by Callie James
I rolled my eyes. “Well, thankfully, my mother isn’t here. You’re safe.”
“Fine.” She paused before saying a quick mouthful of syllables, what ultimately sounded like a question. I assumed she’d spoken Japanese, but she could have spoken Mandarin for all I knew. Still, she’d spoken it well, what sounded like a million words that probably amounted to her asking where she might find the bathroom.
I grinned. “Now say something sexy.”
Her eyes sparkled at my teasing tone, and I held my breath while a warm, sultry expression transformed her features. She said the next few words, whatever they were, slowly and an octave lower than her normal voice. I couldn’t take my eyes off her and she eventually dropped her gaze to my hand gripping the picnic table.
“What did that mean?” I asked.
She chanced a quick glance at me and turned to the dark horizon, hugging herself in the cool air. “I can’t tell you. I don’t know you well enough.”
Damn. Someday I’d ask her again. I wanted to know what she’d been thinking when she’d looked at me with that expression. “Sounded nice, whatever you said.”
Her smile grew. “It was very nice,” she said softly, gripping her arms tighter when another shiver ran through her.
I scooted closer to her and rubbed my hands over her arms to warm her up. “So, four years. That’s serious. You’re not planning to move to Japan, are you?”
She laughed. “No.”
“Majoring in Japanese?”
“Um, no. I won’t have time.”
“Then why four years?”
She still wouldn’t look at me. “That’s way too personal a question for a third date.”
My hands halted on her arms. “Wait, I just told you more detail about my life than most of my closest friends know. How is that question too personal?”
“Because it is,” she said, tamping down a relentless grin. “Listen, Sam, there’s no way I’m telling you. You can quit giving me your soulful pretty-please expression right now.”
I couldn’t stop smiling. “I didn’t know I had a soulful pretty-please look.”
“Well you do, and you can stop using it on me because it won’t work.” Her knees started bouncing when I kept smiling, and she pushed my leg with a halfhearted shove, giggled and looked away. “Stop it. You’ll laugh.”
God, I liked this girl. “I won’t.”
Her feet bobbed in triple time. “You’d have to swear you won’t laugh. That you won’t tell anyone else.”
“I swear. Anything said between us stays between us.” I actually felt strongly about this issue and maybe I needed to mention that later.
“And you swear not to laugh.”
My focus dropped to her pale, exposed neck. I leaned down, kissing a soft spot under her ear. “I swear,” I murmured.
She crooked her neck but didn’t move away. “That tickles,” she whispered.
“I can’t help it,” I said, dropping another kiss to her neck. “You smell so good.”
She pulled back to look at me, still smiling. “Clearly, you have no sense of mercy, Sam Guerra. All right. I’ll tell you.” She blew out a nervous breath. “It’s anime. That’s my reason for taking Japanese. Now can we please change the subject?”
“Anime?”
“Let’s drop the subject,” she said.
“Um, no. Hell no. I definitely need to hear this. But first, let’s get you in the car and warm you up.” I brushed my hands over her cold arms. “Your skin is cold.”
She looked to where she’d parked her Lexus next to the Impala before nodding and hopping off the table. After we tossed our paper bowls and empty water bottles into the trash, I threaded my fingers through hers as we walked across the parking lot, something I’d wanted to do during our last date.
She said she had to get something in her car so I focused on warming up the Impala.
When she opened the passenger door and plopped onto the seat engulfed in my leather coat, I paused for a reality check. The way she looked at me with those playful, blue eyes made my throat go dry. “So … anime,” I said, determined to do this right. “You were going to explain.”
Her dimples deepened. “You want to embarrass me, is that it?”
Damn, I was going to kiss her if she didn’t start talking soon. “Come on. Just tell me.”
“If it means we can move on to another topic.” Her grin faded and she turned to stare out the windshield. “Adam introduced me to anime in eighth grade and I totally fell in love with it.” She huddled into the coat while dropping back against the seat. “But anime is Japanese, which meant I had to read subtitles or watch English versions. They didn’t always translate well. That’s why I wanted to learn the language. I wanted to watch the originals and understand what the writers intended.”
“You like a cartoon enough to take another language for four years?” Saying it out loud didn’t make it any more believable.
“Wait a second,” she said, turning to me and holding up a finger. “Anime isn’t a cartoon. Let’s get that on the table right now.” She shivered and folded her arms over her chest, her hands buried in the sleeves. “Besides, if you’ve never watched anime, an explanation won’t do it justice.”
“Maybe you should move closer. You’re still shivering.”
“I’m not cold anymore,” she said, facing me and shifting to the middle of the seat where I met her halfway. “See?” She pushed her hands outside of the oversized sleeves. “Feel my hands. Warmer already.”
I wrapped my fingers around both hands, warm and soft. “Then why are you shivering?”
“Um…” She looked down. “I shiver when I get nervous.”
“You’re nervous?”
She nodded.
“Don’t be.” I wanted her to trust me and wished we could skip to that part. Maybe if I kept her talking she’d relax. “Tell me about anime.”
“What do you want to know?”
“I’m just wondering how a show could be so great it would inspire someone to learn another language just to understand it better.”
She shifted and I put my arms around her, breathing in her sweet scent. “The stories are amazing,” she said as she leaned against me. “The fighting is internal as much as external. It’s about personal demons. Personal growth. Empowerment. Living by a code. The importance of friends. Family. Honor and doing the right thing. Never giving up on what you believe.” She turned to me with those dimples. “Never giving up, no matter how difficult things get. That’s what I love the most.” She stopped talking, an odd expression pulling her eyebrows together.
“What?”
“You’re totally laughing at me.”
“I’m smiling,” I said.
“You think I’m lame, don’t you? A geek even,” she accused. I opened my mouth to deny it, but she pointed her finger at me. “Sam Guerra, I challenge you to watch twenty episodes of Naruto, look me in the eyes, and tell me you didn’t cry at least once.”
“Naruto?” No. Way. The same cartoon that made my hardass sister cry like a baby. Great. I hadn’t smiled in seven years as much as I had in the last week, all because of this girl, who apparently wouldn’t be satisfied now until she made me cry. “Peyton, I can tell you right now I won’t cry over a cartoon.”
She poked my chest, her finger unbending. “It’s not a cartoon.”
I pushed her finger to the side and inched forward. “Whatever.”
A half-smile twisted her lips. “Sam, you’re going to need to get your geek on a little better if you want to get to know me.” Her eyes widened. “Do you want to know me, Sam? The real me?”
Great. Now I wished I’d stayed and watched that stupid show with Vanna instead of going to my room pissed because she wouldn’t quit talking about my doomed relationship with Peyton. If I had, I could impress my hot date with the same nerd-speak that made her so tight with Cooper. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to know you.”
“Well, if you really want to k
now what curls my toes, you should watch my favorite show. You can learn a lot about someone if you understand their interests, don’t you think?”
The exact reason I’d kept the conversation focused on her.
“You have to watch it. Naruto is the ace of all anime,” she said. “But you can’t confuse it with Naruto Shippuden because that’s the continuation. If you watch that one first you’ll be totally lost.”
Tired of the cartoon subject, I leaned in, close enough to kiss her. “There are other ways I could get to know you, hermosa.”
Her dimples appeared and she pulled back enough to place her finger against my lips. “Try to be good, Sam. This is serious stuff.”
I liked this playful side of her. I liked every side of her. “You seriously want me to watch anime to get to know you?”
She giggled, clutching my shirt. “I do. It’s one of those it’s-important-to-your-girlfriend things. Would you watch it if I asked nicely?”
Girlfriend. The word lodged in my brain as I brushed her hair back. “I’ll watch it, but you have to be there to translate.”
“It has subtitles.” Her widening eyes searched mine. “Did you just ask me to come to your house?”
I couldn’t believe I had. “Yeah. I need to witness this toe-curling event myself.” I brushed my finger along her ear, this time tracing her hair down her neck. She licked her lips and my focus dropped back to her mouth. I brushed my thumb along her lower lip.
“Sam?”
She had the softest mouth. “What?”
“I want to kiss you,” she said, “but you should know it’s five minutes after the time you said you had to go.”
I turned to the small digital clock stuck on the dash and frowned. “Give me ten seconds.” I grabbed my phone, texted Jonas at lightning speed and hit Send before pivoting my attention back to her mouth.
“Who’d you text?”
“My boss at the gym. I told him I’d be fifteen minutes late.”
“Fifteen? But you’re only five—” The second my lips touched hers, the sweetest sound drifted up her throat and she reached out, clutching my shirt and pulling me closer. I shifted forward, causing a thudding sound—my phone hitting the floor—as I kissed her with zero intention of wasting one second of those ten minutes. Her bent leg between us kept me from getting closer, but I parted her mouth anyway, desperate to try. She brushed her tongue softly alongside mine, then my lip, as though tasting me. I remembered her doing that last night. A signature move. She shifted her leg and hooked it over mine. Pressed her hands to my chest, hesitating only a moment before her fingers drifted to my shoulders. I wanted to tell her to go for it, to do what she wanted with me, but it would have been too much too soon.
My hands moved everywhere, drifting down her sides and back. She kissed me repeatedly. Soft. Aggressive. The combination made me nuts. I pulled her against me, unable to get close enough as her knee slid across my thigh. I drew her closer, gripping her legs until she shifted over my lap a minute later and straddled me. I wasn’t sure who was leading what, but I went with it anyway, pulling her hips flush with mine. She sucked in a breath, the sweetest sound against my lips, but she never even paused as she kissed me. I felt her fingers thread into my hair as she opened her mouth to mine. Cupping her jaw with one hand, I kissed her hard as I pushed my other hand under her shirt. The soft skin at her waist tempted me to try for more, but I didn’t want to move too fast and screw this up. Besides, her sweet scent was making me crazy. I kissed her throat, finally recognizing the scent. “You smell like frosting. The really good kind.”
“I do?” She sounded dazed as she dropped her head back.
“Yeah.” I tasted her skin, expecting powdered-sugar sweet but getting soft instead.
Her fingers gripped my shoulders as I slipped my hands under the coat to drift along the narrow curve of her back. “Sam …”
Damn, she had a great body. “Hm?”
“That feels good.”
Given our position, I imagined her saying the same words except with fewer clothes. My body’s tense response reminded me to slow the hell down. “Peyton.”
“We should probably stop,” she whispered.
“I know.” I kissed another soft spot on her neck.
“You have work,” she added, curling her arms around my neck and getting closer. “And my parents are expecting me at home. But this is—” she sucked in a breath when I pulled her hips tight to mine, letting her feel how far I wanted to go, “—it’s really nice.”
“Mhm.” I kissed her neck, her jaw, making my way to her mouth and starting everything all over again. Soon we weren’t just kissing but moving together as if we were doing something else. Something more. Breathing hard, we barely finished one kiss before starting another. And if she didn’t quit making those soft sounds with every breath…
I imagined all the things we could do together, just her and me in this car. Wondered even, if she was thinking the same thing. I grabbed the leather coat and pulled it off her shoulders, down to her elbows. She didn’t act surprised, didn’t even pause as she kissed me. I was beginning to think maybe…
“We really should stop,” she whispered.
I leaned back against the seat, trying to put some space between us, but she followed me, her chest nearly in my hands as she started kissing me again. After another minute, I had one hand wrapped in her hair as my fingers brushed the side of her breast.
Damn, I was no good at making out sober. Way too aware of every move I made. Every move she made. When she didn’t stop my hand, I tried for more the second time, realizing the second she moaned that if I didn’t halt this now—
I gripped the jacket bunched around her elbows and pulled us apart, immediately wishing I hadn’t. “If we’re going to stop,” I said, catching my breath, “we should do it now.”
My voice had come out harsh and raspy, but she didn’t seem to notice. Her hands remained pressed to my abdomen as she stared at me with wide eyes, looking like she’d woken from a dream. “You’re right. I have homework,” she explained in a whisper. “And tons to do on my website. We should…”
“Go,” I finished for her. “We should definitely go.”
Her lips were without lipstick now, and red and puffy after kissing ten minutes straight. She remained flush against me, apparently not wanting to go any more than I did. Maybe she didn’t feel strongly about stopping. Maybe she wanted me to convince her.
“I don’t normally do this,” she said.
The tremble of vulnerability in her voice reminded me why I needed to stop and think a minute. Taking a deep breath, I leaned back and forced my body to relax. “I know.”
“I haven’t been with anyone, Sam,” she said, biting her lip briefly and looking unsure. “So when I say I don’t normally do this, I mean at all.”
Any time she glanced down, her long, thick hair fell partially over her eyes. I reached out and pushed the soft tendrils back and her gaze lifted to mine. “I know,” I said.
“But how do you know?”
She’d obviously heard the rumors about herself. What a downer subject. “I saw it in your eyes that day at your house. When you came down the stairs.”
Her mouth twisted to one side. “You could tell?”
“You have expressive eyes.”
She curled her fingers against my shirt. “Does that mean you’re okay with waiting?”
She had to know I didn’t want to wait, but her apocalyptic, relationship-ending expression kept me from mentioning it. My response had to be perfect or I might as well chuck the whole relationship right now. “I don’t want you to have any doubts,” I said, and meant it.
She gave me another uncertain smile. “Maybe we should go slower then.”
I glanced at her hand on my left pectoral and those fingertips sliding back and forth over the ridge of a scar—an entirely different conversation I wanted to avoid. “Maybe you should define going slower,” I said, “if you don’t want me to cross a speci
fic line. Because I think we’ve crossed a few lines already.”
Her fingers halted. “Have we? I didn’t notice. I mean, I’ve never …felt like this. It’s really nice.” She hesitated and leaned closer, kissing me again. Her mouth felt soft and uncertain.
Damn. The second her lips parted, I kissed her back, my fingers threading through her hair as I did. She felt better than nice. She felt perfect. I never wanted to stop.
Work. I could probably get out of it. Maybe Jonas or Bobby could take my four Sunday appointments this once. I was seriously considering it when my phone dinged on the floorboard, the sound of a text reply. Jonas was likely wondering what the hell had happened to me. I usually got to work with time to spare.
She moaned a sound of disappointment and pulled from the kiss. When I opened my eyes to look into those pretty blues, I could suddenly picture us together. As in, together. Like two people who did shit with each other all the time. Like trust and love, and all that crap I’d never wanted in my life. Apparently, I’d lost my ever-loving mind over this girl and needed to regroup. “That’s probably my boss. I should go.”
“I’ve made you way too late,” she said. “Will you get in trouble?”
“No, Jonas is cool.” Jonas might go nuclear on my sorry ass, but she didn’t need to know that. Sunday night was his designated family night. He hated anything getting in the way of that. His wife, too, whose public freak-outs concerning family neglect could get loud and embarrassing.
Peyton slid off my lap and over to the passenger side, slipping one arm from the coat. “I meant to give this to you earlier.”
I pushed the thick material back over her shoulder. “Wear it. I like it better on you.”
She paused and pushed her arm back through the sleeve, wrapping the coat tightly around her. She sat a long moment, looking as sexually frustrated as I felt, which somehow made me feel better. Turning to me, she asked, “I’ll see you tomorrow? Seventh period?”
“You’ll see me before seventh period,” I said. She smiled softly, still looking disappointed as she opened the door and got into her own vehicle. I waited until she drove out of the parking lot before leaving for work, hoping Jonas was in a forgiving mood.