“Uh-huh. Don’t stop.” I pull him back into me.
“Jane.” His eyes search mine. “I have to tell you something, and I really hope you won’t hate me.”
“Alex. I know.” I step into him.
“Jane, I—”
“Yes. Same. I get it. I like you too. Please kiss me.”
Every night, we kiss. And kiss and kiss. And it’s never enough. I’m constantly starved for more. More of him. More of his mouth on mine, his hands skimming my waist, being able to touch him anywhere. Well. Almost anywhere.
I press myself against him, and he slows us down to gentle pecks and touches and then breaks us apart to ask me to dinner.
And after three weeks, or more, I don’t know, time is starting to slip away, the anticipation and discovery and inferno of desire are turning into . . . desperation.
Every night I get hot and bothered and every night, Alex wants to take me to dinner. Tomorrow. Dinner. Tomorrow.
Tomorrow doesn’t exist!
I’m so horny, I can’t sleep. Eating becomes an erotic event. My eyelashes are turned on.
I wake up wanting him. All day needing him. Every night with him and still, we kiss.
I want him more than I thought was physically possible, and I know he isn’t immune, I’ve felt the proof of his arousal up close and personal. But for him, it’s always the first kiss. And when I even try to push the boundaries, I get shut down. Understandably. We haven’t even dated and Alex is . . . Alex. He wants to wait because he cares. I can’t fault him for that.
Self-induced orgasms help at first, but it’s not the same.
Alex is a gentleman in the truest sense of the word, and it’s one of the things that makes him so attractive. I don’t want him to change, but at the same time . . .
He wants to take me to dinner. He wants to woo me. He thinks we have the potential for something special and we can’t ruin it.
But I think I might incinerate from the inside out if we don’t push it to the next level.
“So. Dinner? Tomorrow.”
I grit my teeth together.
Tomorrow. Everything is always tomorrow. I hate tomorrow!
I take a deep, calming breath. Love. I need to get through this with love. I need to take control of myself. Not everything is about sex. I need to remember why I liked Alex in the first place, and it’s not just because of his clever tongue and strong hands and leanly muscled physique.
Wait a minute. “Why don’t we go now?” My voice is more clipped and forceful than I intended it to be.
His brows lift. “You want to go to dinner now?”
“Sure, why not? A lot of places are open this late.” Plenty of people eat dinner late at night. People who work late, drunks, swing-shift workers, and lusty women stuck in time loops. There are no rules.
He shrugs. “I’m not hungry.”
“You don’t have to eat. Or we could get dessert. Or you could watch me eat.” Because that’s not weird.
He rubs my arms. “Jane, are you all right?”
“I need sustenance. Hunger is making me loopy.” Ha. Loopy. Interesting word choice. And it fits. If I was one of the seven dwarfs, that would be my name. I shove away the ridiculous thought. Can constant arousal make you senseless?
“Well, then. Let’s go eat.”
Chapter Eleven
I should be nervous. I mean, I am nervous, but I should be more nervous.
I’m on a date with Alex. A date with Alex. Old Jane would have been freaking out, frozen, stuttering, possibly sweating all over the place, gassy, you know, the attractive stuff.
Now I’m new Jane. New Jane has made out with Alex more times than she can count on her fingers and toes. New Jane is more concerned with getting into Alex’s pants than any conversational faux pas.
Is living in this time loop turning me into a sex fiend? Maybe I should slow it down, take it easy. I’m going to lose my mind from the lust. I need to focus on talking to Alex. Just talking. To learn more about him.
Things other than what he tastes like. The way his firm, lean, muscular form fits so perfectly with mine. The way he smells, especially the warm place where his shoulder meets his neck and smells like soap and man and sex.
My entire body flushes with heat.
Stop it, Jane.
“Golden Boy Pizza is around the corner. Have you been?” He motions down the street with a head tilt.
“No. Pizza sounds great.” Anything to distract me from the never-ending thrum of desire burning under my skin.
Our steps synchronize as we head down the hill, passing restaurants emptying out, nightclubs filling up, dark laundromats, and a smattering of convenience stores. The storefronts are topped with second-story apartments, all of their Victorian-style bay windows casting creamy light down onto the street.
We hook a left on Green Street, and there it is.
The Golden Pizza Boy building is bright red, the name of the restaurant scrawled around the top in antique lettering. A giant neon sign in the shape of a hand hangs from the roof, pointing inside.
The bar is on one side, and on the opposite side a long countertop runs the length of the wall with a number of stools set close together.
I order a slice of pizza at the bar, settling on clam and garlic. Maybe if I smell bad, I won’t jump Alex at every available opportunity. It’s protection from my own dark impulses.
Alex insists on paying even though he just gets a water, and I take my food over to sit on one of the available stools. He grabs the free seat next to it and faces me, one elbow resting on the narrow counter next to us. It’s cozy, squeezed in together with people all around us, our knees brushing with every movement.
Once I’m done stuffing in a few bites of delicious pizza, I enact the talk to Alex and
