Page 18 of Up All Night
At least the guy who kills me and dumps me in the river will be hot?Yeah, that’s how desperate I was.
I never felt like that around Hadrian, though. His unwillingness to touch me – and even talk to me at times – made me more frustrated than comfortable. I wanted to kiss him. I wanted him to pin me against a tree and make a dishonest woman out of me. I wanted him to curl his arm around my torso and hold me to him like he was the luckiest guy in the world. We only had tonight, right? Maybe he was the luckiest guy in the world – he certainly had the power to make me the luckiest gal.
All he had to do was authorize that power. Let me know that it was okay for us to fool around a bit. For me to let down my guards that I erected after I realized this may not be a date after all.
“Oh, no, I don’t like.” He stopped in the middle of a path and ducked onto the other side of me. “I don’t know how to say in English.” His thumb jerked toward a cemetery across the small river.
“Cemetery.”
“Yes! Don’t like. Protect me, please.”
I stopped and stared at the cemetery while he lost the skip in his step. “Why?” Japanese cemeteries are one of the least foreboding in the world. Cremation is the norm there. With no bodies to bury, most graveyards are simple granite pillars with the family’s name on them. Personal names of those who have passed on are written in white, while family members who have yet to pass on are written in red. From our distance, all you could see were a few pointed pillars about three feet high clustered together. Hardly anything to worry one’s cute head over.
I turned to give him alook,but Hadrian’s eyes were elsewhere. Namely, on my ass.
Protection, huh?
Last thing I needed to do was playfully chastise or make fun of him. With the language barrier, that was probably not a good idea… and if he were playful right now…
Yes!
“You’re cute,” I said.
“Cute?” He put one hand on his hip and rubbed his goatee with the other. “It is good thing?”
“If a girl calls you cute, you bet your firm ass it’s a good thing.”
I don’t think he understood a single thing that I said, but his smile was golden. Maybe he was as confused by my signals as I was about his?
We came upon a small wooden pedestrian bridge, the traditional kind that used to be so often found in Japan before the wars. This one was obviously a recent addition, but under the cover of night it looked as if it had been there for a hundred years. I took out my camera and took a picture. Hadrian went to the river’s edge and peered into the deep ravine plummeting beneath flood walls.
“It’s deep.” He said.
“Yeah, think I’ll stay back here.” I’m a tad hydrophobic. Me and rivers don’t get along.
He propped himself up on the fence while I continued to take pictures. The man was practically a monkey while I looked for the best shot with such little light.
“Have too much coffee?”
Hadrian hopped down. “A little bit too much, maybe. Tonight I can’t sleep.”
I wasn’t about to take that as a sign that we were going to have sex all night. (As much as I wanted to.) “Me too. I can never sleep lately.”
This was it. This was my last chance to put sex in this guy’s brain.
“Why not?” He was by my side again.
“I told you. My neighbor is busy.”
He grinned sheepishly. “Yes, you say. Your neighbor has too much…” Here came the phone again.“Stamina.”
I nodded. “How can I sleep with my neighbor having so much sex?”
He scratched his head, opened his mouth… and immediately shut it again. Instead, he jerked his thumb behind him. “We go?”
Every time he said that, I had no idea what was going to happen.
We made another loop around the park. My mind ran with possibilities: was he going to ask me somewhere? Would he want to go home? Would he at least try to kiss me in this nice park? I had never had something like that happen before!
