Page 70 of Leah

“How the hell did this place stay open for so long?” I wondered aloud. “There are hardly any cars in the parking lot, and it’s a freaking dump. It makes that zebra car we slept in look like a dream, right?”

When he didn’t answer, I turned to him and paused. My cheeky humour had fallen on deaf ears. With his back pressed against the door, Carter was too busy looking at me. If ever there was a gaze to melt the heart of a girl, it was the one he was giving me. He smiled wistfully at me, and I consciously crossed my arms over my wet body.

Why are you looking at me like that?I wanted to ask.

“What?” I pushed out breathlessly.

“If someone told me last week I’d be in a motel room with you, and that you would be soaked to the bone looking like a fucking goddess, I’d have shot them in the face.” He said this to me so quietly, I had to strain my ears to hear.

I barely moved as he spoke.

The room felt smaller all of a sudden.

All I saw was him.

He let out a long sigh, running a hand through his longish hair. Drops of water fell over his face, sending trails down his cheekbone and lips. “I’m trying to think of ways not to fuck this up.”

I shook my head a little. “You can’t fuck this up.”

“I want you to want me, and I’m stumped because usually I have girls falling to my feet, and the one girl I want isn’t.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that.

There was no way to eloquently tell him that the past had scarred me, that our time together had left me frightened to ever love someone again, let alone the same one. I tried to thinkof ways to lighten the conversation instead, but my mind was empty.

My humour ended the second my eyes touched his blues.

He pushed off the door and slowly walked to me. My heart pounded harder the closer he got. It took everything in me to look at him, to not shrink away.

He was so close to me, I could feel his body heat. He looked just as scared as me, if not worse. I’d never seen him this vulnerable before.

“Does it feel like we’ve been apart?” he asked me in a hushed voice.

“No,” I answered.

“Is your heart beating as fast as mine?”

“Yes.”

His chest rose and fell rapidly, and for a few long seconds, we just stood there, taking each other in.

Then he inched a little closer, watching me carefully. My breath thinned as I angled my face up to meet his. There was something powerful at work between us. This connection that sizzled without touch; that grabbed at my being and tethered me to his. It made me cloudy and aroused.

It also made me scared.

So unbelievably scared.

“It’s okay,” he assured me, reading me like a book. “Just feel, Leah.”

My heart opened wide, and I glimpsed at his lips, at his throat, at his broad shoulders and wide chest. Then I looked back up at him, and I let the magic continue its work.

I inched to him, feeling my chest brush against his.

“I’m feeling,” I whispered to him.

He dipped his face down, until his nose barely touched mine. He held my gaze captive, and his hand went up, lightly brushingaway the hair that had been stuck to my cheek. His touch felt hot and sweet. It made me shiver and inch even closer to him.

I was lost in him—

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