Page 17 of Possessed By Knox
I blink up at him, my brain slowly catching up with what he’s talking about, and when it does, I pray for the earth to open up and simply swallow me whole.
My face is heated and probably red as a tomato when I turn to look away from the man and toward the oncoming foot traffic. I’m hoping someone will slam into me and put me in a coma, but everyone just casually walks around us. That’s what I get for walking next to a handsome but scary beast of a man. With a sigh, I decide to play it off casually. “Yeah, I was talking about the Ferris wheel too. It was…um, I felt good riding it.”
“Did you now?”
“Yes, I felt great. Fantastic. I would do it again, every day even. No problem at all.”
Kill me now.
He doesn’t laugh at me, but from the look in his eyes, I can tell it’s close.
“Are we heading back now?” I ask, the prospect of ending the day leaving me a little disappointed.
“Not yet. I figured we’d grab something to eat,” he says, casually taking my hand in his. It doesn’t feel as strange as it did the first time he held my hand, and that little fact worries me considerably. “I think you’ll like this place. It’s the best for authentic Chicago-style pizza, and it’s not too far from here so we can walk.”
I follow him silently through the crowd, trying to ignore the little green monster that pops up when I notice other women looking our way and the way their eyes flash with pure lust at the sight of him.
He’s not mine.
But my brain refuses to believe that little fact at the moment. How can he not be mine when I’ve felt his lips on me, his hands all over my body? When I’ve heard the promise of more from his lips and seen the need flash in those gorgeous eyes?
I shouldn’t allow myself to fall for a man who loves this city as much as he does. It’ll just make leaving this city behind harder.
And yet, I feel myself getting swallowed deep. Into him.
“So, what is it you do?”
His voice pulls me from my thoughts, and I glance briefly at him. As I do, I bump into a pedestrian and trip on the pavement, and his hand is the only reason I don’t face-plant on the ground.
Knox straightens me, chuckling as he does so. “Are you okay?”
Kill. Me. Now.
“What do you think I do?” I ask, hoping to deflect his attention from my near death. Judging by the grin he tosses my way, I imagine my effort doesn’t go unnoticed, but he indulges me anyway.
“I’ve only seen two people dress the way you do,” he says, running his eyes hotly over me, and I can’t help the flush that climbs up my cheeks. “My guess is you’re either a lawyer or a librarian.”
“Nope.”
“Do you work in sales?”
“Not even close.”
“Darn it, what about cat herder?”
“You just made that job up, didn’t you?”
“Wrangling cats is a serious job.” He laughs as we walk down the street. “Okay, maybe something in the line of a consultant of sorts. Maybe in finance. Hmm, something tells me you could be a headhunter too.”
“You’re way off.”
“Huh, is that so? How about a professional thumb wrestler?”
I choke out a laugh despite my best effort to hold it in. “Is that even a real thing? Why do you think I’d be a thumb wrestler?”
“Your eyes,” he says seriously. “They’re beautiful, stunning, like the bottom of a glacier, but they have a controlled intensity and I can just picture you in a room competing. You probably have a championship belt at home.” He stops dead on the sidewalk and turns to look at me. “Whatever field you’re in, you can’t tell me that you don’t have a couple of trophies on the shelves of your childhood home.”
Oh, I have them in the hundreds. Certificates and trophies I received from all the math and science competitions my parents enrolled me in from the moment I could speak, but I can’t find the words to say that. In fact, I can’t find any words at all when he looks at me like that, so I turn away.
