Page 41 of Make Me Love You

“Quarter to five.”

She sat up. Perfect. That would give her time to get home, shower, and meet Cesar. “Early day for you?”

He shook his head. “My shift doesn’t start until nine. You said you needed to be up by five.”

She paused in the act of pulling her shirt on over her head and looked at him. “You set your alarm for me?”

“You fell asleep hard and fast after”—he made a vague hand gesture—“so I didn’t want to wake you. I figured it would be better to let you sleep.”

She had told him what time she had to be up? She didn’t remember that, but she wasn’t surprised that he did. Typical Eli. He could always be depended on to do the right thing. Set the alarm so she would be up when she needed to be up. Run for mayor when no one else was interested in the job. It wasn’t anything new with him; he had always been that way, from the day they had met in kindergarten, when she had forgotten her lunch so he had given her half his sandwich and a cookie. Sturdy. Dependable.

Galling.

How could the traits that drew her to him in the first place be the exact same traits that caused their irreparable rift? How had she not known that he would arrest her dad? How—

Well. She hadn’t known. That was all there was to it. She had been distraught when she went to Eli with what she had discovered. Not thinking straight. Shock did that to a person.

She hadn’t known.

She shimmied into her pants, pushing the thoughts down into the dark hole of her mind where they belonged. She wasn’t going to replay it over and over again. What good would that do?

“Thanks,” she said. “For setting the alarm, I mean.”

He regarded her quizzically. “Right. Because that’s what we were talking about. What else would you mean?”

Thank God he wasn’t privy to her inner thoughts. “I don’t know. For the mind-blowing sex, maybe?”

Eli collapsed backward onto the bed, grabbing his chest like the shock had given him a heart attack. “Did you really just say that?”

“Are you saying you didn’t think it was mind-blowing?”

She didn’t think her pride could take that. It wasn’t as though she had never had good sex before. She had. Really good sex, even. But this...this was different. It had been so much more than she was used to. More heat. More intensity. More orgasms. Three, to be precise, which was two more than usual for her.

It had been more than mind-blowing. It had been soul-shattering.

She hadn’t realized that sex could be so...so intimate. That it could be more than two sweaty bodies seeking to give and receive physical pleasure. Well, she had known. She understood, in a very mechanical sort of way, that sex was, by definition, an intimate act. But she had never felt it in that way before. Had never experienced that kind of intimacy for herself. Until Eli had called her name.

That was the moment when sex had crossed over from being simply more to being too much. Her chest had felt like it might crack in two, and tears had slipped from her eyes before she could stop them. Fortunately, Eli hadn’t seemed to notice.

It had been so raw. So terrifying.

She shook her head, trying to clear the thoughts away. Better not to think about the soul-shattering parts. She would focus on the mind-blowing aspect. The orgasms. The things that felt good. Ignore the scary feelings that had tagged along for the ride.

He still hadn’t answered her question, which was unforgivable. “Well?” she demanded.

“Yes, the sex was mind-blowing.” Eli traced a seam on the white duvet. It was one of those down comforters meant to have a washable cover, but he had left it bare. It was a strange dichotomy, because the sheets were actually very nice. The softest she had ever slept on, in fact. Emma wondered about that, about the decadent sparseness of his entire house. Everything was for the comfort and enjoyment of exactly one person. There wasn’t room for anyone else here.

“We should do it again sometime,” he said.

“Okay.”

They stared at each other.

“All right,” he said slowly. Then he cleared his throat. “Sorry, but what is it, exactly, we’re agreeing to?”

She let out the breath she didn’t know she was holding in a startled laugh. “You’re the one who propositioned me, Eli. So I guess the question is, what, exactly, are you propositioning?”

He shifted, pulling the duvet over his lap. She watched him with avid interest. He was still naked, and until this very moment, he had seemed entirely comfortable with his nakedness.

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