Page 48 of Things We Hide from the Light

She blew out a breath that I could feel.

We kept getting closer and closer. Standing in the middle of her mostly empty apartment, we filled the space around us with heat. Her breasts brushed my chest, bare feet skimming the toes of my boots. My breath stirred her hair.

“Need to ask you something else,” I said.

“If it’s my mother’s maiden name and the last four digits of my social security number, I’m going to realize this is a really elaborate scam.”

I ran a finger down her sharp jaw. “Do you like it when I touch you?”

A shiver ran through her. “Why?”

“You know why. But I want you to say it. Cards on the table.”

Her face softened. “I don’t seem to mind when it’s your hands doing the touching, hotshot.”

“If that changes, I need to know. Immediately.”

She hesitated before nodding.

“Yeah?” I pressed.

She nodded again. “Yeah.”

I took one of her hands from my chest and slid it over my shoulder. Then I did the same with the other. She felt warm, alive, and so fucking soft against me. I shifted my weight to one foot, swaying us to the side.

“We can’t slow dance to the Struts,” she pointed out as the driving beat of “Could Have Been Me” thumped.

“Looks like that’s exactly what we’re doing.”

She let out a shaky breath. I brushed a fingertip to the pulse in her neck. Despite her calm exterior, her pulse fluttered under my touch.

“Is you monitoring your heart rate part of that near-death story?” I asked her.

She paused midsway, then bit her lip, looking uncertain for the first time I could remember. “I think maybe we’ve had enough honesty for one night,” she said.

I didn’t agree. But I was a patient man. I’d unravel every one of those secrets she held back until she was laid as bare as I was. I tucked her head under my chin, then slid my hands under the hem of her cardigan to touch the skin of her back. Breathing in the scents of shampoo and laundry detergent, I held her to me like she was precious cargo and swayed.

I was hard again. One thing was for sure, Lina Solavita knew how to make a man feel alive.

I was so focused on absorbing all the soft and warm she had to offer that Lina reacted to the knock at the door first.

“This shower curtain ain’t gonna hang itself, Chief,” Mrs. Tweedy bellowed.

“Fuck,” I muttered.

“I guess you’d better go,” Lina said, her arms slipping free of my neck.

“Guess so. Think about what I said?”

“I might not think about anything else,” she confessed with a wry smile.

Gently, I cupped her face in my hands and moved in. But instead of going for those full lips that parted when I was just a breath away, I pressed a kiss to her forehead.

“Thanks for the dance, Angel.”

TEN

SWEATING WITH THE OLDIES