Page 43

And he sees it.

Eli cocks his head slightly. “Reese, have you had too much to drink?”

“No.” Is that the truth?

Just before he left, Neil insisted on ordering whiskey shots for all of us. “Just one,” he insisted, given half of us had to be up at dawn tomorrow for shooting. “But I wanted to thank Reese, specifically, for graciously allowing us into her kitchen.”

How could I say no to that?

I was fine until this last beer. Now, I’m slightly tipsy, with Eli sitting across from me. Having admitted he was feeling similar, I wonder if that was such a good idea.

Because my kneecap still burns with the feeling of Eli’s touch. Even though he’d been touching me there all night, that dance of his fingers just now felt different. Illicit, somehow.

Because there’s no one here to perform to anymore.

I swallow. I should stand up. Tell him good night and walk right out the door, don’t stop until I hit my apartment.

But I don’t. Instead I look at the top of Eli’s head, at his thick mass of dark hair. I look at his shoulders—so broad and strong. His hands, dangling between his legs, millimeters from my knees. Veins pop across the backs of his hands and somehow, it’s what makes heat grow between my legs. The sight of his hands.

God, I’m weak.

“Eli,” I say, the words coming out despite my brain telling them to stop. “Are you hoping I’m going to make a bad decision?”

I think I meant it as a joke, but Eli looks up at me from under his flop of hair.

“Are you?”

My lips part slightly. I don’t know why—to breathe, to tell Eli that’s enough. But his eyes go to my lips and to my shock and dismay, his tongue darts out across his.

He looks very much like he wants to kiss me. But his eyes go down once more. Only this time, his fingers splay across my knees. He keeps them there a moment, like he’s deciding what to do.

I’m frozen, my breath hitched, my whole body inexplicably turned on by this slightest of touches.

Then he slides his fingers lower, around the back of my calves.

I’m so shocked by the sudden fullness of his touch I don’t think to react to what he does next, which is pull me toward him. He pulls me so my ass comes all the way to the edge of my chair.

My knees are now deep between Eli’s legs, nearly brushing his crotch, which I can’t help but notice looks fuller than it did a moment ago.

My pulse throbs in my throat as he draws his eyes up level with mine. His face is only inches away now.

“Yes,” he says. His breath is warm across my lips, and mine part once again, involuntarily.

“Yes what?” I ask, breathless.

He husks something so low I barely catch it.

Then I realize I did hear. It sounded likeopen for me.

I feel the words, I think. I hope. He didn’t say them, did he?

But the next thing I know I’m tipping forward, and his lips brush against mine, so briefly I might have missed it.

Might have, if an almost painful shock of electricity hadn’t jolted through me where we touched.

“Was that a bad decision?” Eli rasps. His hands still cup the back of my calves, and he pulls them apart, just slightly, nestling my knees against his inner thighs, on either side of what I can see now is definitely a bulge between his legs.

My lower half aches, an outrageously delicious heat spreading through me. I know my panties are soaked. I can feel them. “Definitely a bad decision,” I say. Then I lean forward, pressing my lips to his.