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I help Charlie slide off the counter before tucking my crutches under my arms. “I’m going to go to the weight room for a few minutes and burn off some energy.” God knows I need to. “Want to meet back in half an hour or so for a movie?”
She smiles uncertainly. “I’ll pop the popcorn.”
I head down the hall, completely unaware that we’ve permanently altered our previously rock-solid relationship.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHARLIE
I escape upstairs while Mark is in the weight room. I hear pounding music and the clacking of metal weights from behind the closed door. I shut my bedroom door and sag against it, my knees trembling.
What the hell?
What the hell, what the hell, what the hell???
My heart is still pounding from that – that – I don’t even know what to call it.
Intense. Passionate. Hot.
And I wasn’t afraid. I didn’t panic, not even a little.
I head into the bathroom and turn on the shower. I think better in the shower.
I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror. My hair looks sexy and rumpled. My pupils are huge. My lips are swollen, and my face is flushed.
And I’m definitely aroused. There’s a heat in my core, a molten fire that I haven’t felt before.
Ever.
I swallow hard, remembering, and my heart starts thudding in my chest again.
As soon as I agreed, something in Mark’s smile changed. He went from regular Mark to… Sensual Mark? Suggestive Mark? Sexy Mark?
All the above.
I’d taken in his stubbled face, his strong jaw, his full mouth. My stomach churned with anticipatory butterflies.
His eyes softened when he called me Baby Girl and told me I was beautiful, and unlike when Blake called me beautiful, Mark sounded like he meant it, like the sentiment was unearthed from somewhere deep inside him.
My heart pounds harder. I’ve had boyfriends in the past. I’ve been kissed before.
But I’ve never been kissed like that. Slowly. Tenderly. Gradually becoming more inquisitive. Tasting. Teasing. Touching. Caressing.
Electric tingles had coursed through my body, awakening long-forgotten places. A warm ache had begun to slowly build in my body. Tension. Dampness. Heat.
Heat that exploded between us like a volcano, threatening to ignite us both.
I shove my face under the streaming water to stop my mind from taking the path it’s begun wandering down, one that wonders what it might be like if he hadn’t pulled away.
If we’d just kept going.
Stop.
I can’t think about that.
I can't even consider it.
Mark is everything to me. My best friend. My rescuer. My person.
