I nodded. “Last year, some drunk guy staggered to my front door and begged for a spare. Lucky for him, I had one and was sober enough to drive him home with it so he didn’t get told off by his missus.”
“He is lucky. That he found you, I mean. So am I.”
“That a drunk bloke woke me up last Christmas?”
Rami rolled his eyes. “Don’t be coy. It doesn’t suit you.”
“What does?”
“I couldn’t say in such a public place.” Rami winked and I felt heat rising in my bones.
Dangerous heat.
Delicious heat. I wasn’t a man who thought with his dick, but something aboutthisman made me see everything differently. I wanted every part of him I could have, even if it meant missing him harder when he was gone. “We never decided about dinner.”
“Younever decided. I’m happy with the chips.”
I sighed. “Fine. Whatever. Chippie closes in ten minutes, so drink up.”
Rami necked his beer, oblivious to my fascination with how his throat worked as he swallowed. It was elegant and filthy and did nothing to calm the smouldering in my belly.
I drank my beer too, enjoying the buzz as it joined the heat Rami’s company had ignited. Then I dropped my empty glass onto the table. “Come on then.”
“That a challenge?”
I stood. “Not one I’d win.”
Rami chuckled and preceded me out of the pub, but I wasn’t joking. Not really. I didn’t have the first clue about his romantic history, but I was willing to bet he was better—or at least more well-versed—in any of this than I was, particularly the part that kept making his eyes darken and my heart beat faster. Thewantingpart. One-night stands weren’t my thing, and he was leaving soon, so whatever fantasy was brewing in my overactive imagination couldn’t happen.
ButChrist, I wanted it to. So much. Almost enough for a seismic shift to occur in my soul so I could blink and be someone else. Someone who could take a man to bed and never see him again. Who could separate sexual attraction from the deeper longing I had for Rami.
The seismic shift didn’t happen, though. And I didn’t want it to. I was who I was. If chips and beer got out of hand, Rami would understand that. It was why I liked him so much; his ability to see beyond what people were towhothey were.
You like his body too: his arms, his legs, his—
Wow. I’d never been so physically obsessed with someone. It threw me for a loop, and by the time we reached the chip shop, I’d forgotten why we were there.
Rami shot me a look I couldn’t fathom and ducked inside, leaving me to wander to the off-licence and buy more beer. In a daze, I grabbed a pack of cans from the shelf and paid for them, only realising when I was outside that I’d bought the super-strong stout my dad used to drink on Boxing Day to soften his hangover from the whisky-fuelled night before.
Oops.I traipsed back to the chip shop. Despite arguing against the chips, I couldn’t deny the sight of Rami waiting outside, juggling big bags of chips skewered with giant battered sausages, was the stuff dreams were made of.
I approached him with what was probably the grin of a village idiot.
He smiled back.Reallysmiled, and I forgot for a moment that his presence in my life was temporary. That we didn’t do lazy date nights like this all the time.I want to kiss him. The irony that he was standing beneath the chip shop’s plastic mistletoe wreath just about killed me.
Yearning for his lips finished me off.
Rami’s smile faded. “You okay?”
I held up the beer as my answer.
He cocked a dark brow. “They didn’t have what you want?”
“What makes you say that?”
“You look disappointed.”
“What, like, permanently? Thought you said I was Mr Happy?”