Hold Me Close - Talia Hibbert Page 0,274

I get along just fine.”

“Rae.”

She rolled her eyes, but there was something mischievous about her mouth. He had a feeling she was being difficult on purpose, as if bickering would defuse this thing between them. It did. He was grateful. They untangled themselves, and it was almost like nothing had happened. He kept hold of her hand for the benefit of the audience he’d forgotten.

The baby and Billie were nowhere to be seen. He watched Rae carefully, but she didn’t even look for them. She had faraway eyes, like she was dreaming up different worlds.

He was glad she wasn’t dwelling on the kiss. That was for the best. Because if she’d felt that lurch of attraction, too, and if she tried to touch him in private, he might ask for something she’d never offered. Something close and silent and strong, skin-to-skin in the dark, all intimate secrets and whispered confessions. And she would tell him no.

“You still want to go upstairs?” he asked.

She didn’t answer. Her tongue ran over her lower lip, and his heart shivered.

He squeezed her hand. “Rae.”

“Hmm?” She blinked back to life. “Oh, sorry. What?”

“Upstairs?”

Ah,” she said. “Yes. I need to write.”

Zach nodded, tugging her toward the elevators. Her plans complemented his perfectly, because he needed to log into his demisexual forum and search for discussions tagged, Oops, I’m suddenly attracted to my friend/fake date. Please help.

Or maybe he could start his own thread with that very question?

No. No. Not yet. He had too much to think about. Such as the very painful truth currently weighing on his shoulders.

He’d just kissed this woman with everything he had, down to his fucking soul. And she would never know it had been real.

Upstairs, Rae typed her own version of lorem ipsum and tried to remain cool while Zach sat beside her, the sheets pulled up to his waist, his bare chest gilded by the sultry lamplight. After fiddling with his phone for half an hour, he’d taken out his contact lenses and put on honest-to-God horn rimmed, tortoiseshell glasses. Then he’d started reading some sci-fi novel like the sexiest nerd she’d ever seen. Even if he hadn’t ruined her with his mouth in the middle of the dining hall, the sight would have scrambled her brain.

But he had. He had ruined her, without even trying—so utterly that, an hour later, she still had to remind herself to breathe. She also reminded herself that he’d been performing. That the hard press of his erection against her belly, that jutting steel she felt the ghost of even now, was simply a physical reaction to stimulation. It didn’t mean a damned thing, because he’d made it crystal clear that he didn’t see her that way. She could never let herself forget it.

“How’s the writing going?” he asked after a while, and her cheeks heated.

“Fine,” she said tightly. It wasn’t exactly a lie. She couldn’t focus at the minute because he was suffocating her with sexiness both past and present, but the knot inside her mind had started to unravel the moment they’d arrived in Manchester. Ideas were flowing fast now, dripping steadily like blood and wine did in the venomous world of her imagination. It was as if coming here and facing her fears had already set her worries to rest. As if she were one of her own heroines, trapped in a vicious court, proving her strength to herself with every inch of control she took.

Tonight hadn’t been so bad, after all. Largely thanks to Zach.

He removed his glasses and closed the book, marking his page with a finger. “Do you want to talk through anything?”

This was a habit of theirs, one she still couldn’t believe she’d fallen into. Discussing ideas with Zach, telling him stories before they made their way onto paper, helped Rae think. And yet, every time, a warning siren sounded at the back of her mind: You can’t trust him with that.

She did her best to ignore that siren. There were all sorts of things she couldn’t trust Zach with, but her work wasn’t one of them. “Maybe tomorrow,” she murmured. “Right now, I think I’m ready for bed.”

“Me, too,” he agreed, and his smile knocked her on her arse.

They packed up and turned off the bedside lamps. The room’s gauzy curtains let in hints of city light, so she could see the outline of Zach’s body beside her. He was a forbidding, shadowed landscape, a mountain she shouldn’t want to climb. But she did want to,