All the Lies We Tell (Quarry Road #1)(44)

“You’ll be leaving again soon, won’t you?”

Run away.

Run toward.

Make a decision; you can’t just stand still.

“Actually, no,” Niko said. “It looks like I’m going to be hanging out here for at least the next few weeks.”

“Oh. Really? That’s a surprise.” She gave him a steady, thoughtful look, her eyes a little narrowed. “I would have thought you’d be out of here as soon as you possibly could. How come you’re staying?”

Because he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the taste of her and the feel of her and the sound of her saying his name, and now faced with the reality of her, there was no way he could go back to the kibbutz. All he had to do was tell the council that he was going to cash out his contract and move back home, because the thought of being away from her again was unbearable. All he had to do was run toward and not away.

The heat he’d been trying to ignore all evening flared between them. Neither of them moved, but they didn’t have to. He could feel the tension from all the way across the room. He swept his tongue over his bottom lip, remembering the flavor of her. Wishing he could forget, but knowing he wasn’t going to. Not tonight, anyway. Maybe not ever.

“Why are you staying, Nikolai?” She gave him that head tilt, that up-and-down look that drove him crazy.

Niko took a step closer, getting off on the way she drew in a breath. At the darkness growing in her eyes as the pupils dilated. “Unfinished business.”

“Funny thing, that unfinished business,” she murmured. Her lips parted. She shifted, her fingers gripping the countertop as she settled her feet wider apart.

By the time he got to her, they were both reaching for the other. He couldn’t hold back the groan when he kissed her. Laughing, she covered his mouth with her hand.

“Shhh.” She did let him pull her closer, his hands cupping her ass cheeks. “You don’t want anyone to hear.”

“Definitely not.” He nuzzled at her neck, nipping. It was his turn, then, to cover her mouth with his fingers to stifle a noise, but only for a few seconds because he had to get his mouth on hers again. “I’m starving.”

Alicia let her head fall back so he could mouth her throat again. “We just ate.”

“Not for dinner. For you.”

She looked at him. “Careful, Nikolai. You’re going to make me think you like me a little.”

He palmed her ass again, kneading. Then slipped his hand between her legs to press her there. “I think we’ve already established that I like you more than just a little.”

She rocked against him, her fingers curling in the front of his shirt. Her back arched as she offered him her neck again. Whatever she meant to say eased into a mumbled moan.

“I want you,” Niko said. “I want you so f*cking much . . .”

The fall of footsteps above them pushed them apart. Alicia turned to the sink to fake rinsing a dish. Niko put the lid on a plasticware container of leftovers. Nobody came downstairs, and after a minute or so, both of them started laughing.

“It’s worse than in high school, waiting to get caught making out on the couch,” Alicia said.

“I never worried about getting caught. I never had a girlfriend.”

She made a face. “Not one you brought over here, anyway. Don’t tell me you and Deb Smith never got hot and heavy in her rumpus room.”

“What about you and Mike Taylor?” Niko took her by the hips and pulled them together again, one ear cocked for sounds from upstairs.

“What about him?” Alicia gave him a coy smile. “What makes you think he and I were an item?”

“Because he used to brag about it in gym class.” Niko frowned at the memory. “Used to piss me off.”

Her jaw dropped. “Ew, gross, no! He did? Oh, yuck. What did he say?”

“Just that he was taking you out.” Niko’s lip curled.

Alicia swatted at him. “And what . . . you were jealous?”

“Maybe.” He gave her a steady look, watching the way her smile softened. “I did think he should have kept his mouth shut about you. I remember that.”

“We never did more than kiss,” she told him. “And only then a couple of times. If I’d known you cared—”

“What? What would you have done?” he asked when she broke off.

Alicia shrugged and linked her fingers behind his neck. “I don’t know, to be honest. It wasn’t like I thought you and I would date or something. Back then. We just had a thing.”

“A thing. Like we have a thing now?”

Her smile didn’t quite all the way reach to her eyes. “Yeah.”

“This thing,” he said in a low voice. “This unfinished business.”

“What happens, do you think, when it’s finished?”

Niko had a feeling it would never be finished between them. It had been more than twenty years in the making. What would he do without this desire that, once sated, would surely disappear? What would he do without the thoughts of her that he turned to when he needed to remember he was capable of feeling? Where would he run to then?

“I think that’s a much longer conversation,” he said finally.

She bit her lower lip for a second. “Why can’t we have it, then?”