Page 25 of The Love Interest
His eyelids flutter and he says nothing for an awkward moment. And then: “What’s your last name?”
“Walker.”
“Fiona Walker.”
“Yes.”
“You look like a Fiona Walker.”
“Thank you?”
He drags his thumb across my lower lip and then cradles my face in both hands. “It’s a compliment.”
“Good.”
“You’re beautiful, Fiona Walker.”
“How oldareyou, Emmett Ford?”
He grins and strokes my jawline and then lets his fingers glide down my neck, sending shivers down and back up the center of me. “I’m thirty-five.” He kisses my neck.
My head falls back and my eyes close and I see stars.
This is the thing. This is the thing that I’ve been anticipating. And maybe Emmett Ford is too much of a gentleman to ask me to go to bed with him now, despite the fact that I have basically been trying to consume his entire face for the past ten minutes.
Screw it.
It’s been a night of firsts.
I’m going to proposition a man for the first time in my life.
“Emmett…”
“Yes?”
“Your place or mine?”
He stops kissing my neck and clears his throat. “Fiona. I want to see you again. Soon. Later today, if possible. But I think we should go home now. Separately.”
Record scratch sound effect followed by total silence.
“Oh.”
He seems surprised that I seem disappointed. That I might feel rejected. That I don’t understand that what he’s saying is the opposite of a rejection.
“I like you,” he says, resting his forehead against mine. Like it’s an admission of some kind of weakness. But it’s this tiny gesture, his forehead against mine, that makes me wonder if this is more than just hormones. If it’s more than hands on hips and the delirium of staying up all night with a handsome stranger. “I really want to see you again. Without your cock. That’s the first time I’ve ever said that to anyone.”
It’s definitely not a rejection.
It’s the start of a bigger story than I had ever allowed myself to imagine for myself.
So I can wait for the next chapter.
There’s still so much we have to learn about each other, but we know enough.
“I like you too,” I whisper.
It feels good to be whispering this true sentence out loud when we’re this close.
