Page 55 of Dear Mr. Brody

I grabbed onto the word like a lifeline.

“We can figure it out.” Not giving him any room to argue, I said, “Not everything has to be decided this very second. Enjoy the kiss, Van. Enjoy this.”

I ghosted a finger under the waistline of his jeans, teasing his hot skin, and he grabbed my wrist.

“Not here.”

“Where, then?”

“Not yet,” he breathed into the crook of my neck. The soft pressure of his lips tickled my skin. “If we’re going to do this… I want to do it right.” I laughed and he pulled back, his brows furrowed. “What?”

“You do want to date me.”

“Yeah.” His laugh was quiet and soft like his smile. “I guess I do.”

Donovan

Parker pulled into my driveway, and I turned to look at him through my driver-side window. Every ethical bone in my body told me this was reckless, told me I shouldn’t risk it, shouldn’t risk losing my job at Winchester, possibly even at Lowe. What would Anders think? It was a stretch, and my brain tended to jump from zero to sixty, but what if we got caught, and there was some kind of scandal, would he fire me for bringing a bad reputation to the agency? Jesus, I’d jumped right into a worst-case scenario. WSC was a mediocre school, and Parker was an adult. Maybe in hindsight the word scandal was a bit overdramatic. Either way, it was definitely a good thing we’d agreed that it was best to have dinner at my place and not in public. At least not until we figured out boundaries, and how this thing between us would work.

On the way to my house, my ten-minute drive had been plagued with conflicting thoughts. I hadn’t given myself a chance to properly think about everything. His kiss, his touch had made me want to be impulsive, and the whole way home I’d hoped Parker hadn’t thought I expected anything from him. We needed to talk. Just talk,I told myself as thoughts of his hands in my hair, his hard body pressed against me, his confident lips claiming my mouth, invaded my brain. I’d never kissed like that before. Kissed like a fire consumed oxygen and it burned through me, scorching any misgivings I might’ve had about him, about us. He was twenty-four, and it wasn’t like I’d lured him unsuspectingly to my house with promises of good grades for sexual favors. This thing between us, this unlikely coincidence, it snuck up on us, or maybe it had been there all along, but it happened. Parker walked around the hood of his car, his shoulders loose, his confident blue eyes meeting mine as one of the most handsome smiles I’d ever seen broke across his face, and I shelved any remaining trepidation I had for the moment.

“Were you thinking again?” he asked as I stepped out of the car.

“It’s not a bad thing.” I shut the door and approached him. His grin even wider than before. “One of us has to have a clear head.”

“And I don’t?” he asked, reaching for my hand. He threaded his fingers through mine, and I nervously glanced around the cul-de-sac. It wasn’t like I spoke to my neighbors very often, or that they would even know who he was, but the fear was there. The guilt. “Hey, it’s okay. We don’t have to do this… I can go. No questions asked.”

“No,” I said, refusing to succumb to my doubts. This wasn’t some forbidden thing. This wasn’t wrong. We were adults, the rest of it was semantics, shit I would have to figure out later. Not now. Not with the heat of his skin against mine. Not when my pulse shouted stay, stay, stay. “I want you here.”

He raised my hand to his lips and brushed a kiss across my knuckles, sending a shivery heat over my skin. “Good because I’m hungry… and you did promise me food.”

“I did.”

Laughing, I invited him inside, and he released my hand as we walked up the small path to the front door. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss the touch. His rough skin was different from Lanie’s. The callouses on his palm were satisfying in a way soft skin could never be. It scratched at something inside me, made me want to keep touching, keep feeling everything he had to offer.

Once we were inside, I dropped my keys on the sideboard table and flipped on the living room lights. “This is nice,” he said, running a hand over the back of the couch. “Remind me never to invite you to my shitty apartment again.”

“It can’t be any worse than the place I had in college.”

My comment was another reminder of our age difference. Nine years in the grand scheme of things wasn’t a big deal. Parker was obviously mature and had a plan for his life. But he was at the beginning of everything. The starting line. I was a divorced thirty-three-year-old with a kid he didn’t even know about yet. Not a very tempting prospect for a guy with his entire adult life ahead of him.

“Van,” he said, pulling me from my thoughts. “You’re doing the thinking thing again.”

“It was nothing, just…” I huffed out a laugh. “Overthinking.”

“About?”

I walked past him and into the kitchen. Switching on the light, I avoided his eyes.

“We don’t know each other very well.”

“Isn’t that why you date someone, to get to know them. See if they’re worth pursuing?”

“Exactly,” I said, finally raising my gaze. His brows were pulled into a tight line. “What if they’re not worth it? Or there’s dealbreakers?”

“Like?”

“Answer the question.”