of his pants.
“I can’t drive that fast,” he says. “Besides, nobody’s out here.”