A happy sound leaves him, but he holds me, rubbing slow, comforting lines up and down my skin. It feels so incredibly good. His heart beats fast like a bird’s, an insistent flutter that seems right for someone who can turn into the wind.
“Louanna, my sweet,” he says after long minutes of simple touch. “Let me shoulder some of this burden. Please.” His voice is soft, soothing. “Give me some of yer stress, sweet girl. Let me handle some things so you dinnae have to.”
“That’s a nice offer,” I muse, allowing myself to take comfort in him for just a minute. “But maybe handling burdens is something we should reserve for some time after the first weird date.”
A little sigh leaves him. Reaching down, he tips my chin up so I’m forced to look into wide, beautiful blue eyes.
“There’s nothing about dating you that I want to put off, Louanna. I want you tae be fully you when yer around me. I need the good, bad and ugly, as the triplets say.”
When I say nothing, he grips my chin a little harder. “I’m serious, my sweet.”
I fall back on humor because it’s an easy way to defuse real feelings. “What about Connall? Maybe he’s got baggage too. You might be in for a lot of big feelings, Dirk.”
He smiles. “I intend to pursue the both of yeh. Nothing that happened yesterday will halt that pursuit. I told yeh he’d come around, and he will. There is no amount of baggage either of yeh could hold that would stop me.”
If he keeps repeating that, I’m in real danger of believing it.
Looking up, I give him a wry smile and pull away slightly, although his hand on my back flattens, not allowing me to move far. He wears the same serious expression he did when he came in.
“Is your pursuit going to involve anything other than spying on him?”
“Yes.”
“Like what?”
“Conversations. Invitations. Touching. Romantic dinners.”
Heat flares through me. Gods, the idea of Connall and Dirk touching is exhilarating. The truth is, Dirk is so intense, he scares me a little bit. I’ve imagined what he’d be like in bed, and I bet he’d be wild. But add Connall to the mix? He’s got to be three hundred pounds of solid muscle. Quiet strength and dominance exude from him.
Dirk sucks in a deep, ragged breath. “Ah, Louanna. You’ve imagined it, then, haven’t yeh? The way your scent blossoms when yer hot under the collar does things to me, my sweet.”
A hot blush pinkens my cheeks. I’ve always held Dirk at, well, not quite arm’s length. But away from me a little. I’ve never let him fully in. And despite my reticence, he’s never stopped being there. He’s as constant as the earth beneath my feet.
“Are you sure you’re not an earth elemental?” I ask with a lilt in my voice.
His nostrils flare. “Why, Louanna? You achin’ tae feel my rocks, pretty girl?”
I slap his chest. “Can you sexualizeanything?”
He snorts. “O’ course. You cannae do it?”
When I can’t hold back a smirk, his own wide-mouthed smile grows insufferably huge. For long, heated moments, he stares at me like I’m the center of the universe, dark gaze roving over my face and neck before landing on my eyes again. It’s the gaze of a lover, someone who knows all of your secrets and wants to help you make new ones.
For the first time ever, maybe, I stare back, not telling him to stop, not slapping his chest or playfully pushing him away. I just let him. And it feels nice.
Better than nice.
Malik’s old cuckoo clock chimes from the depths of the store.
“Nearly closing time, my sweet.” Dirk is still smirking at me.
I groan. “I’m not done with everything. I was still putting inventory away in the stockroom when you got here.”
Dirk waves the comment away. “No matter, Louanna. Put me to work. The sooner I can get yeh out of here, the sooner I can take yeh on that date I mentioned yesterday.”
I blink my eyes. Date?
Dirk’s smirk grows bigger, eyes wrinkling at the edges as he plants both hands on his hips. “Louanna, you don’t mean tae tell me yeh forgot our date, do yeh?”
