Page 20 of Escape Girl

The sun was low in the sky by the time he drove me back to my father’s house in Pacific Heights. He pulled his Jeep to the side of the road and turned off the ignition. I reached for the door handle. “Hold up!” Bobby said. “I’m a gentleman. I’ll walk you to the door.”

Grinning like an idiot, I dropped my hands in my lap and watched him jump out of the car and scramble to the passenger side. Anticipation rose like a cloud in my throat. We’d spent the entire day inches from each other without touching. I’d been able to feel his body heat near my skin for hours, but I still didn’tknow how his hands felt. Or how he smelled. Or much at all about his lips. I mean, I’d memorized their exact shape and the many expressions they made when he laughed or spoke. But I wasveryinterested in how they might move against mine.

I glanced around my father’s street and up the sidewalk to the door. If I accepted the job offer I had in San Francisco and moved back here permanently, I’d choose a place in a lively neighborhood instead of this rarified, ultrawealthy corridor. I preferred sidewalk seating at nearby cafés, people walking dogs, apartments with tiny, oft-used patios. But here, on my father’s street, it was quiet. The only sounds were that of landscaping and an occasional walkie-talkie blast from a neighbor congresswoman’s Secret Service patrol.

My father’s next-door neighbor was watering her plants on a spacious second-floor outdoor patio. She had a perfect view of my father’s front door, which absolutely sucked.

I wanted a kiss.

Not a peck on the cheek or forehead. Not a lingering handshake. I wanted a kiss to match the singeing heat I felt every time I looked in Bobby’s general direction. A kiss that would steal the breath from his lungs. A kiss where I could show him just how wound up he made me today.

Bobby opened my car door, and I resigned myself to a short walk up the sidewalk and a quick goodbye. But to my surprise, he didn’t open the car door wide and offer a hand to help me out. Rather, he opened it and then stepped inward, bracing himself with both arms and blocking anyone on the street from seeing into the car. “If I walk you to the door,” he said in a low voice, “there’s going to be an audience.”

My skin started to burn under my cashmere sweater. I wished I was wearing…less. My lips curved up at him as my gaze greedily roamed over his shoulders, neck, and lips. “An audience for what?”

“Our goodbye,” he whispered. He leaned closer, and I licked my lips, breathing the thickening air between us. He hesitated a couple of inches from my mouth. “Do you feel this too? When we’re together? The voltage?” He laughed, a little desperate. “I’m so attracted to you that there’s a humming in the air when you’re near me.”

I tipped my chin up, bringing my mouth closer to his. “Of course I feel it,” I said, practically panting. “It’s like a drumbeat in my veins.” I smiled, close to a purr. “Don’t tell me you haven’t read anything on the science of attraction,” I teased. “I’m sure you could lecture me on what’s happening between us on a physiological level.”

His eyes crinkled as he brought the hand that had been braced against the car door to my nape. My eyes fluttered shut as I felt his fingers in my hair. “Yes,” he whispered. “I could talk to you for hours about theories of sexual attraction, about the way our bodies right now are sensing each other’s pheromones. But…” He wound his fingers through my hair, twisted his hand into a tugging fist. “I’d rather just do th—”

I didn’t even wait for him to finish. I jerked upward, closing the distance between us.

Most first kisses start gentle, with closed mouths and slow friction as people adjust to one another’s shapes, movements, breath.

This was not like most first kisses.

The millisecond our lips finally met, Bobby groaned in his throat. He released his remaining hold on the car and leaned fully in, pinning me to the passenger seat with his body.

I wanted to gaspyes, but I was too busy opening my mouth and pulling at his hips with both hands.

He tasted sogood. Our mouths were frenzied: pressing, licking, sucking, and biting at one another. This wasn’t a first kiss at all. It was a revelation of human chemistry. With onethrust of his tongue, I wanted to rip off my sweater and his T-shirt. Press against each other until our sweat mingled and we were one scent.

Bobby angled his head to take the kiss even deeper, and I was lost. Maybe we were in the front seat of his car in broad daylight in full view of the neighborhood, but all I knew from all five senses was Bobby. If I opened my eyes, I could see his blue ones staring at me like I was a fallen goddess or a risen devil. Every nerve ending in my body was screaming for more friction, and if I could have physically managed it, my legs would have been wrapped around his waist already.

Embarrassing whimpers of arousal and joy escaped my throat every time I managed to gasp air, and I didn’t even care. I wanted to inhale the scent and taste of him until the end of time, although I couldn’t have described them with all the words in the English language.

Except one:mine.

From the very beginning, Bobby felt like mine.

One street away, a fire truck roared by. Its screaming siren startled us apart a few inches. Enough so that I could see that nosy neighbor overwatering her plants as she snuck surreptitious glances through Bobby’s windshield.

I automatically stiffened, and Bobby released his hold on me immediately. “Are you OK?”

“I’m great.” I pressed a quick, soft kiss to his cheek, and the concern in his eyes vanished. I pointed up to the balcony. “Just wondering what Florence thinks of the show.” Florence wouldn’t be scandalized. She’d lived in San Francisco her whole life. She was kind of a hoot. Her cat was named Chairman Meow and she referred to him only as The Chairman, which was outstanding.

Bobby straightened and angled himself back out of the car with some difficulty. He presented his hand to me likea footman. I took it and levered myself onto the sidewalk, although I really wanted to use it to pull him back on top of me.

We took two tiny steps. Bobby looked down at me, blue eyes wide and more serious than I would have expected. “That was…ah…”

A game changer? Alifechanger? “Yeah.”

Florence was still staring at us, so I gave her a jaunty wave. She was quite flushed and sweaty, and I wondered if she was overexerted from gardening or if watching us had brought on the heat. Bobby followed my lead and waved up at her as well.

When she gave Bobby a thoroughly unhurried full-body scan and then gave me a thumbs-up, I burst into loud laughter. I’d laughed a lot today. The sound had been rusty, weird, and almost unrecognizable to me.

“Perhaps Florence would be interested in an article I recently read about the weird science of how sweat attracts,” Bobby said.

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