Chapter Five
Amber had a million different impulses at the same time.
Crawl into his lap.
Keel over and die.
Ask him to kiss you.
Hide in the corner.
Fumble around in the dark for his fly and find out if he means it.
She liked that last impulse best, but she couldn’t move. Running her mouth was one thing, and getting rejected—physically, actually, definitively rejected—was another. She wasn’t sure she could hack it.
“Who ever said I was a bunny?” she asked.
“Nobody, honey.”
“Well, I’m not. I’m just a woman, Tony. Just me. And I … I like you.” A lot.
“I like you, too, honey, but I—”
The tornado siren cut him off. It built from a low moan to a wail, surprising her with its volume.
When the siren died down, there was only their breathing and her disappointment. No way to resurrect the conversation—the noise had effectively sliced through the intimate atmosphere—but she wanted it back, all the same.
She wanted to know what would have happened next.
“That was the all clear,” Tony said.
“I know. We can go up. You want me to lead the way out, since I know it better?”
“Yeah, that’d be good.”
She stood up and brushed off her butt. He got up, too, and he was standing so close to her that they bumped a few times as they got cleaned off.
“So, wait, which way are you facing?” she asked.
His hand collided with her hip, a solid weight. “This way.” The other hand landed, and there went that heat between her thighs again. That single, intense pulse that flung her whole body headlong into lust.
He could kiss her, if he wanted to. He was breathing hard. Maybe he did want to.
Here, in the dark, where she was safe, she could even kiss him. She wondered how far away his face was. If he was staring over the top of her head or looking to the side. How difficult it would be to seek his mouth with her own and to find out whether his lips were soft or firm.
“I need to get out of here,” he said.
Right. She had sex on the brain, and he was in fight-or-flight mode.
“Okay. Let’s go over to the side wall so I can turn the light switches off, just in case the power comes back on tonight.”
She pried one of his hands off her hip and held it, pulling him along behind her as she took tentative steps into the blackness. She realized too late that she should have followed the back wall instead of walking in the open, because every step she took, she became a little more uncertain, a little more worried she’d drop into an abyss or trip over something. Get eaten by a lion. Whatever primitive fears her brain unleashed upon her at moments like this one.
Tony was breathing as though he’d just finished running a marathon.
“You never told me what your worst fear is,” she said, hoping to distract him.
“This. This is it.”