Imaginary Lines (New York Leopards 3)

He smiled down at me. “I’d think that was self-evident.”

I let out a huff of amusement, but still gave him a soft push so that he sat up. He did, though slowly, and I did as well, until we sat across from each other in a nest of blankets. I scrunched up my hair in a brief tick of frustration. “Okay, but why?”

He narrowed his eyes. “Is that a trick question?”

I accepted that with a smile, but stood my ground. “All I mean is—I don’t really want to be friends-with-benefits.”

To my great surprise his expression utterly blanked, and no matter how hard I tried, it remained unreadable. “Really.”

Great, I’d probably insulted him. As though it wasn’t hard on me, too, having a conversation when there were so many better things our mouths could be doing. “I just mean—no, that is what I mean. I don’t want to hook up with you.”

He reached out and slowly traced a line from temple to my jaw, and then over the outline of my lips. “It didn’t seem that way a minute ago.”

I trembled but remained firm. “Okay, yes, I do physically, but emotionally it’s a really bad choice for me right now.”

His eyebrows climbed and his dark eyes turned practically black. “I’m ‘emotionally’ a bad choice?”

I hung my head in embarrassment. “I’m insulting you, though I swear I’m not trying to.”

His voice came out clipped. “Yet you’re doing a very good job.”

I made myself look up, because he deserved an explanation. “Abe.” I took his hands in mine. “Abraham, I get that you can’t really be in love with someone who doesn’t love you back, but you get that I was totally infatuated with you for years, right? I don’t think it’s healthy for me to hook up with you when I want to start looking for a real, lasting relationship.”

His dark eyes searched mine for a long moment. “That’s what you’re looking for?”

I shrugged. “Yeah.”

His breath touched my neck. “You’ve wanted us for ten years.”

I slipped my hand up his jaw. He leaned his face into it and I smiled. I could feel my heart steadily pounding, and I breathed in the relaxing, familiar scent of him. “But I don’t want to get my heart broken by you again.” I picked up my list and handed it to him.

He glanced down at it briefly, and then his brows dove and he took a second, longer glance. “‘Get over Abraham’?”

“Probably the wrong wording,” I said mildly. “I got over you years ago. It should probably read stay over Abraham.”

“I can get under that,” he said below his breath, and then shot me a sharp, heated smile.

I responded with my best Seriously? expression, which he returned with full on impishness. I shook my head and tried to continue without laughing. “I don’t want to put myself in a position where I’ll end up pining. I want to fall in love. I want a real relationship. I don’t want to hook up with a friend.” Especially not with him. “We had a shot, four years ago, and it didn’t work out. End of story.”

“It didn’t work out because it was the wrong time and place. Besides, you called that shot. I’m calling this one.” He smiled slowly. “You say you want a real relationship?”

I nodded, refusing to be embarrassed.

“All right then. Let’s date.”

I gaped at him. That hadn’t even been on the list of reactions I’d expected. “What?”

He smiled at me, slow and sure. “You know. You and me. See each other.”

That idea was so antithetical to my notion of the universe that I shook my head dumbly. “You don’t want to date me.”

“And how do you know that?”

“Because!” Why was he even suggesting this? “You’re only interested because for the first time in our lives, I’m not throwing myself at you.”

He let out a

breath of laughter. “That’s not true.”