Page 70 of Hold Me Today

He doesn’t even know half of what he’s asking. And the kicker is, I can’t exactly tell him the truth about the unknown man. My sperm donor, if you will. Sure, Ican—but what good does that do? I spent near-on ten years asking my mother for information she refused to give me. Re-hashing the details is like picking at an open scab I won’t let be.

That’s me in a nutshell: picking at scabs, watching the blood rise once more, and then hastily bandaging it up, never doing a good enough job for it to heal completely.

On habit, I start to tap my fingers—only for Nick’s fingers to wrap around mine again.

“You don’t need to be nervous with me, Ermione,” he says, voice rumbling. “I’ve told you this before: there’s nothing you can tell me that’ll make me look at you any differently.” He tugs on my hand, a silent command for me to look at him. So, I do. Full-on, with my emotions bleeding on my sleeve and this ridiculous sense ofhopeclawing its way up my chest. “Nothing,” he repeats in that classic, no-nonsense way of his. “You got that?”

I meet his gaze. “It’s when I get a tattoo.” He pauses, and I see the confusion in his pewter eyes. “When I get like this”—I put a hand to my chest, over my coat—“this restless, on-edge feeling . . . it usually results in a new tattoo. Those snapshots I told you about, I wasn’t all truthful about it. I mean, Iwasand I wasn’t.”

Releasing my hand, he leans forward, and, on instinct, I do too. His palm makes gentle contact with the side of my face, then delves deep into my crazy, untamed hair. I stare at him as his fingers graze the shell of my ear, and then my breath catches when he traces the sensitive skin behind my ear—right over my soaring-wings tattoo.

He remembers.

It’s crazy how you can know a person your entire life and yet it’s one moment, one sliver in time that tells you everything you need to know about their soul. And Nick’s soul? I’ve never met anyone else with his quirky humor, his good nature, his damnkindnessthat radiates from every inch of him.

“I got all night,” he husks.

I don’t get addicted to men, not ever, but I could get addicted to Nick—so easily.

Tilting my head to give him more access, I curl my fingers into a fist when the need to start tapping kicks back in. “Each of my tattoos are always the opposite of what I’m feeling. When I got the one on my foot, I lived each day like I couldn’t wait to get to the next big thing. I needed—”

“Patience.”

I nod, feeling more exposed than I ever have in my life. “It was a reminder to cool my hungry ambition. You can’t rush certain things. You can’t make them happen just bywantingthem to happen. Dreams need time to prosper and grow—and I firmly believe that they unfold when you can personally handle them manifesting, never before.”

“And the one behind your ear?”

His fingers graze it now, and I fight the urge to nuzzle his hand. “A pair of wings,” I tell him, “during a low point when everyday felt like a struggle, a constant stream of disappointment.” I may not want to come clean about my mother’s infidelity, but this I can tell. It’smystory to tell. “I don’t have the same outlook on marriage and kids as you because my parents just . . . I couldn’t breathe. It wasstiflingliving under their roof. They told Katya and Dimitri to reach for their dreams, but never said the same to me. I got theyou should be married by nowspeech one day and the very next, they were telling me no one would ever want me because I’d accomplished nothing.”

“Who said that? Your mom or your dad?”

I almost laugh. How can he read me so damn well?

“Mostly my dad.”

“Your dad’s an ass.”

“You won’t hear me tell you otherwise.”

He gives a quick, teasing tug to my earlobe, and then pulls back. “You’re one of the most accomplished, ambitious people I know. Don’t listen to their bullshit.”

My heart, traitorous, rebellious thing that it is, flutters to life.Down, heart. “No need to lay on the sugar, Nick.” I pointedly look down at his crotch. “We both know you’re just trying to get into my pants.”

He grins wolfishly, and it’s so surprising, sounlikehim, that I audibly gulp—like the true, awkward person I am deep down inside.

“Later,” he says before shifting the car into drive.

“Later?”

“Yup.”

“But—” I cut off, completely befuddled. Men don’t just ignore their erections for what, a random drive through town?Most men aren’t Nick-fucking-Stamos. Too damn true. I’m sitting next to a guy with steel resolve. It’s dreadfully unfair.

One palm on the steering wheel, the other on the gearshift, Nick glances over at me.Damn him for looking so sexy like that. He cocks a brow. “But what? Something wrong?”

He isnotgoing to make me say it.

The car rolls to a stop at an intersection, and then his big hand is on my thigh and, oh, God, I love how it feels. If he moves his fingers up justalittlehigher . . .

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