I appreciated the railing support because his grin gave me the vapors. “It makes it very easy to get what I want.” With the hunger in his eyes, I could almost hear his unspoken “And I want you.”
The thought made me light-headed. I had to remind myself that I shouldn’t be interested. “That must be nice.”
“It is, but—” Armand cut himself off with an indecisive noise as he tried to figure out how to express himself. “You helped me realize that perhaps I was mistaken in assuming I had everything I wanted.”
His words triggered confused panic within me.Oh god, is he talking about me? What the fuck am I going to do if he says I’m what he wants? No, stop being so ridiculous. Nobody as gorgeous as him desires me for real.
I pushed my fears to the side. “How did I do that?”
He kept his gaze trained on the vista in front of us. “Everything in my world is built on the superficial. The models and art—it’s all about the aesthetic surface. There’s nothing under all that. You reminded me about the depths I’ve ignored for too long.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“C'est très bon.” He studied me with his eyes that were bluer than the sky and water around us. “You view the world so much differently than anyone I know. It lets you see something in me that I forgot was there. You fascinate me.”
I had to be hearing things, right? “M-me?”
“Oui.” He reached out and cradled my cheek in the palm of his hand. His touch combined with his genuine sense of awe melted me in a way no woman had ever done. The smell of him mixing with the ocean air overwhelmed me. “You’re remarkable, Zio.”
If I had fallen off a cliff on our hike, I hoped nobody woke me up from my coma dream. “I’m not sure being weird and neurotic counts.”
“Everything about you is, especially your strange and quirky parts.” He smiled at me as his thumb brushed against my cheek. The gentleness of it caused me to tremble. No one had ever looked at or treated me that way. I soaked it up like a day of warm sunshine after a long winter. “It makes me want to discover all your secrets.”
If he kept looking at me while touching me, the first secret he would uncover was that I apparently wasn’t nearly as straight as I thought. As stunned as I was, my subconscious took over my mouth to say, “Only if I get to learn yours, too.”
His eyes lit up in delight at my response, sending a shudder through me. “That’s a most agreeable arrangement.”
When he moved his hand from my face, I mourned the loss of contact and lack of a kiss. The voice in my head crowed at me with glee.Do you think that’s a heterosexual reaction? Because it’s definitely not.
I fumed at myself.Maybe I wouldn’t be so confused if you weren’t making things way harder than they have to be, asshole.
Its knowing snicker infuriated me.The only thing that’s harder than it needs to be is your dick whenever you fantasize about him.
Armand interrupted my internal argument by wrapping his arm around my waist to pull me closer. “Let’s take a selfie.”
My body reacted by holding on to him in a one-armed embrace, but being in a picture with someone as beautiful as him was laughable. “That’s not a good idea. My pictures are awful whenever I have to pose.”
“Then don’t pose.” He cut off my response by tickling my side. It was so unexpected that I yelped and started cracking up because I was ticklish.
“Mercy! Mercy! Stop!” To his credit, even though I was laughing as I told him to quit, he stopped. It was such an absurd thing for a grown man to do that it broke me out of my weird mental headspace I had been stuck in. “Oh, I see how it is. You play dirty.”
His wicked smirk once again did things to my heart that made me question how much longer I was going to be allowed to call myself straight. It filled me with needs that I couldn’t afford to have when I was close to him. “Sometimes. There’s a method to my madness, though.”
He held up his phone and showed me the selfie he snapped of us when I was too busy laughing to notice. We both had broad grins as we looked at each other, looking like lifelong friends sharing a funny joke. I had never seen a picture of myself so free and happy. It was the first time I liked a photo that I was in, which was unexpected when I assumed I’d look homely standing beside someone so handsome.
When he swiped to the next one, my breathing hitched when I saw how I looked at him as he smirked at me. The naked desire in my expression stunned me, confronting me with irrefutable evidence that the lust he kept stirring up within me wasn’t just in my head. It showed all over my face that I wanted him.Badly.
Uh-oh.
* * *
Sittingon the outdoor deck of a restaurant with an amazing view of the beach, I was grateful for the shade of the umbrella on such a sunny day. It was impossible to be stressed-out when surrounded by such beauty. Not even the pain in the ass who lived to torture me in my mind could mess things up today. The delicious raspberry mango margarita I enjoyed while waiting for lunch helped me forget about my inner bastard, who was attempting to ruin my fun.
The wind ruffled Armand’s hair, making my heart tremble like a leaf in a storm. Nobody should bethatattractive. I stiffened when he shifted his gaze to meet mine. “It’s so beautiful,non?”
“Stunning,” I agreed, although I wasn’t just talking about our surroundings. Everything about Armand was too much for me to handle. Reminding myself to get a grip, I did my best to act normal. “Thank you for letting me come with you today.”
“I’m glad you did. It’s been far more fun than I would have had on my own.”
