Page 7 of Anyone And You

“Never going to happen,” I replied.

“Then I guess we can go pretty damn fast,” she said. “Start spinning, sunshine.”

It became a game quicker than I realized it would. Within seconds, we were trying to outdo each other, fixated on somehow getting that cup to spin so fast that we would be thrown off of it.

Her laugh filled my ears, and for the first time in a long time, I felt my walls crumbling down. I wanted to laugh too. I wanted to let go, throw my head back, and be as in the moment as she was.

She looked so damn gorgeous, more so than usual. The delight on her face, her eyes scrunched and closed, how wild her hair flew around with the wind. I wished I could have grabbed my phone to take a picture of it.

However, the thought left my mind when I could no longer contain myself. The wind whipped my face so fast that it hurt, but her laugh was contagious. Her happiness poured through me, and I felt it coming from deep within me before I could stop it. The next thing I knew, I was laughing with her.

I hadn’t laughed like that in over a year.Shehad pulled that out of me. She had gotten something from me that no one had been able to in so long.

My heart swelled as our laughter turned to soft chuckles, and as our eyes met, we both realized what had happened. She scooted closer to me, and I kept spinning the wheel, coming down from the high she’d just put me on. And when she was directly at my side, she pressed her hand to my cheek.

“I wish you would laugh like that all the time,” she said, her eyes darting back and forth between mine. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything so beautiful.”

Fluttering filled my stomach. I almost kissed her, but everything in me said not to. Not yet. Not so early in the night when I was finally starting to enjoy being around someone again. I would save that for when I couldn’t resist her any longer because the moment it happened, I would need to take her home and make her mine.

I started moving the wheel faster again, though in the opposite direction from what we’d been spinning in. Her laughter filled my ears again, and I sat there dumbfounded at the feelings running through me.

CHAPTER SIX - DES

HE LAUGHED.

He fuckinglaughed.

I hadn’t been able to keep my eyes off him. The sound of that laugh and how he looked at me made me want to kiss him right there. I nearly had, but I didn’t want to spook him. And that slow moment we’d shared, how his soft beard had felt beneath my fingers… Fucking hell, I was in trouble.

I couldn’t stop laughing as we stumbled out of the ride, his hand on my waist as he guided me toward the exit. Once we were out, I took a few steps away from him to try and catch my breath. The full moon caught my eye as I looked up, and just as my breaths began to even, I felt a warm body press flush to my back.

My knees weakened as I inhaled the musky scent of his cologne and resisted limping into his grasp. His hand tickled over my forearm, the touch so light that it sent a chill down my spine.

“What are you doing to me, princess?” he whispered in my hair.

“Breaking you,” I said.

“It’s working,” he admitted. “I’m not sure I like it.”

I turned around, finding him staring at me with such intensity in his gaze that I had to force myself to breathe. He reached up and pushed a hair wave off my face before gently touching my jaw.

“I think you do like it,” I said. “I think how much you like it is eating at your insides, breaking down that exterior one tap at a time.”

“I won’t go down without a fight,” he said.

I bit my lip and grasped his arms, inching my face closer and closer to his. His throat bobbed as our noses grazed.

“Go ahead,” I whispered. “Kiss me like I know you want to.”

“Not here,” he grunted. “Not yet.”

Yet.

I took a step back at the word and pushed my hands into his, giving him a deliberate once over. “Okay, sunshine. We have five more tickets. What do you want to do next?”

Axel sighed and looked around us. “Tilt-a-Whirl.”

Every ride Axel chose was more intense than the last. By the time we were down to two tickets, I had to pause and sink over my knees to keep from falling over from how dizzy I’d become.

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