Page 144 of One Night Only
I glare at him but don’t deny it. He’s right. I couldn’t. And now I can’t keep my hands off him either. Just the memory of him that night, leaning over the bar to talk to me, to flirt with me, has me struggling not to touch him again.
“It’s not a big deal,” I insist.
But Declan looks pensive. “I actually thought you’d come to see me,” he says, his hands still holding mine, keeping them in place. “When I realized you were there on a date…” He frowns. “I should have left you alone, but I was pissed. So, I took it out on you. Again.”
I shake my head impatiently. “I wanted your attention. If you’d ignored me, I would have lost it.”
“I thought I’d killed it,” he continues and I lean back, giving up. “Whatever we had. When you left, I was convinced you and that guy were going to have angry sex in the back of his limo.”
“You think Matthias has a limo?”
“He looked rich.”
“He just knows how to dress himself.”
“Ouch.” He laughs.
“I didn’t have sex with him in a limo,” I say. “I didn’t have sex with him anywhere.” I hesitate, taking a steely breath. “I actually haven’t been with anyone since I met you.”
His eyes search mine, expression gentling. “Is it bad if I tell you that makes me happy?”
“No,” I say. “I get it. Even that night with Claire… I knew she had no interest in you but when I saw you two together I got so…”
“Jealous?”
“No need to look smug.”
He releases my hands to cup my face, his thumbs running across my cheeks and the tell-tale signs I know he sees there. “Tell me about this dream.”
I groan, dropping my head to his shoulder.
“I want to know.”
“And I want a Chanel purse,” I mutter into his shirt. “We don’t all get what we want.”
“I think I have a right to know if it was about me.”
“You would think that, wouldn’t you?”
“I wish I dreamt of you,” he says, moving his hands distractingly up and down my back. “I had to settle for a lot of daydreaming. A lot of very exciting daydreaming.”
“Is that a romantic way of saying you jerked off to me?”
“Your words, not mine.” He smooths my hair against my head, pressing a light kiss to my temple. It’s as if now I’m sitting here before him, he can’t stop touching me. I know the feeling well. “You want to know what I thought of?” he asks. “I thought of the moment I saw you right before the wedding. Do you remember?”
Remember? How could I forget.
“I was hiding,” he continues. “Nervous for Paul and panicking about leaving you and suddenly there you were, standing before me like I’d conjured you.” His hands stop moving. “I thought you were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.”
“You didn’t look very happy to see me,” I say, remembering the expression on his face. How it felt like a punch to the stomach.
“That’s because I wasn’t,” he says lightly. “We were moments away from the biggest moment of my brother’s life and let’s just say he was the furthest thing from my mind.”
I lift my head from his shoulder. “I thought you regretted it.”
“In a way I did.” He hesitates. “You made it clear you didn’t want anything more. I respected that. Only problem is I wanted a lot more. I thought if I could just… I don’t know, tune you out I’d get over it, but I couldn’t get you out of my head for weeks. I couldn’t even bring myself to pick up the damn watch because that would mean severing my last excuse to see you again. When I saw you sitting at the bar, I thought the universe was either answering my prayers or playing a very cruel trick on me.” He pauses, a familiar glint in his eye. “Now if I’d known you’d spent all that time thinking of me…” He laughs as I pull back.
“Come on,” he says. “Tell me about your dream.”
