Page 40 of Love at First Sighting
“You okay?” El asks.
My throat knots. “No.”
El chews on my word before pulling over. We’re far enough away, so lost in a sea of LA traffic that whoever was after us isn’t bound to find us now. We’re on a dusty road off the Pacific Coast Highway and El hops out of the car. At first, I don’t know what she’s doing, but then my door swings open and she directs me to turn. She kneels in front of me on the ground, finding the space between my legs.
She reaches over me, pressing herself against my thighs as she pops open the glove compartment. I’m too hypnotized watching the commanding and confident look on her face to notice what she’s grabbing…until a glaring white light ignites in front of me.
“Calm down. It’s a ring light. Let me see the damage.”
With her free hand, El brushes her thumb along the bruising on my cheek. There’s no cut, but the skin is raw and stings. As she finds a particularly tender point, I wince.
“Is it an end to my Abercrombie modeling days?” I ask.
“I don’t know. Doesn’t seem like your crowd in the first place. You’ve got too much of an edge to you.” She smirks and runs her finger around the scarring near my eye, so delicate it makes all the pain in my body go away. “You’ve got bad-boy scars and a pretty-boy face.”
Why does that feel so good to hear?
“And,” she adds, “I think you’ll be okay. It’ll look like you got into a bar fight for a few days, tough guy.”
El smiles and drags her eyes down my body until shereaches my hands. Her fingers weave with mine, and then she jolts.
“Oh damn.”
“What?”
She doesn’t explain, just reaches into her purse on the floor. Finally, she whips out a single bobby pin and bends it. El picks up my hand. I’m still in one handcuff. She furiously digs the end of the pin into the lock and wiggles it around, sticking her tongue out of the side of her mouth in deep concentration.
“You know how to pick locks?”
“Handcuffs, at least,” she says. “I had a boyfriend who roped me into a BDSM class once, so…I guess I know handcuffs.”
I want to fucking die. That is the absolute last thing I want to hear when El is kneeling between my legs, picking a goddamn lock, and telling me nice things. Now all I want is to know what she looks like when I strip her down, plant myself betweenherlegs, taste every inch of her, and leave her with only one name on her lips.
The handcuff pops open and I shake it off my wrist. El spins the cuffs around her finger with a dignified laugh, tossing them back into the car. Then she rests her hands on my thighs. Oh no. She slips an extra bobby pin into my pants pocket.
“There. For the next time you get stuck in handcuffs.”
Chapter 11
El
“You’re like a fast-food connoisseur now, aren’t you?” Carter laughs. We find a spot on the beach and spread out the blanket I received from a sponsor from the back of my car. There are two burgers and a well-done serving of fries between us as we sit.
“Treason calls for a little treat.”
More than that, I couldn’t bear the idea of going home yet after our close call. Back to Bex and Lea and their bullshit and no Carter. He doesn’t seem to mind that I’ve asked him to hang around a little longer and didn’t object when I told him I knew a place we could go.
“Right.” He laughs. Carter ditched his suspenders, jacket, and hat in the back of my car. Now he’s loosened his tie and unbuttoned the top few buttons of his shirt.
Aside from peeks at his forearms when he rolls up his sleeves, I’m almost convinced he doesn’t have real skin and only has a suit for a body. I have to guess through the fabric. I have to imagine the curves of his biceps or the toned muscles of his stomach, the sharp angles of his collarbones. He reaches down, yanks the bottom of his button-down from his pants,and tosses the shirt aside, leaving him in a white undershirt. I eye the jagged scars crawling up his right arm. There’s a gnarly one along the inside of his elbow, clear signs of surgery.
He catches me looking. “Pretty brutal, I know.”
I shrug. “I don’t care. I mean, Icare. I just…don’t mind.”
Carter nods slowly and focuses back on his French fries. The waves crash onto the shore yards from us. I drove us to my favorite quiet beach. It’s out of the way most of the time, but it’s where I come when I want to be alone or want to tan in peace instead of shoot content. It’s a little north of LA, and in this quiet coastal town, there’s a faint hum of life, but it feels like the world’s gone to sleep here. I wanted Carter to see this small slice of peace I’ve found for myself.
Carter bites into his burger with a satisfied groan. I ordered mine pretty plain and straightforward, but I have a feeling Carter would have been fine with me going either Animal Style or in a lettuce wrap. I feel like he might want me to get whatever makes me happiest, much like the way he asked me about my comfort level in my clothes.
