Page 3 of Crushes to WHAT

Emerson ducks his head as I tilt mine up, up, up, and our eyes meet.

My throat constricts.

He smiles.

I forget how to breathe.

“Hey, baby,” he murmurs. Then, in an unprecedented assault on my senses, he wraps his arm around my waist, pulls me tight against his front, and walks us both into my house, kicking the door shut behind him.

“Oh my gosh,” I croak, wide-eyed, as my knees give out.

Emerson’s lips quirk and his eyes scan the room before settling on me, soft and sweet and seriously freaking hot. An ember crackles just beneath the surface of his gaze, sparking a blaze within the speckled brown depths that heats my skin and sets my nerves on fire. Strands of dark hair frame his face, just on the wrong side of too long.

Freaking, freaking, freak.

A whimper slides past my lips as my body alights, then goes limp under the soft lick of flames ghosting along my nervous system. My vision darkens at the edges, and I have just enough cognizance to recognize that I’m embarrassing myself more than I’ve ever embarrassed myself in front of Emerson Wright—which is really saying something—before I lose my sight completely as I swoon.

Swoon!

Honest-to-goodness, real-life, right-here-in-his-arms, swoon.

When I come to, I am no longer in his arms, but instead in the cozy embrace of my sage-green sofa. I spread my hands out over the velvety fabric as I blink awake.

Through an interior window that allows me to see my living room from my kitchen and my kitchen from my living room, I catch sight of Emerson. His shoulders bunch as he swiftly opens and closes cabinets, then shift when he finally finds what he’s looking for—cups, it seems. He grabs a hand-thrown ceramic tumbler and fills it with water from a pitcher in the fridge.

I nearly swoon again.

He looks good in my kitchen. Like, really good. Like, wow, why don’t you just stay forever good. Despite him clearly having no clue where anything is, he moves as if it’s his right to be there—as if it’s his right to learn where I keep my cups and plates and silverware. As if the very idea that he might not be welcome to go through my cabinets is laughable.

It kind of is. I’d let him go through anything in this house if he wanted to. Heck, I’d even lead him straight to my menstrual doom basket if he asked. Especially if his eyes held dark, simmering heat when he formed the question.

When Emerson rejoins me in the living room, I’m fanning myself with a hair magazine I usually keep on a side table. In an effort to not literally faint again, I avoid eye contact when I drag myself to sitting and accept the tumbler of water he offers.

In what I can only assume is an effort to counteract my efforts to not lose hold of consciousness, he claims the space my torso previously occupied, wraps an arm around my middle, and drags me backward to lean against him. He shifts to better cocoon me before sliding his free hand down my arm to take hold of my hand and bring both it and the cup of water to my face.

Taking the hint, I drink.

He rumbles an approval. “Good.”

Belly aflutter, I take another drink and am rewarded with a rough, quiet, sweet, “Very good,” in my ear.

“Sorry,” I whisper. “I don’t know why I did that.” We both know exactly why I did that, but I’m too much of a wuss to admit it out loud to his face.

Emerson is no wuss.

“I know why you did that,” he says, dropping his hand to my thigh to rest innocently atop my skirt despite his darkly satisfied tone. “And I like why you did that.”

Um.

Um!!!

Shakily, I set my water on the coffee table, lest I spill it all over myself as I process the words that have just graced my living room air, casually, as if they are words Emerson can just say and I can just hear.

He nuzzles my hair while I deep breathe through the I cannot believe any of this is happening right now, least of all the specific things happening right now. He graciously allows me several minutes of this internal freak out before he sighs, minutely tightens his grip, and reluctantly asks why I called for help. “As much as I’d love to sit here with you like this forever, I can’t stand the idea of you needing help and me not giving it.”

I think my heart is going to combust if he keeps acting like this.

He doesn’t normally act like this… does he? I mean, I know that our one-on-one interactions usually involve a whole lot more of me diving behind something and praying he hasn’t seen me, but we have been in the same room together, interacting, before. Notably, I’ve done his hair twice, and he didn’t act like this either of those times… I think.