Never Say Forever

“Is that right?”

While he’s clearly happy to play along, I feel he requires further persuading. Or impressing. Or maybe he just needs to get off his knees and come and kiss me.

That’s what would happen in the movies, right?

“I’m a good Catholic schoolgirl. Former schoolgirl, at least. No jailbait here.” I laugh a little nervously. Ack! Could I be any more obvious? It’s not as though I look like a schoolgirl, though he is obviously older than me. Maybe late twenties, early thirties? I wonder if he’s a deckhand from one of the posh yachts down in the harbour, or maybe he’s one of those sailor types who bounces around the world in his own little yacht. It would certainly account for his tan and those delicious creases around his eyes.

“Is that the new pope’s way of getting down with the kids, using buttmunch as a new catechism?”

A man living an itinerant life on the open seas. How romant—

—ic.

My heart pounds once, loudly and belatedly.

“Did you just say buttmunch?”

“I guess you’re right, it’s not much of a curse, but I’m not so sure where fuck nuggets comes to play on the scale.” His eyes widen a little salaciously as he adds, “I can’t see His Holiness muttering that at Mass.”

“I’m sorry?” I reply, my mind still working around a delay. At least, that’s what I think I say. So why, when the word hits the air, did it sound like I said pussy?

“Is this where I ask if it’s pink again?”

I shake my head, a little like a horse shaking off flies. Surely, I did not just say that in front of this gorgeous man. Life is not that cruel. Maybe I banged my head on the steering wheel when the tyre blew, and I now have a problem with my hearing? Or maybe this is some kind of lucid accident-induced dream?

Lucid or lurid? I guess only time will tell.

“The holy trinity of buttmunch, fuck nuggets, and pussy. Did I get that right?” He looks so gorgeous when he’s amused and trying not to show it.

“I . . .” Groan like I’m in pain because, in a funny kind of way, I am.

Mortification, I think it’s called.

Maybe I can convince him I have amnesia?

Or a head injury-induced bout of Tourette’s?

Or maybe I can just tell the truth.

“Okay, so I might swear a tiny bit,” I eventually reply a little defensively as I hold my thumb and forefinger a smidge apart. “But I don’t ordinarily curse like a sailor.” Not fucking much, I don’t. Truly. “But if you’d had the sort of day I’ve had”—the sort of year I’ve had—“you’d be cursing, too. Anyway,” I add a touch accusingly, “I thought you said you were a gentleman.”

“Do you see anyone else on their knees in front of you?”

His answer stops me in my tracks. No, it’s not his answer. It’s the innately suggestive note in his tone. Before I have a chance to respond, the last lug nut loosens, and my rescuer pulls the tyre free. Laying it flat on the gravel, he stands and pulls a handkerchief free from the pocket of his pants. He begins to wipe the dark marks from his long fingers.

This is madness. I cannot find his fingers attractive.

“Y-you’re definitely good at that,” I find myself stuttering. “Very good.”

He glances up from beneath the sweep of his dark lashes, and heat rises under my skin in the place of a well-deserved cringe. An endless moment passes between us when neither looks away. But the instant he does, I forgive him, feeling every inch of my skin tingle as he begins a slow perusal of my body. His attention caresses the flare of my hips, meandering along the length of my bared legs in a look that seems to say you have no idea how good I am. How good I can be. A look that causes a very particular kind of ache between my legs.

“Good at the car thing.”

I mentally kick myself for trying to fill the silence, ridiculousness bettering nervousness as I continue to stare at his gorgeously large hands. Despite being covered in grease, road dust, and crud, I long to reach out and touch them. For them to touch me. And I don’t care that he’s looking at me like he has a front row seat to the thoughts running through my head because all I can think about is how I’ve never seen a nose as straight as his or a mouth as expressive. I wonder if he knows how much his mouth gives him away? This is a man who laughs a lot, I can tell. It’s in the way his lips twitch at the corners when he’s trying not to laugh and the fine lines at the sides of his mouth bracketing the full lushness between. But what his mouth doesn’t tell me, doesn’t even hint at, is what it would be like to kiss him. His lips look like they’d be soft, but his kiss? That remains a mystery. Would it be gentle and soft or strong and masterful, or even—