But even with the way her mouth ran when she got nervous, he wanted another night. A whole night. He wanted her to stop spewing ego-shriveling assumptions and get her head back in sync with his.
Her mouth popped open again, making his gut clench. “You should just take the twenty—”
Enough! He’d crossed to her before her next breath, preempting the completion of her thought by catching her around the shoulders and surprising a sharp “Eep!” from her.
“Damn it, it’s not the money, Elise.” Looking down into those smoked-glass eyes, he searched for that same heat that had been there the first night. Found only confusion. How was he blowing this so badly? “It’s just … hell, it’s just you. You’re different. I don’t know what it is. But I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since last week. And seeing you yesterday—” His jaw clenched. “It was all I could do to walk out of here, but I did because I’m just as wrong for you as I was that first night. I’ve already got one foot out of Illinois, the other one ready to go. I don’t have anything real to offer you. And whether you want one right now or not, you’re still a real relationship kind of girl.”
He should have left it at that. Said goodbye and gone. Only his hands were already on her, his thumbs brushing over the bare skin of her upper arms, and he knew he wasn’t going anywhere. “Aren’t you?”
She stared up at him—pupils dark and wide, an erratic flutter at the hollow of her neck—leaning in with each shallow breath. Her gaze dropped to his mouth and the pink tip of her tongue wet her bottom lip.
His heart kicked hard as that connection between them began to untangle. Smooth and pull taut.
Her eyes slid closed. Her next pull of breath drawing him in with it—bringing him closer to those bare naked lips. Parted, ready for him to take—
“I’m seeing someone.”
LEVI froze a quarter inch from her mouth as something icy cold and distinctly unpleasant slid through his veins.
Not possible. He’d heard wrong.
“What?” He looked up, finding one anxious gray eye fixed on him, the other squinched shut.
“I’m seeing someone. Sort of.” Elise let out a tremulous breath, slipping from his hold. “I shouldn’t do this. I can’t do this.”
Because of another man.
Because of the kind of person she was.
He got it. Had understood from the start and known it had to be a fluke to find a woman like her outside a relationship. Figured it was only a matter of time— So what the hell was tightening his tendons and pulling his fingers into fists? Jealousy?
It couldn’t be. He didn’t get jealous. Ever. And besides, it wasn’t as though he had any claim over her. They’d had one night. And an afternoon at the park. Less than a handful of hours combined. She wasn’t his … only somehow that handful of hours must have been enough to screw with his head, because even as he closed his eyes to blot that pretty face from his sight, the images of lithe-bodied, little Elise in his bed were brighter than ever.
Hell, he could still feel her wrapped around him. See the smoke in her eyes thicken as he pushed her closer. Hear his name, all breathy and hot on her lips when she came.
His name.
What the hell was wrong with him?
She wasn’t his.
He didn’t want her.
No, that wasn’t true. He wanted her. Bad.
What he didn’t want was the complication of what being with her meant. He didn’t want her getting the wrong idea about what he had to offer.
But more than any of that … he didn’t want some other guy doing the things to her that Levi couldn’t stop thinking about doing himself.
“Seeing someone, since when?” Any effort to modulate his tone into something casual failed miserably as the words ground out through his clenched teeth.
It had only been a week from that first night, so maybe whoever this chump about to get dumped was hadn’t had a chance to make much of a move.
Damn.
It didn’t matter. Right. Keep telling yourself that.
Elise blinked up at him, those pearly white teeth sinking into her lush bottom lip as if she’d figured out just how very much it was mattering to him at that very second.
“When?” Less gravel and broken glass in that one.
“Tomorrow,” she whispered, backing across the room.
Tomorrow?
Elise, Elise, Elise. Not a nice thing to do. And definitely not enough to make him back off. His conscience didn’t swing that way.
The corner of his mouth twitched as relief pumped hot and fast through his veins, roaring past his ears, and pushing his feet to move.
“How’s that work? Exactly?”
“Ally, my sister, set me up on a blind date.” She was watching his every move as he closed in—watching his mouth, his eyes, his chest and, oh, so briefly, lower. “She won’t cancel it for me.”
Which meant she’d tried to get out of it.
Yeah, that date wasn’t happening.
Levi nodded his understanding, doing his best to keep the possessive satisfaction beating its chest under wraps. This guy hadn’t even laid eyes on Elise, let alone a finger or anything worse.
And more than that, his little Elise was the kind of sweet thing who didn’t want to cheat on a guy she hadn’t even met.
They were face-to-face, but it wasn’t close enough. Stepping into her space, he crowded her against the back side of the couch, leaning closer still until she’d pushed herself on to the ledge.
A better man might have let her be, given her the space she’d asked for without words. But then a better man probably wouldn’t have backed her up there in the first place. A better man wouldn’t have wanted to get her off balance and caged in so she had no choice but to reach out and hold onto him.
She could have a better man after he left town.
Reaching for one hand and then the other, he rubbed his thumbs against the pale skin of her wrists, felt the racing of her pulse beneath, and then brought her palms to his chest. “What’s she doing setting you up?”
Her gaze was fixed on the spot where her hands rested against him, her breath coming in shallow pants. “It’s her version of an intervention because of what happened with you. She thinks I’m … lonely … desperate … something. Doesn’t believe me when I tell her I don’t have time for a relationship right now. She feels … sort of responsible for me. It’s not right, but, whatever. So she called a guy she knows, a ‘nice guy’ looking for something serious, to save me from myself.”
Bowing closer, he let his words wash over her temple. “Do you need saving?”
Her breath caught, but not her hands. Slipping over the back of the couch, she landed on the seat cushions with a startled gasp. Only too quickly, she saw her opening and was on the move. Levi followed her over, hitting the cushions as Elise slithered to the floor—her slinky, back-crawling escape making him want to catch her all the more.
Just not quite yet.
Eyes wide, she shook her head. “I don’t know what I need.”
Not a problem. “I do.”
It