“You think he’ll want to play poker?” I say.
“Poker,” she says as she rocks her head from side to side, “I doubt it. More like Go Fish.” She grins at the look on my face. “You do know how to play Go Fish, right?”
“I can google it,” I say. Then she makes a face at me. “What?”
“Nothing.” She smiles. “I think you’re adorable.”
“Well, I think you’re sexy as fuck,” I whisper back to her.
She freezes, and immediately I worry that I just made a mistake. Then she keeps walking like nothing happened. Suddenly, she turns around and marches back to me, stopping so close to me that I can feel the heat of her and smell her lemony scent. She sticks her finger in my face and glares at me. “You don’t get to do that,” she says.
“Do what?” I ask. I have no idea what I did wrong.
“You don’t get to turn me on in the middle of the store by firing stupid compliments at me.” She glares some more, which makes me smile. She’s so indignant right now that it’s funny.
“My comment wasn’t a compliment,” I clarify. “It was the truth.” I reach behind her and grab a tub of bait worms from the shelf. My arm slides along hers as I reach. “And its purpose wasn’t to titillate you. It was just to tell you how I feel.”
She scrunches up her face. “You just used the word titillate in a sentence. Are you for real?” She backs up to look at me like she has never seen me before.
“I read. And I know things,” I fire back. I stick my tongue out at her, which makes her laugh. I reach out and tug a lock of her hair. “And you are sexy as fuck.”
She stops moving, closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Trying to catch my breath,” she whispers back to me. “So shut up for a minute.” She presses the index fingers of both hands against her thumbs like she’s meditating, and hums for a second.
“Umm…”
She holds up a finger, her eyes still tightly closed. “Hold on,” she says.
I smile as I watch her. I look down the aisle to find Shy staring at us. He gives me a grin and a thumbs-up sign.
“Why do you have to catch your breath?” I ask her. I watch as the hair on her arms stands on end, goose bumps shoot up to her shoulders, and a flush covers her chest.
She opens her eyes and stares at me.
“Oh,” I say as understanding dawns. I grin. I let my eyes roam up and down her body. “You’re turned on right now.”
“Shut up,” she says, and she turns on her heel and marches toward the front of the store.
She sets the basket on the counter and I lean close to her. “Tell me I’m wrong,” I say quietly, my mouth right next to her ear. A noticeable shiver creeps up her spine as goose bumps travel across her chest. “You can’t,” I pronounce triumphantly.
“Shut it,” she hisses. Her cheeks turn even pinker and she’s so damn cute I can barely stand it.
Shy looks from me to her and back, over and over, a crazy grin on his face as he rings up all my purchases.
“You going to have a visitor at the lake, Ethan?” he asks as he analyzes all the purchases, putting them in bags.
“My son is coming to spend the night,” I tell him, a bit of pride in my voice.
“Glad to hear it.” He’s still looking from me to Abigail and back. “I hope you guys have a good time.” After I pay him, he leans casually on the counter. “Y’all have a good day, you hear?” He laughs to himself.
Abigail’s cheeks are still so pink that she looks like she’s been in the sun too long.
She marches out in front of me, and Shy calls my name just before I leave.
“Ethan.”
I turn back.
“I’d give just about anything to know what you were whispering that got her all twitterpated.” He chuckles.
“I told her she’s sexy as fuck,” I say with a wink.
He raises his brows. “That’s all it took?” He scratches his stomach. “If I tried that on my wife, she’d probably tell me to go mow the grass or something so I can expend some energy.” He laughs loudly and waves goodbye.
I find Abigail standing next to my truck, where she’s tapping her toe, her arms folded in front of her body. “You okay?” I ask her.
I take the bags and load them onto the front seat of the truck. She stands there, saying nothing.
“How long are you going to be mad at me?” I finally ask.
“I’m not mad.”
I let my eyes roam up and down her body. “I might have been away from women for a really long time, but I know when one is upset.”
“I’m not upset.” She sniffs. “You just surprised me, that’s all.”
I walk closer, pushing her back against my truck with my body ever so slowly. She steps back until the truck braces her, and my body lines up along hers, all my hard parts touching all her soft parts in exactly the right places. She lifts her hands to rest on my chest, like she’s going to push me away. But she doesn’t push me away. She does quite the opposite. Instead, she softens her hands against my chest.
She glances toward the front window of the store. “What are you doing?” she asks, her gaze checking to see if Shy is watching.
I really don’t give a fuck if he’s watching or not.
“I’m not sorry for telling you how I feel about you,” I say. I lean down and kiss her cheek, holding her gently against the truck. Her pulse beats rapidly at the base of her throat; I can see it pounding beneath the tender pink skin. “I do think you’re sexy as fuck, and I want to move this relationship forward so bad that I can barely stand it.” I punctuate my sentence with a kiss to the side of her neck. “But I’m not sure how accepting you’re going to be when you find out who I really am, so I can’t do what I really want to do.”
“What do you really want to do?” she asks quietly, her eyes lifting to meet mine. I see the world inside those eyes, or at least everything that’s great about it. I see her kindness, her empathy, and I see that she wants me just as much as I want her.
“I want to make love to you. But I’d kind of like for you to know who I am, first.” I press a kiss to her temple. “That okay with you?”
She nods, and she leans forward to bury her face against my shirt. She sucks in a big breath, and I palm the back of her head, holding her close to me. “Is Shy watching?” she asks quietly, her voice muffled against my shirt.
I let out a chuckle. “I’d bet my life savings he’s in there taking pictures.”
She grins. Then she stands up on her tiptoes and kisses my lips. It’s a quick move, one meant to show love more than passion. But still I have to take a deep breath when she does it, or I’m afraid I’ll lose my shit. “At least he got a good show,” she says.
I step back from her and adjust the fit of my jeans. She catches the action and raises her brows at me.
“Something wrong?” she asks, a grin teasing her lips.
“Everything’s right.” I tuck that lock of hair behind her ear. “For the first time in a really long time, everything is right.”