By the Book (15 page)

Oh yes. He knew.

I couldn’t take my damn eyes off him.

“I think…” The closer he leaned in, the warmer his breath was on my skin. “You have something I want.”

“I do?”

“Yeah.” And just like that, his entire demeanor changed from flirtatious to playful. “The popcorn.”

“The…?”

“God, yeah, I’m craving something tasty. What? Not gonna share?”

I wet my lips, but it wasn’t enough to enable me to speak properly. My entire throat was dry. “Here,” I croaked, reaching for the popcorn carton balanced between my legs.

He laid a hand on my arm. “No, it’s all right. I’ve got it.” Without taking his eyes off me, he reached for the carton.

Although I couldn’t see him in great detail, every time light flashed on the screen, his face lit up and there was something intensely
erotic
about the way his cheeks hollowed when he sucked on the piece of popcorn. The twist to his lips as he chewed and swallowed. And all the damn time, he stared at me. If I saw correctly, his gaze occasionally flitted down to my mouth but stayed mostly fixed on my eyes.

“Mmm,” he murmured, only just loud enough for me to hear above the soundtrack. “Tasty.” He licked his lips, I was sure to draw my attention, and it worked. His bottom lip was fuller than his top and made me think all sorts of—

He moved his hand again and I flinched, but it was only going for the carton I still held. “Here.” He waited a beat. “Why don’t you try some?”

My lips parted in shock, and he took the opportunity to hold the popcorn to my mouth, use his forefinger to push it past my lips and onto my tongue.

Trying to hold on to the popcorn meant my lips pursed around his finger as he pulled it back.

“Addictive, isn’t it?” he asked with another damn wink. “You know you shouldn’t, but you can’t help yourself.”

Shaking myself back to life, I tried to take in the film, but no matter how I shifted in my seat, leaned back, crossed one ankle over the other knee, fidgeted, nothing worked. Because Daniel was always sitting next to me. Whispering from time to time or adjusting his posture so I’d
think
he was leaning over to me and then not. Straightening his cuff or crossing a leg over the opposite knee, leaning back in his seat, hogging the armrest.

At one point I hypnotized myself by staring at the silhouette of his hand hanging off the end of the armrest, not pale but certainly less dark than the absence of light around it. The hand I wanted curved round my neck as the other stroked my—

Clearing my throat, I jerked upright in my chair and tried not to look like someone who’d just allowed his mind to run away with itself.

Daniel lifted his arm off the rest, held a finger to his mouth contemplatively. “You okay?” he asked without leaning in.

“Yeah, sure.” I paused to see if the lie clanged as loudly against the near darkness as it did against my conscience.

“Hey.” He moved his hand away from his face as a casual gesture, I thought, and somehow managed to hook a finger round one of my own. “You’re jumpy.” One finger became two became his hand became a gentle squeeze, which to anyone else may have felt reassuring, but with me? My pulse rocketed. Even when he lowered his hand—our hands.

I took a deep breath before replying. “Is it any wonder?” I didn’t look at him but felt his gaze on me.

Finger by finger, he let go of my hand while relief and addiction fought for supremacy. I had not a clue how it was possible to want the thing that scared me, but there it was.

Above the dialogue on-screen, I heard Daniel draw a deep breath, the kind of inhalation that usually preceded speech, and my spine stiffened, bracing itself against a desire to lean into—or away from—him.

“Reece.” Elbow on the armrest, he twisted round to face me properly. “Come here.”

Instead of mirroring him, I shifted to my right, lent him a shoulder or a listening ear.

Incongruously, the warm breath on the side of my face made me shiver, and I wondered what it was he had to say.

Nothing.

I gasped when the tip of his tongue flickered against my neck, unable to tell him to stop or carry on. The way it trailed up to the spot behind my neck rendered me speechless, and when his kiss, or his taste, grew more insistent, even then the only sound I managed was a whimper. I doubt he even heard it.

What I did know was the way he breathed against my ear without saying anything audible, without
moving
, drove me crazy. Shifting in my seat, I moved the popcorn carton from my lap to the empty seat to my left. It was just too damn uncomfortable having anything touch me. Hell, I was so hard even my jeans fit too snugly and I had to uncross my legs.

Not drawing back from my ear, his cool words sent a jolt of fire through me. A hand coming to rest on my thigh all but made me combust. “Am I getting too close?”

I gulped. Knew what I wanted to say but not how to say it.

“Or not close enough?”

Yes, that
. Clearing my throat, I inclined my head, and his breath whispered from my earlobe, down my neck to the collar of my jacket, where fabric formed a barrier between breath and skin.

The hand on my inner thigh moved up, squeezed my erection once, briefly, then moved back down my leg. His touch was gone before my widening eyes had returned to normal, and the voice in my head wondered, did he really do that?

“Fuck.” The word emerged as a sigh, though intended as an exclamation, and Daniel, now sinking back in his own seat, laughed. “
Fuck
.” Turning my head to look at him at last, I didn’t know whether I wanted to call him a bastard or grab his collar, pull him toward me, and kiss him till he couldn’t breathe. I saw no earthly reason why
he
should be allowed the luxury of oxygen when just being around him took
my
breath away.

He grinned, while focusing—or pretending to—on the screen, and I wondered exactly what he thought. It was probably best I didn’t know. I had enough problems dealing with the thoughts in my
own
head.

Probably another hour or so of the movie to go, I estimated, willing myself to concentrate.

God, I don’t know how I’m going to get through this.

* * *

Daniel zipped up his jacket and hunched his shoulders against the biting cold. “What did you think?”

Other moviegoers milled around us, spilling from the cinema into the night, heading to the parking lot or walking home. The ground was wet, shallow puddles here and there refracting the neon from the sign above us into a thousand shards of eye-watering light.

I looked at him and blinked.

“The movie?” he prompted. “I was asking what you thought of it.”

“There was a
film
showing?”

He shook his head, trying to look disapproving, I supposed, but the smirk ruined the attempt. “Reece, you…” He tutted, flicked up his collar, and thrust his hands in his pockets. “Listen.” And suddenly his demeanor changed from lighthearted to
other
. “Are you—I mean, do you want to…?” He stepped closer, eyed any passersby, and I wondered what necessitated his desire for public privacy. “You can stop at my place if you want. I mean I’d…” His gaze scanned the crowd, now less of a crowd and more of a moviegoers’ equivalent of chucking-out time at the local pub. Stragglers wandered past us, not listening, but Daniel—the normally confident Daniel—was concerned someone would overhear.

And it had to have been on my behalf, because he didn’t give a shit what anyone thought.

“I’d take the settee. You could have the bed. The bedroom. Just so you didn’t have to go back home.”

“I don’t know.” I looked down at the ground, shuffled a bit, could have kicked myself. I must have looked like a nervous kid. Two grown men dancing around each other like we were strangers.

“Look, we go back to my place to get out of the cold, and I can either call you a cab, or…” He shrugged, took a step closer to the parking lot, a step farther from the shelter of the cinema, and a step farther from me.

He had me on a piece of elastic, because I followed. “Okay.”

“Sure?” He raised those damn eyebrows expectantly.

This is such a bad idea. I should say no.

“Yeah. Saves waiting for a taxi in the rain.” I sent up a silent prayer of thanks that there wasn’t a single taxi waiting in the cinema parking lot. If there was, I’d have to jump in a cab and absent myself from Daniel far too abruptly. I was a great believer in making life difficult for myself. Slow good-byes did no one any good in the long run, but I sometimes used them to convince myself I wasn’t really leaving.

“It’s not raining that hard. Just a drizzle.”

“Changed your mind about me coming back to your place?”

“Me?” He grinned as we walked, side by side, mirroring each other. Collars up, shoulders hunched, hands in pockets. “Never.”

An instant parting would have forced the issue. I would have to choose between a homeward journey and the admittance, then and there, that I
wanted
to go home with Daniel.

And I shouldn’t have wanted that. I should have turned my back on Daniel, hailed the first available taxi, jumped in, said a few mea culpas, and headed back to a flat containing nothing but the chalk outline of a dead relationship.

But I kept walking. Because Daniel was my way of forgetting a slow good-bye to someone else. He was the reason I’d needed to say it in the first place.

“You know…” He drew a deep breath and stopped. The surprise of him pulling up like that caused a delay in my comprehension for half a second, and I backed up, leveled with him again. “I didn’t want you thinking…”

The way he looked with spots of rain occasionally running from his hair down his face made me shiver. But I told myself it was a cold evening.

There are no greater lies than the ones we tell ourselves.

“There’s no ulterior motive to this, Reece.” He cleared his throat.

It seemed incongruous that two people who had been intimate to whatever degree could be fully dressed, out in public, and yet somehow reticent.

Shaking my head, I tried to focus on
him
, his words, but that bottom lip of his distracted me. Even still, while he searched for the right words, it invited kisses.

Daniel’s tongue flicked across his lips. “I just thought you could do with some company, that’s all, and if that sounds patronizing, it’s not meant that way.” He shrugged, and we started walking again, fell into step. “You’re welcome to stay over if you want. If you don’t fancy going back home.”

We continued in small talk for the rest of the short walk to his flat, and with every left step, I decided staying was the only option. Every time my right foot hit the ground, I tried to convince myself to read over the script in my mind. All I had to do was ask him for the number of the nearest cab company. Stay, go, stay, go; my mind changed with every footfall.

I followed Daniel up the tenement stairs and waited while he fumbled for the correct key on the fob. He paused before flipping past the thumb drive and the keys to his filing cabinet and computer desk then ran a finger along the correct key slowly as if contemplating something. Then he came back to life, stuck the key in the lock, and—

Stopped.

“Reece?” He straightened, didn’t unlock the door, but turned in a half circle where he stood so he was facing me. “You know what my job is.”

“Yes?” Frowning, I nodded, unsure of where this was going but sure he’d tell me.

“I’m a writer.”

“Yes, I know that.”

“But sometimes I have trouble with words. Like now, for instance. There’s something I’d like to say, but if it comes out wrong, I’ll just have to trust you to translate.” His words were quiet enough to cause little or no echo in the stairwell, secretive, conspiratorial, and most of all, discreet.

I gulped. It was never pleasant when someone tried to prepare me to hear something.

“There’s something I want to do before we go in. I mean, try. Like a tryout or something.” He bit his lip, that lip I wanted to feel on my neck.

Images of him leaning in to kiss my neck, the rough of his stubble against the smooth of my skin, flashed in front of my eyes, and it took effort of which I didn’t know I was capable to bring myself back to the present.

“Just to see if…” He stepped in closer, hands in jacket pockets while his keys hung from the lock, unturned and taunting me with their silent
not yet
. “You see, after everything that’s happened, I just need to check that you…” Daniel’s breath whispered over my skin. “Aren’t…” He gulped. “You know…”

With one tilt of my head, one degree of incline, one hand on his lapel, I closed the gap between us. Kissed him or let him kiss me, I wasn’t sure which, but when our lips met, all doubt melted away.

I clenched my fingers, not enough to bunch the leather of his jacket under my hand but enough to let him know I wanted to touch him. Wanted him closer.

The tip of Daniel’s tongue traced an invisible line from the corner of my mouth along the inside of my top lip, and I sucked in a breath. The smell of him—leather, deodorant, washing powder, sheer, unadulterated
sex
—filled my lungs, and
oh God, Daniel, Daniel, Daniel, who the hell needs oxygen when I can just breathe you in instead?

Then that wasn’t enough. I wanted to taste him as well, drew his tongue into my mouth, letting—

“Jesus.” He broke off the kiss, panting, touching his forehead to mine for a second before straightening.

“Did that answer your question? Whatever the question was?”

“I think so. I don’t know. Reece. Fuck.” He took a deep breath, frowned, looked away, and I imagined him—knew if I were in his position, that was how
I
would feel—in pain. Questioning himself. Us.
This.

“Go on.”

“You’ll think I’m an idiot.”

“What’s new?”

He smiled, thank God. The ice wasn’t fully broken yet, but the thaw had begun. “You know what they say about the road to hell.”

“Daniel Cross is at the end of it?”

He burst out laughing, the grin lighting up his face. He looked me in the eye, and something in us connected. An understanding, maybe, that if neither of us knew where this was going, we at least agreed to be confused together.