The Magnolia Chronicles: Adventures in Modern Dating(42)

"No idea?" he repeated with a grin. "That's what you think?"

My eyes widened. This man. Mercy, this man. "Then you're doing this on purpose?"

He speared his tongue into the gelato, scooping up a creamy bit. It was filthy. We'd spent the past two hours together, wandering around the North End and talking about everything and nothing until we decided on dessert.

But now I understood. The jig was up.

To Rob, this was the audition. Not the time we spent talking about our families—my brothers, his sister—our work, our long paths from kids not knowing what to do with ourselves and doddling in and out of college and crummy jobs to mostly successful adults, our enjoyment of campy disaster movies like Volcano and Deep Impact and 2012, our hope the world wasn't driving itself off a cliff and our corresponding inability to watch as we careened toward the edge.

All of that? The warm-up. The gelato was the performance.

He reached for my gelato, freeing it from my hands and setting it on the bench beside him. Then he reached for my hand—the one with melted pistachio dotting the fleshy space between my thumb and forefinger—and brought it to his mouth. Licked. Sucked. Suuuuuucked.

"What—what are you doing?" I stammered. He swept his tongue over my skin, and the fabric formerly known as my panties was gone. Just gone with the wind. "We're on the street. This is a street, Rob. With people. There are people around and you're—you're—what are you even doing?"

"Just a preview, love," he murmured as his teeth scraped over my hand.

I hadn't considered going back to Rob's place when he invited me out for a walk tonight but that was the trouble with these boys. They kept turning simple, innocent moments into situations where my underwear, my inhibitions, and my intentions flew out the window.

Not that I'd taken off my underwear for either of the men in my life right now but I'd thought about it. Oh, yes. I'd thought. Thinking. Lots of thinking. That was exactly it.

But I could barely think of anything aside from the way he teased my hand. Whoa, that was weird. Right? Never had a man sucked on my hand.

"We're not in the right place for a preview, Rob," I said, a gasp slipping through my words.

He laughed, shaking his head as his teeth pressed against my skin again. Damn, that was good. I couldn't explain why but it was good. "That's hardly a problem," he replied. "Grab my phone. Back left pocket."

I didn't move. I couldn't move. Not with his lips on my hand and the promise of something more lingering in the air.

Rob pressed the remains of the waffle cone to my free hand after a minute. "Hold this," he ordered.

Once I had my fingers around his cone—fuck, this was such strange foreplay—he pulled his mobile from his pocket. I watched while he keyed in the code right in front of me. He didn't angle the phone away or make any attempt to conceal the numbers. Then he shot me a see what I did there? smile. He wanted me to know. This man, the one who melted down at the notion of anything more serious than working off some nasty breakup energy, was offering access to his digital life.

What was happening right now?

"Since we're not in the proper place for this, I'm gonna call my car service," he said. "All right?"

"You have a car service?" I asked, focusing on all the right things. "Not Uber or Lyft but a legit on-demand driver?"

Rob jerked a shoulder up but offered no other response. He wasn't flashy when it came to money. I liked that about him. More than that, I liked the maturity and sense of self backing it up. Just as he'd known who he was when he first approached me with his performance statistics, he made no attempt to argue his worth. He knew it and he let it speak for itself. That was enough.

"That's convenient," I murmured.

"It is," he replied. "I don't use it too often but when I have somewhere I'd like to be or someone I'd like to be with, they get me there in a hurry. I appreciate that."

Nodding, I asked, "If you call this car service, what happens then?"

"Whatever you want." He shifted, moving his lips from my hand to the crook of my neck. Yeah, like I needed this to get more intimate. "No expectations. We can go back to my place and avoid the news if you want. Watch a movie or just sit outside with some wine. I'm embarrassed to say there's a real shortage of living things on my terrace." When I frowned up at him in confusion, he continued. "I thought it was better to tell you about it now than conceal the fact."

"Thankfully, I know someone who can fix that," I said, laughing.

Did I want to go home with Rob? To this point, I hadn't been in a confined space with either of the men on my dance card. I wasn't counting the time spent at Ben's renovation house. That was mostly work and the occasional moment pressed against the wall while he kissed me, and it wasn't as though we had any soft surfaces around for it to go much further. Maybe I was splitting hairs or drawing wobbly lines but that was the beautiful part of making the rules. If I was content with my decisions, that was the only thing that mattered.

And I was content with Rob in confined spaces.

"Okay," I said. "Let's go to your place."





*



Rob lived in a new building in the South End, all concrete and exposed ductwork and huge, yawning windows. The furniture was reliably manly—a leather sectional, a big-ass television, no curtains. Somehow this wide-open space felt cozy. It probably had something to do with the vintage rug on the floor, the books packed into a set of shelves, the pile of throw pillows discarded under the coffee table.