Page 52 of Hat Trick
But the one thing I do know, the one thing that’s safe, is the way we get lost in one another. The way they light me on fire.
Sipping my wine, I murmur to Emerson, “I’ve come to terms that crème brûlée and wine under the stars is the quickest way to get in my pants, Mr. Baker.”
CHAPTER 32
THAT FEELING…
EMERSON
Fuck me running.
She’s giving me those fucking eyes.
Her sage-green eyes have the power to bring me to my goddamn knees on a good day, but when she looks at me likethat.
Well, I feel like I can’t breathe.
And as tempted as I am to give in right here and now, I want, no, Ineedher to know this is about more than sex for me.
That I feelmorenow.
That after a life of feeling invisible, she and Dominic make me feel like the most important person in the room. They make me feel like I can be more than carefully put together. They make me feelseen.
I know she feels the same.
I saw it in the way she was looking at me. Liliana Campos likes to pretend that nothing can shake her,that she’s incapable of letting anyone in, at least fully. But she plays her every thought across her face like my favorite motion picture.
Just like she is right now. Judging by the way her brows are pinched together and her pink lips are parted ever-so-slightly, she’s wondering why I’m not jumping her bones. But I have one more thing I want to do first.
?1 Standing up, I pull my phone out of my pants pocket and press play on the song I have queued up. MGK and Julia Wolf’s cover of “Iris” starts playing through the portable speaker I have sitting on the patio table as I hold my hand out to her.
She looks up at me, and I see an unexpected gloss cover her eyes. “Emerson…”
I give her a soft smile. “Dance with me, Darlin’.”
Wrapping her delicate hand in mine, I pull her from the blanket. As she stands, I take a moment to drink her in. She’s wearing a casual summer dress, black with small white flowers all over it. It has a slit on one side that goes up her leg just far enough to get a view of her toned thigh, and the thin spaghetti straps allow me to take in the slope of her shoulders. She’s barefoot from coming from inside, and the Florida breeze is blowing her dark, curled strands out of her face, allowing me an uninterrupted view of her pink cheeks and full lips.
Breathtaking.
With her hand still in mine, I bring us chest to chest and rest my other hand on her waist. A soft sigh leaves her lips before she places heropposite hand flat on my chest. The two of us start swaying back and forth, dancing beneath the stars in a place neither of us are from, but now call home.
As the chorus sounds through my backyard, my eyes remain glued to hers, silently willing her to understand that this is how I feel. That I want her, I wantthem, to know how I feel. To see me for everything I am despite the world around us.
And it’s funny, I’ve spent my entire life wanting to be heard, wanting my voice to be louder than everyone else around me. But with them, I find myself not needing to speak at all. It’s in the silent moments that she and Dominic hear me the loudest. I don’t know when it happened or how I realized it, but I’d be the luckiest man alive to sit in silence and watch the two of them be, well, them.
“Emerson…” she sighs my name again. God, the way it sounds leaving her lips.
“Yeah, Lil?”
“Can you kiss me now?” We didn’t say the words, but once again, I can read it all over her face.
Can you kiss me now that I know?
A huge smile blooms across my face. “Sure can, Darlin’.”
Without a second thought, I slant my mouth over hers, and her body immediately melts against mine. Her lips part and I take the invitation to sweep my tongue inside of her mouth. She moans against my lips, and even with the music in the background, I let the sound wash over me.
Dropping her hand, I bring both of mine to her face and tip it further back, allowing me to kiss her deeper. Both her hands are on my chest now as she fists my shirt hard enough that a couple of the buttons on my Henley pop open. She smiles against my lips, but neither of us stop kissing, desperate to get lost in one another. And when one of her hands slips inside of my now-open shirt and her palm connects with the skin of my chest, any semblance of self-control I once had goes out the window.
