“Yeah.” He blinks out the window, frowning. “Well, I guess we’ve answered that question.”
“What question?”
“Whether it was only like that between us because you didn’t know who I am.”
I’m not sure why this raises a contrary, defensive flag inside me. “That isn’t fair.”
His surprised gaze flashes to me. “How is that unfair?”
“You have to let me be hurt that I was being real and you weren’t.”
“Is that really what you think? That I wasn’t being real?”
And this, right here, is where he has me. He knows it, too.
We stare at each other, breathing fast and deep, worked up.
“If I acknowledge that I hurt you,” he says quietly, and when he fights a coy smile, it digs a dimple into his cheek, “then what?”
I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling back. “Then… I don’t know.”
“Come here,” he says in a gentle purr.
Staying put requires pretending my feet are blocks of concrete. “I have to edit my article.”
He stares at me, jaw tensing, and then nods once. “Right. You’re on deadline.”
And… that’s it? He would just let me leave? I feel like a punctured balloon. My thoughts are a swirling storm of relief and lust and irritation and ambition and infatuation. Alec Kim has the wildest chemical effect on my blood.
I mean… technically, the article is written.
All it needs is editing.
And by calling me here, he’s given me twelve additional hours.
Excuses line up in my mind, and Alec watches me with increasing amusement the longer I do not turn and walk toward the door. Finally, I say, “You come here.”
With a quiet laugh, he walks over to me, standing so close I feel the heat of him all along my front. “And then what?”
Can he hear my heart? I swear it’s the loudest thing in this room. “I still don’t know.”
Alec reaches down, threading his fingers with mine. Holding my hand. “This?”
“Maybe.” I am unable to stifle this grin, and he sends his other arm around my waist, pulling me against him. He tucks me into his chest and squeezes.
A hug.
“And this?” he asks.
Emotion swells thick in my throat at the familiar feel of his body and the duality of the sweet seduction of his embrace. Every memory from our night together is sealed back into place. I wrap my free arm around his neck, pulling his head down until he rests his forehead against mine, and like this, with eyes closed, we breathe in jagged, charged tandem for a handful of seconds.
I open my eyes to find him looking at me. Fondness blooms in my expression before I can tuck it away.
Alec smiles, pulling back. “How mad can you be if you’re looking at me like that?”
“Very mad.”
He swallows a laugh. “Your ‘very mad’ is not very intimidating.” He kisses his fingertip and gently rubs it over my heart.
“I felt stupid,” I admit, finally. “I told you about Spence. About where I work.”
“It wasn’t fair.” He presses his lips to my brow. “I’m sorry. I would have shared more but—it was selfish, I know. It was a perfect night. I worried it would vanish.”
“What are we even doing?” I ask. “We barely know each other anymore.”
“That’s not true. We may have changed a lot in the past fourteen years but just as with renovations…”
I grin up at him as we both register that he’s committed to the terrible metaphor. “We’ll always be part of each other’s foundations?” I guess.
He nods, laughing in self-deprecation. “That was bloody awful.”
“No, it was surprisingly cute.”
I take a minute to really look at him. It seems like his face should jolt me into a different kind of awareness, that his presence should now send me into shaking, nervous territory. He’s my oldest crush and now he’s an actual celebrity. But the electricity along my spine isn’t nerves or insecurity; it’s raw hunger.
Alec bends, hovering with his lips near mine, staring at my mouth. “You smell so good.”
“Do I?”
He hums. “I didn’t want to shower you off that morning. Wanted to feel you all over me a bit longer.” He tilts his head, breathing in deeply beneath my jaw. “It’s sugar and sex.”
His words light a fire under my skin, and I send my hand up under his shirt, feeling this body that’s immediately familiar, but with the new visuals in my head—the picture of him from Jeju Island with his shirt blown up off his beltline, exposing his tight abdomen; the way he’s so tall he has to bend to kiss me and how every fan site has written an entire feature about his perfect proportions—now I’m jolted into a new hyperaware territory.