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He backed her into the wall just as he’d done the first time, only now, thanks to her new porch light, she could see his face and watch the way his eyes raked over her like she was a three-course-meal and he, a starving man. He licked his lips, lowering down, down, down . . . She felt his breath on her mouth. Her eyes closed. Her whole body softened and then—
“Don’t forget to lock up,” he said, and her eyes flew open to find that same haughty smirk he wore at dinner.
“You—” She might have swatted him if he hadn’t already been moving away with a wink. “Are you kidding me?”
He descended the stairs and kept walking backward toward his car. “What? I thought we were taking thing slow.”
“Slow, yes. Not glacial.”
“What’s the matter? Can’t handle a little pressure?”
“I told you, this is not a challenge.”
He grinned and opened the driver’s side door. “Then what are you so upset about?”
Nico started the engine and waved her inside. After giving her enough time to lock the door, he drove away, leaving Lexie staring after him with an open mouth.
What just happened?
When his taillights disappeared into the night, she turned away from the window with an indignant pout. He was having fun with this. Too much fun. When he’d said that she would be the first one to break, he hadn’t been kidding. He actually intended to derail her plan to keep this thing steady and controlled by using himself as bait. He wanted her to want him. To crave him enough to throw caution to the wind and let herself go, consequences be damned.
She both hated and loved the idea.
Lexie thought it over as she stripped naked and stepped into the shower, letting the warm water, the steam, and the smell of her lavender soap clear her head and help her gain some perspective. In an ideal world, she would wait for the dust to settle, for this stuff with Kyle to become a distant memory, and for things to go back to normal before she entertained the possibility of starting something new with Nico. But—as she’d learned time and time again—this was not an ideal world, and if she were being brutally honest with herself, she would not be this young forever. She wanted to fall in love again someday. She wanted a family. She wanted to build a life with someone who made her heart sing and her body yearn. She wanted to be happy. Here, in this house, with the person she was meant to love. Maybe Nico was that person, but she’d never know if she didn’t let him in.
After showering, she slipped a short, cotton nightgown over her head and climbed into bed.
Kyle had broken her heart, but he hadn’t broken her. The fact that he was an ongoing, terrible thing in her reality didn’t seem to phase Nico in the slightest. In fact, it seemed to invoke some gallant, primal part of him that wanted to pull her in even closer. Was it so wrong that she wanted to lean into it?
She nestled into the pillows, but sleep did not come. Her bed felt cold. Empty. She wished Nico were in it. She wanted his warmth at her back, his bare skin on hers, his scent embedding itself in her sheets. In the darkness, her body ached for him. She wondered if he felt the same, right now, this very moment.
Show him, she thought. Show him how it feels.
Before she gave herself the chance to change her mind, Lexie switched on the bedside lamp, reached for her phone and kicked the covers away. She pulled her nightgown off and tossed it to the floor, then rolled onto her stomach and opened her camera. After snapping a few images, she picked the best one and sent it straight to Nico.
She felt bold. Naughty. And free.
Seconds passed. Then minutes—almost sixty of them.
It was torture, so she decided to set her phone to silent and put it in a drawer until tomorrow. She switched the lamp off once more and sighed. Was he looking at the picture? Was he touching himself? Was he thinking of her while he did? Reaching beneath the covers, she let her hands glide over her skin. She imagined they were Nico’s. What would he do? How would he touch her? Gentle squeezes and featherlight strokes of her most intimate parts? Or a wild, brutish conquering of her feminine flesh? In her mind, she explored different versions of one man, writhing and moaning as her fantasy grew more real, more intense.
When she finally drifted off to sleep, after bringing herself to a release she somehow knew would never measure up to one that he could give her, she dreamed that someday soon she might learn how right she was about that.
Chapter eighteen
Lexie’s alarm woke her at six a.m. She groaned. It was her turn to do side work at the bar. When she eventually opened her eyes, stretched, and remembered what she’d done the night before, her stomach lurched. She flew out of bed and over to her dresser to retrieve her phone, only to discover she’d not heard a thing from Nico. No call. No good morning text. Nothing. It was enough to make a girl want to scream. Then quit her job, leave town, assume a new identity, and start a brand-new life somewhere far, far away.
What the actual hell?
She got dressed and applied her makeup in kind of a numb state, hating herself for the number of times she kept checking for a reply. It was embarrassing, bordering on pathetic, the complete opposite of how she’d felt about it eight hours ago. After the tenth glance to ensure she had adequate signal and her phone volume was all the way up, she’d had enough, and decided to switch the damn thing off.
His loss.
Any excuse about him being too busy to answer would not be accepted. As far as she was concerned, nobody was that busy. And there were unwritten rules about this kind of thing. Rule number one: always answer a girl’s text when it contains a naked photo of herself. Even if you aren’t that interested. It was just polite.
Could it be that Nico was having second thoughts about her? About the whole thing? Perhaps the reason he’d not replied was that he didn’t know how to tell her that and was trying to find a way to let her down easy? The prospect of her photo being met with an awkward pinching of his lips and an expression of pity made her cheeks feel hot, so she shoved it away.
Rusty’s was locked up tight when she got there. Wade would be coming in around mid-morning, as would the rest of the staff covering the lunch shift, so for the moment, she had the place to herself. Taking advantage of the peace and quiet, Lexie selected a dozen of her favorite songs on the jukebox, cranked the volume, and made the herculean effort not to dwell on her sad love life—or lack of—anymore.
