Page 36 of A Dark Fall
“I never asked you to chase me, Jake,” I whisper, stalling for time.
He lets out a breath and stalks across the kitchen toward me. My heartbeat speeds up the closer he gets, and when he stops in front of me I think I stop breathing completely. He reaches his fingers up under my chin and tilts my head to meet his eyes, his eyes roaming mine, looking for something. I want him to find it. I try to imagine what he’s seeing, hoping for once how much I want himiswritten plainly across my face, because then I won’t have to say it out loud.
“No, you didn’t ask me to chase you.” He shakes his head, his voice sad, almost. “And if you asked me to stop now, I would. I can take a hint. But I know you want me, Alex, and it’s confusing the fucking life out of me. So, I need you to say it. I need you to tell me.”
This is a turning point. He will leave me alone now if I ask him to. He’ll walk away, and I don’t know how to feel about that. What I do know is if I tell him to leave me alone, anytime I walk down a London street—or likely any street—I’ll search every nameless face, hoping one of them will be his. Hoping one day, when I least expect it, I’ll bump into him, like what happens in movies. In my fantasy, he’ll have been hoping to bump into me too. We’ll have an awkward, “Hi, how are you?” before the next scene of us kissing and making love desperately. Ridding ourselves of the memory of the night I stood him up and smacked him in the face.
That’s the fantasy. Though, in reality, if I bumped into him in the future, he’d be married to a glamour model, and I’d be single, alone, and bitter because he still looks as good as he does now.
“Is that what you want, Alex? You want me to leave you alone?” His voice snaps me out of my thoughts.
Okay, real life now. Not chick flick-inspired fantasyland. I need to rationalize this. I’m good at rational.
Is that what I want? To move on and continue with my life as it was before him? To never set eyes on him again? A weird sense of panic skitters down my spine at the thought of that—of never setting eyes on him again.
His thumb is at my mouth now, and as he strokes it softly over my lip, my body sizzles. Yes, actually sizzles. I’m sizzling from a man’s touch, and I’m contemplating not seeing him again. Am I bloody mad? Have I lost my mind?
No, not seeing him again is not an option.
No.
Jake smiles. It’s small and starts in the corner of his mouth before spreading across it slowly. I wonder why he’s looking at me like that, and then I realize: I spoke aloud. I didn’t think the word “no”—I said it aloud.
“I didn’t think so,” he breathes. He runs his hand slowly down the side of my cheek and brushes my hair behind my shoulder, exposing my neck to him, then he skims his fingers down, his touch leaving scorch marks as they go. When he leans down and kisses open-mouthed across the path his fingers just took, it occurs to me how gentle all his touches have been. They’re not at all what I expected. Not when I first saw him, and not in my fantasies where he’s always commanding and rough.
I hear him inhale and moan softly.
“Fucking hell, you drive me crazy, Alex ...” he moans against my throat, dizzying me.
I’m stunned by him. Stunned in the real meaning of the word—as in, he constantly shocks me into a semi-conscious state. When he reaches my ear, he nuzzles below it and then softly begins to suck on my earlobe, biting down on it gently. Oh ... my ... god ... A small, loose moan escapes my mouth.
When he twists his head to kiss me on the mouth, it’s sudden and shocking, and I have to dig my feet into the ground to stop my legs from buckling. My arms slide up and around his neck to pull him into me, deepening the kiss. He’s greedy with it, sucking and biting and licking at my mouth, my lips, my tongue. When he pushes his hips into me, I feel the hot hardness of his arousal against my jeans. Without warning, he moves his hand to the waistband and pulls open the top button quickly.
Breaking away from his mouth, I shake my head at him.
He gives me a look, apologetic and uncertain, before I slip out from between him and the counter and away, turning back to him when I reach the kitchen door.
“Well? Aren’t you coming?” I ask, breathless. “I assume you haven’t changed your mind about wanting to come to bed with me. I’ve high hopes for your cuddling ability.”
He blinks in shock before a look flashes across his face that practically sets my womb on fire. It’s similar to the look he gave me in the deli when I agreed to go out with him, only magnified by a thousand. How does any woman have a chance against him when he looks at them like that?
They don’t.Idon’t.
My entire body trembles as he walks toward me, his movements slow and measured, before wrapping an arm around my waist and pulling me into him. His free hand, he slips around my neck, possessive. When he speaks, his voice is low and serious.
“Doctor, I’ve wanted to go to bed with you since the moment I laid eyes on you.” His thumb strokes the skin of my cheek, soft. “Doctor” doesn’t sound so impersonal this time. It sounds erotic. Carnal. “You think there’s any fucking chance I’m letting you go now?”
Before I have time to respond, he wraps his hands around my butt and hoists me up, spreading my legs so I’m wrapped around his waist. A small, surprised gasp escapes my mouth, and Jake smiles.
“Come on, Alex. Don’t tell me that’s the first time you’ve ever been swept off your feet.”
I giggle. And so, like I never thought he’d be gentle, I also never thought he’d be cute or sweet. Then his mouth is on mine again, and I can’t do any more thinking about what I thought he’d be. Jake carries me out of the kitchen and up the stairs as though I weigh less than nothing while I mumble against his mouth that he should watch his head because the ceilings are low.
When we get to the top, he halts but doesn’t put me down, his breathing only slightly labored. I pull back from his mouth to find him looking at me expectantly.
“Gonna need some directions here, baby,” he says, amused.
Oh, right—to my bedroom, because he’s never been in there before.