She reaches over and lays her hand on my thigh—light, reassuring, way too intimate for the middle of a parking lot. “Relax, Jaxon. Take a nap. I’ll get you home safe. I mean…” Her grin turns wicked. “They wouldn’t have given me my license back if they thought I was still a menace on the road.”
My eyes fly open. “Oh, Jesus.”
She bursts out laughing. “I’m kidding. Mostly. Everything’s fine as long as I stay at least twenty feet away from Taco Bell.”
I stare at her. “What?”
She scrunches her nose. “Okay, maybe fifty feet. The ink on the order was smudged. But better safe than sorry, right?”
I shake my head, chuckling despite myself, and sink back into the seat as she eases us out of the lot. Once we hit the highway, exhaustion catches me, but I reach out and rest my hand on her thigh. She turns the music down, letting us fall into that easy, comfortable silence that feels like something rare.
I must drift for a bit, because the next thing I know, the car stops and she whispers, “I’ll just be a second.”
The hell she will.
I’m already popping my door open. Whether it’s how I was raised, or the fact that being away from her for three days was three too many, I’m not letting her walk up there alone.
“Jaxon,” she scolds as I join her on the sidewalk.
“It’s dark,” I tease, taking her hand. “Plus, I want to see your place.”
“You’ve seen it before.” She glances up at the narrow home wedged between two others, all tall and skinny like they’re trying to stretch enough to fit. “Small. Perfect for one.”
“I like small,” I say.
“I like big,” she counters, her voice low, playful, suggestive enough to make my blood heat.
I can’t help myself. “That’s what she said.”
She snorts. “Yeah. That is exactly what she said. I mean—what I said. Like just now, I said it.”
I pause, studying her. “You doing okay, Rowyn?”
She swats me with the back of her hand. “I’m fine. Focus on not falling asleep upright.” She starts up the walkway and I follow, watching the sway of her hips, the faint flush on her cheeks.
At the door, she jams the key into the lock and tries the knob. It sticks. Again.
“You still didn’t get this fixed?” I ask.
“Been busy,” she mutters.
“Yeah, you have.” I nudge her aside gently and give the door a hard shove. It finally pops open. “Let me take care of this tomorrow.”
“No way. You have hockey to think about.”
“I’ll make a call.”
“No, I’ll make the call.”
“Promise?”
She rolls her eyes. “Yes. Bossy,” she grumbles as she steps inside.
Vanilla hits me instantly, soft, clean, unmistakably hers. She flicks on a light and I spot the diffuser glowing in the corner.
I step in behind her, closing the door with a quiet click, feeling the warm press of intimacy settle over us like a weighted blanket.
She glances toward the stairs. “I’ll just be a second.”