Page 121 of Look, Don't Touch

“Really?”

“Yes, really.”

Her grin is wide. Then her cheeks turn the most precious shade of pink. “Maybe we should build up to sex every day, multiple times a day?”

“We should build up to whatever we’re comfortable with. Whatever that is. Just because I enjoy touching you doesn’t mean you have to give me everything all at once. Just being in the same room as you is enough to make my best days a year ago seem downright pathetic in comparison.”

She tugs me in for a hug and drags her lips over my neck.

“You said that was most of it. What’s the rest?”

Her lips still. She becomes lead weight in my arms.

“No playing possum when the conversation gets touchy, Doctor.”

“Ugh! Fine.” She groans and leans back. “I was worried, if I didn’t, if we didn’t…”

“Fuck?” I offer.

“Yeah, I guess.” She picks at a nonexistent thread on my tailored shirt. “I thought if we weren’t intimate, that you might backslide and not want my touch later.”

I inhale and open my mouth to speak. Hailey’s fingers are cold on my lips.

“What you just said was perfect. I know you don’t want me just because I’m the only one you’ve been able to touch in a long time. I know you like me for more than my body and what it can do for you.” She grins, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “I have this propensity for seeking out the negative, for inventing trouble, even where there isn’t any.”

She cups my face and presses a kiss to my lips, placing her fingers between.

“I’m working through it in therapy. It might take a while to rewire that way of thinking.”

“The easiest way we can work through our issues is communication.”

“I know.” Her groan is robust. “I, more than most—relationship therapist here—know that.”

“Then you also know it’s not an easy thing. Especially for people with trauma in their pasts, who’ve never been in a relationship before.”

“We’re in a relationship?” She gives me wide, panicked eyes and a huge smile.

“Bet your pretty ass we are.”

“Are you my boyfriend?”

“Lover. Boyfriend. Partner. Whatever you like, I’m yours.”

“I like that.” Her fingers run over the hint of stubble on my jaw.

“I know all your dirty secrets. You know most of mine.” I steel my spine. “The worst, in my mind. But maybe not to someone else’s way of thinking. Either way…”

I hesitate, knowing that this could change everything for her, especially with what happened to her parents and what she went through.

She brackets my face with her hands and lifts my gaze to her. What I see in her eyes humbles me like nothing else. Not the cliffs of Moher or the vastness of the Sahara.

“I know who you are in here.” One of her hands leaves my face and presses hot and hard against my chest. “There is nothing you could say to make me think differently of you.”

God, please let it be the truth.

I beg this, knowing I don’t have the right. I beg this, knowing she believes it.

“You never asked me what happened to my uncle.”

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