Page 29 of Cream and Punishment
To distract from my deceit, I busied myself with consulting the GPS on my phone, so I’d know which direction to take when we reached the intersection in a few steps. Straight ahead, apparently.
The wind gusted with fervor, turning me into a rippling Dekker-cicle. This time, I couldn’t resist crossing my arms against the chill. “You take your lawman duties seriously, don’t you?”
Either that, or he was following me to prove a point since I’d purposely mislead him. Maybe both.
We came up to the intersection, now bathed in yellow light from the streetlamp above the crosswalk sign. A few cars sped past as we waited for the light to change so we could cross.
Max regarded me with narrowed eyes before tugging his hoodie off.
That small action melted my brain into goo. Because, as he pulled the sweater up and over his head, his T-shirt underneath pulled with it just long enough for me to get a glimpse of his perfectly bronzed and toned abdomen, a smattering of dark hair trailing in a thin line from his belly button down, down, down until it disappeared under the waistband of his pants.
Holy guacamole.
Heat curled in my belly. Forbidden heat I had no business feeling, especially giventhe incident. My mouth went dry, my eyes glued to his midsection long after his T-shirt fell back down to cover it.
I was a Victorian man with no self-control, and Max was the woman who’d just flashed her ankles at me.
“Dekker?” he asked, finally breaking me out of my trance.
“Huh?” I peeled my eyes away and up to meet his gaze, only to find that he held his sweater out to me. How long had he been standing like that? Had he called my name before now? Yikes.
“Are you cold?” he said, amusement written in the arch of his brows, the ease of his smile. Like he had indeed repeated himself. Awesome. “You can wear my jacket.”
“Uh.” I cleared my throat and gulped a few times, willing my tongue to stop sticking to the roof of my mouth. And preferably form multisyllabic words. “Um. Thank you, but I’m good. I’m suddenlyverywarm.”
The light finally turned. I’d never been more relieved to see the flashing pedestrian in my life.
Before he could argue—and he clearly wanted to, based on the steely set of his jaw—I panicked, grabbed his hand, and tugged. “Let’s go.”
I’d made it a few steps into the street before I realized I was still holding his hand. I yelped and dropped it like it burned. And in a way, it did. Not like fire, but a spicy curry. Just enough kick to keep you coming back for more, which was absolutelynotallowed.
He had every reason to hate me.Whether he actually did or not, that fact remained the same. And now I’d gone and held his hand.
Like a captive, to be clear, but there was hand-holding, nonetheless.
“Sorry. That was—um—I didn’t—” I stuttered, before the lit screen of my phone offered an escape. “We’re almost there.”
And thank cheesecake forthat. I practically jogged the last half a block. As much as my flip-flops allowed, anyway, which consisted of a whole lot of slapping the sidewalk and very little forward progress. Max, to his credit, didn’t comment on my seal impersonation.
“Here we are,” I wheezed, hands on my knees as I stopped at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the apartment we needed. “Unit twenty-one.”
Max scanned me, his characteristic smile replaced with a frown. “You good? I can grab the costume for you and bring it down.”
I waved him off. “I’m good.”
I could do it myself. Iwoulddo it. Even if my lungs hated me and my flip-flops tried to fall off with each stair. Which they did.
We finally made it, one of us gasping for air and the other fresh as a daisy. A—rightfully—concerned daisy.
“It’s the altitude,” I managed to get out between breaths as I knocked on the door. “Still haven’t adjusted.”
“You know Detroit is practically at sea level, right?”
“Yeah, but we just climbed, like, a billion stairs.”
“Pretty sure it was twenty-seven.”
I shot him a glare. “Twenty-sevensteepstairs.”
