Never Stay Past Midnight. Mira Kelly Lyn

open again, making his gut clench. “You should just take the twenty—”

      Enough! He’d crossed to her before her next breath, preempting the completion of her thought by catching her around the shoulders and surprising a sharp “Eep!” from her.

      “Damn it, it’s not the money, Elise.” Looking down into those smoked-glass eyes, he searched for that same heat that had been there the first night. Found only confusion. How was he blowing this so badly? “It’s just … hell, it’s just you. You’re different. I don’t know what it is. But I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since last week. And seeing you yesterday—” His jaw clenched. “It was all I could do to walk out of here, but I did because I’m just as wrong for you as I was that first night. I’ve already got one foot out of Illinois, the other one ready to go. I don’t have anything real to offer you. And whether you want one right now or not, you’re still a real relationship kind of girl.”

      He should have left it at that. Said goodbye and gone. Only his hands were already on her, his thumbs brushing over the bare skin of her upper arms, and he knew he wasn’t going anywhere. “Aren’t you?”

      She stared up at him—pupils dark and wide, an erratic flutter at the hollow of her neck—leaning in with each shallow breath. Her gaze dropped to his mouth and the pink tip of her tongue wet her bottom lip.

      His heart kicked hard as that connection between them began to untangle. Smooth and pull taut.

      Her eyes slid closed. Her next pull of breath drawing him in with it—bringing him closer to those bare naked lips. Parted, ready for him to take—

      “I’m seeing someone.”

      CHAPTER FIVE

      LEVI froze a quarter inch from her mouth as something icy cold and distinctly unpleasant slid through his veins.

      Not possible. He’d heard wrong.

      “What?” He looked up, finding one anxious gray eye fixed on him, the other squinched shut.

      “I’m seeing someone. Sort of.” Elise let out a tremulous breath, slipping from his hold. “I shouldn’t do this. I can’t do this.”

      Because of another man.

      Because of the kind of person she was.

      He got it. Had understood from the start and known it had to be a fluke to find a woman like her outside a relationship. Figured it was only a matter of time— So what the hell was tightening his tendons and pulling his fingers into fists? Jealousy?

      It couldn’t be. He didn’t get jealous. Ever. And besides, it wasn’t as though he had any claim over her. They’d had one night. And an afternoon at the park. Less than a handful of hours combined. She wasn’t his … only somehow that handful of hours must have been enough to screw with his head, because even as he closed his eyes to blot that pretty face from his sight, the images of lithe-bodied, little Elise in his bed were brighter than ever.

      Hell, he could still feel her wrapped around him. See the smoke in her eyes thicken as he pushed her closer. Hear his name, all breathy and hot on her lips when she came.

      His name.

      What the hell was wrong with him?

      She wasn’t his.

      He didn’t want her.

      No, that wasn’t true. He wanted her. Bad.

      What he didn’t want was the complication of what being with her meant. He didn’t want her getting the wrong idea about what he had to offer.

      But more than any of that … he didn’t want some other guy doing the things to her that Levi couldn’t stop thinking about doing himself.

      “Seeing someone, since when?” Any effort to modulate his tone into something casual failed miserably as the words ground out through his clenched teeth.

      It had only been a week from that first night, so maybe whoever this chump about to get dumped was hadn’t had a chance to make much of a move.

      Damn.

      It didn’t matter. Right. Keep telling yourself that.

      Elise blinked up at him, those pearly white teeth sinking into her lush bottom lip as if she’d figured out just how very much it was mattering to him at that very second.