A Guy Walks Into My Bar - Lauren Blakely Page 0,75
head. “You can’t have that.”
“I still want it.” I sound desperate. I feel desperate. I tap my chest. “Do you think I came here to feel this way? Do you think I came to London to feel anything?”
“No. You came here to get laid, and you did it. Plain and simple.”
“That’s not why you’re mad.”
“Why am I mad, then?”
I reach for the box in his arms so I can set it on the stoop, but he doesn’t let go of it. Fine, I’ll do this with a physical barrier between us. I clear my throat. “Because in the last forty-eight hours, it’s become more than that, and you know it. Hell, it was more than that the first time we slept together, and you know that too.”
He breathes out hard, licks his lips, then in a quiet voice that gives me hope, he asks, “What did it become?”
I grab his shoulder to bring him close. “You know what it became.”
I inch closer like I’m about to kiss him. To tell him with my lips what this is.
He holds up a hand and presses it to my chest, a powerful stop sign. “You’re not kissing your way out of this, James. You’re not fucking your way out of this. I’m thirty-one. I’m not swayed by that. If you’re trying to say something to me, just say it. Don’t kiss it. Say it and mean it.”
His words are fire, and they ignite me. They’re the last straw between my actions this morning and what I hope my actions will be for the next twenty-four hours.
My jaw is tight; my chest is heavy.
I hold my hands out wide and rip off the remaining layers of truth. “You want to know what I came here to say?”
“Yes,” he bites out.
I shake my head, pissed and sad and frustrated all at once. “I’m crazy about you, Dean Collins. Just completely crazy about you. I didn’t plan this. I didn’t expect it. But it happened. We happened,” I tell him, and it’s both easier and harder now that I’ve said that. Easier because I feel like I can breathe again. I feel like I can fit inside my body without trying to crawl out of my skin.
Harder because he’s expressionless. I grab at my shirt, my chest, to make my point. “I feel so much for you that it scares me. I don’t know what to do about it, and I wish this thing between us could last well beyond tomorrow. I wish I didn’t have to leave. Because I just want to see you and kiss you and touch you and be with you, and it’s driving me crazy. Because you’re not a fling at all—not one bit. You’re the opposite, and I don’t know what to do about it.”
For several anguished seconds, he’s impervious.
His lips barely twitch.
His face remains impassive.
Then he breathes out hard, sets down the box and his keys, pushes me to the other side of the doorway, and kisses me.
My God, does he ever kiss me.
He kisses me like he feels the exact same way.
His hands clasp my face, and his body slams against mine, and he crushes my lips in a searing, bone-melting kiss that knocks all my senses out of whack.
His lips devour mine—rough and demanding, like he’s telling me all the same things with the fiercest, most passionate kiss ever recorded in history. One hand slides down my body, along my waist, traveling to my hip. The other ropes through my hair. And he’s yanking me closer, even closer, and holy hell, I guess I haven’t fucked up too badly.
If I get to have him for even one more day, I will be the happiest man alive.
Because Dean is kissing me like he’s crazy for me too, and I can breathe, and I am lit up, electric and alive again.
When he breaks the kiss, he still has me caged in. His hand clasps my face; his lips are a ruler. “Don’t do that again, James.”
“I won’t,” I say, shaking my head, relief flowing through me.
“I mean it. Don’t do that. I don’t like being ghosted. I don’t like you taking off without telling me. We both know what happens tomorrow. We’ve both known from the start. I know what I signed up for, and I can handle it. But if you want to be with me until then, you’ve got to be all in. No running.”
I swallow roughly. “I’m all in. I’m so all in with you.”