Page 39 of Sing For Me

“Yes,” I whisper, the word coming out before I’m sure if it’s even true. But my thoughts go skittering sideways as he pulls me tighter, pressing my hips to his.

“I’m just going to act like I’m whispering something in your ear,” Eli whispers. His breath on my ear sends a tingling all the way down my spine, culminating in a heat between my legs.

His breath. That’s all it takes.

“Youarewhispering in my ear.”

“Good point.”

“What would you be whispering if we were…together?”

“Hmm,” he breathes. He reaches up and tucks my hair behind my ear. “Probably that you look beautiful.”

I swallow, my arms snaking up around his neck as if they’re not mine. “What else?” I ask, smiling, my heart skipping as if this were real.

“I don’t think you want to know.”

More heat surges down low, and I feel my nipples harden. Thank God he can’t feel it.

“I kind of do.”

What the hell, Reese?

Eli pulls back so he can face me, arching a brow.

“Now it looks like I said something weird.”

“Not weird so much as interesting.”

“Oh my God, Eli. Seriously?”

“Yeah. I want to know what you think I’d say next.”

His smile is so mischievous, so deeply sexy, my breath hitches. Shit. This isn’t good. I throw a glance inside, to where literally everyone at the table is staring at us, his sisters both with their hands over their mouths.

“Dammit,” I whisper. Then I reach up and give him a kiss on the cheek. It’s chaste, but it shuts him up.

It doesn’t do anything for the tingling licking at my core, though.

Neither does the shit-eating grin he gives when he wraps an arm around my shoulders and brings me inside. And somehow, despite myself, I’m smiling too.

To my utter shock and amazement, I manage to have fun with Eli’s family, despite the way his sisters pepper us with questions the minute everyone finished shuffling around to make room for me.

“When did you decide to get back together?” Cassandra asks.

I hesitate, but Eli helps out. “We were never really together-together,” Eli says. “This is new.”

“Who asked who out?” Chelsea asks, practically swooning. “Where was your first date?”

Luckily, I don’t have to lie, if we use what’s happened in the past few weeks as our framework for the truth.

“I asked Reese out,” Eli says.

“And our first date was at Ben’s place,” I say.

Eli’s smile makes my stomach flip, and I have to look to Nora to keep my feet grounded in reality.

Cassandra’s fiancé Blake keeps inspecting both of us like we’re on trial, though I get the sense his interest is scientific. I also get the sense he wouldn’t say anything if he suspected anything—like he sees the bigger picture. He gives me a kind of sympathetic smile when I meet his eyes. He’s been on the hot seat with this family too, I realize.

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