6. The Next Best Thing
6
THE NEXT BEST THING
Miles
I run a hand down her arm, letting my fingers glide across her skin before setting my palm on top of hers—the hand not holding the remote. Her breath hitches—it’s the most gorgeous sound I’ve ever heard.
I slow my movements, running my left hand over hers, curling our fingers together, drawing out the moment. As she clasps my hand in return, she sighs softly, leaning her head back. Her thick, silky hair brushes against my nose. I don’t even bother pretending not to inhale it. I make a show of it, running my nose along the soft, chestnut waves.
“You smell like vanilla and brown sugar,” I murmur as I drift closer to her earlobe so I can kiss her there.
She tenses though, and I’m not sure what to make of that reaction. Maybe I’ve gone too far. Too fast. But then she turns her head back to glance at me, pulling her body away slightly. Like there’s a play I didn’t expect on the ice, I try to read her body language. But it’s hard because there’s a quirk in her lips now, like she’s amused. “And I bet you like that—vanilla and brown sugar.”
Ah, that’s better. Her sass. I fucking love her confidence. I tighten my fingers around hers. “What gave it away?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to say,” she teases, still twisting to look at me, even as she wriggles her ass against my hard-on. And I do know how to read that .
“Some things are more obvious than others.”
“This one seems fairly obvious,” she replies, her voice a little dreamy, a little lost in the moment. But then she takes a deep breath, like she’s snapping herself out of it.
Hmm.
Maybe I’ve been missing her cues all along? “Do you want me to stop?”
She’s quiet for a beat before she says, “No.”
I pause in case she says more, but she doesn’t. I take her word at face value as I let go of her hands and slide mine up her arms, tracing the flowers inked into her skin. I watch the fine hairs rise under my touch while listening to her quiet gasps and the soft murmur of her breath. She melts into me, and I feel her relax, little by little. I want to kiss her right now. But I hold myself back, resisting the urge. I want to make her wait for it, but I also want to be dead sure she wants this .
I lift a hand to sweep her hair to the side so I can kiss the back of her neck, but the second my fingers make contact, she jerks away. “I need to…check the settings,” she says.
Oh. Okay. I’m a little lost. “Sure. Go ahead,” I say since I’m not really sure what she wants anymore.
She nibbles on the corner of her lips, then, like it costs her something, she asks, “Can I take more pictures? I have a pose in mind.”
Best to go with the flow. I’ll chalk the earlier awkwardness up to, well, the fact that we’re half-dressed in a photo studio and we hardly know each other. Intimacy is going to be awkward sometimes. It’s best to talk it out though, and at least she’s trying. “Take as many as you want. You’re the star of the show.”
She pops up to adjust the camera. Her fingers move quickly over the settings, and after a few seconds, she comes back to me. This time though, she doesn’t sink onto my lap, with her back to my chest again. Instead, she straddles my thighs, so she’s facing me.
Well, then. That’s clear.
“This is a better pose,” she says, like she needs to explain herself, when I’m so good with it.
“Whatever you want,” I reply.
One hand is still curled around the remote trigger. With the other, she drags her shiny black nail down her chest, toward the swell of her breasts. “Kiss me here. For the camera.”
That’s all the invitation I need. I dip my head, pressing a soft kiss to her skin, instantly lost in the taste of her. Her warmth. The beat of her pulse beneath my lips. The scent of brown sugar and vanilla lingering in her hair while the camera captures the way I touch her.
I kiss my way up her chest, to her throat, flicking my tongue lightly against the hollow there. My brain short-circuits. Everything I’ve been holding back starts to crumble. I want to grab her face and kiss her deeply, but when I reach up to cup her cheeks and haul her close, her eyes widen—just for a second.
Fear flickers across them .
Something’s wrong. “You okay?” I ask, pulling away.
“Yes, I’m great. It’s fine. It’s just—” She cuts herself off, not finishing her sentence.
“Do I make you uncomfortable?” I ask again, my brow furrowing.
She shakes her head adamantly. “No. I swear. I just…” She shifts a few inches back, wincing. “I don’t usually kiss this fast.”
Oh, fuck. I don’t want her to think I’m only trying to get her naked, even though I’d very much like that. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed.”
“You didn’t,” she whispers. Then she sighs heavily, closing her eyes, like something pains her. She lets go of the grip on the remote.
I feel like a total piece of shit. Except, she’s not moving off me. She’s still straddling me. So I wait for her to go next. When she opens her eyes a few seconds later, she sets a hand on my chest, grabbing the fabric of my shirt, twisting it in her fingers. She parts her lips, breathes out heavily again, clearly at war with herself.
I have no clue what’s going on, but I do not want to make her feel uncomfortable.
“Should I leave?” I ask, trying to fix the mess I’ve made. “I should leave.”
“Don’t.”
So I don’t.
Another big breath, then she straightens her shoulders, gripping my shirt tighter. “I don’t like to talk about this so soon,” she says with a frustrated groan I didn’t expect, then she finishes in a strong voice with, “I wear hearing aids. And I don’t want you to touch my ears when you kiss me.”
I blink. I didn’t see that coming. Only because…I had no idea. Her hair is so long, and it covers her ears, and I haven’t gotten any sense that she hasn’t heard me when I’ve spoken.
But as I roll the tape on the last few minutes, all her reactions make perfect sense—the way she tensed when I got too close to her hair, the way she moved away when I ventured near her earlobe. So many questions ping through my mind, but when I look at her eyes again, there’s a barrier in those blues.
Her guard is all the way up.
Like she thinks…
Ah fuck.
She thinks I’m going to leave.
She thinks this turns me off.
She thinks I’m like some asshole who must have done that to her—left when he learned. And I immediately want to find him and kill him.
I do the next best thing. I lift my hand to run my knuckles down her cheek. “Thank you for telling me. And I have one opinion on that right now and it’s this—I’d really like to take you on a date.”
She relaxes, slowly but surely, her lips curving into a soft smile, like that’s what she needed more than a kiss. “You do?” She sounds enchanted. Maybe amazed.
I don’t waste a single second. “I really do.” I glance at the clock on the wall. “What are you doing right now?”
Her smile deepens. My chest tightens with excitement as she says, “Going on a date with you.”
I slide my hand down her chest once more, my fingers tracing her soft skin, sensing her comfort with each touch returning. “That’s right, you are.”
We untangle from each other, moving off the chair. “I just have one question,” I say since her honesty was seriously brave. I’m not about to tell her this out loud—it would sound patronizing—but I’m even more drawn to her for it.
“Sure, what is it?” she asks, sounding hesitant as she pulls her top back on.
“Is there anything you need from me? So you can hear me better?” I ask, buttoning up my shirt.
Her smile is warm, maybe even a little grateful, and it does something funny to my chest. “With them in, I can hear you about eighty-one percent of the time,” she says with a smirk.
I tilt my head, curious. “That’s specific.”
“So are the hearing tests these days.” Her tone turns more serious as she adds, “It’s like I tell my friends: I just prefer to see your face when we talk—it helps a lot to fill in any gaps. So maybe don’t wear a mask?” Her delivery is deadpan.
“And to think I was going to grab my zombie mask.”
She raises her hand like a stop sign. “Wait, are you into zombies?” Her look tells me she’d show me the door if I said yes.
“No. Are you?”
“The guy who was supposed to do the shoot today canceled because of a zombie video game launch he just had to be at. Apparently, it’s a thing.”
“Well, then I’ll change my answer. I love zombie games because they gave me this chance for our first date.” Emphasis on first. I want Leighton to know I’d like to see her again. I need this to be a great date for her. Something fun, since she could probably use that after her shoot fell through twice , and after opening up the way she did. “How do you feel about geocaching? ”
She tilts her head, her brow furrowed. “Never been. Is it fun?”
“Would I take you on a bad date?”
“I don’t know. Would you?” she teases.
“Try me.”
“We’ve already established I’m saying yes. Now, you’ll really have to impress me with this treasure hunt.”
“Challenge accepted.” I grab my socks and boots, tug them on, and we head out of the studio onto the streets of Hayes Valley. I open my geocache app, scrolling through nearby options. “There are some cool ones around here, but some of the best are in the Presidio. How do you feel about heading there?”
“I feel pretty good about it, Miles,” she says, and I notice her mood seems lighter now, more upbeat. That’s everything I could want. This date has barely started, and already, I don’t want it to end.
The Presidio is a national park with great views of the Pacific Ocean and the Golden Gate Bridge. It boasts some terrific nature trails, towering trees and a handful of redwood groves. But it’s also home to some seriously fun caches.
Like the sixth one we’ve been hunting this afternoon. “It’s over there,” she says, pointing toward a green park bench with absolute certainty.
I gape at her. “Seriously? You already found it? And you said you’d never been geocaching.”
She gives me a saucy look. “Yes, I kept my secret geocaching skills hidden from you, Miles.”
“You totally did,” I reply as we trek along Tennessee Hollow Trail. She found the first cache in under five minutes—a trolley car keychain tucked above a stone in a low wall. Now, she’s hunting under a bench and pulls out a small toy car from a baggie.
“Look! I’ve always wanted a red sports car,” she quips, holding it up, victorious and deservedly so.
“You’re cramping my style,” I say, shaking my head in mock defeat.
She bumps her hip into mine. “Can’t help it if I’m better at this than you.”
I loop an arm around her waist and pull her close. She tilts her chin up, her lips inches from mine, waiting for a kiss.
But I stop short. “Not yet,” I say, savoring the moment.
“Why not?” she asks, her lips teasingly close, a playful challenge in her voice.
“I want to make you wait for it,” I say, enjoying the game.
She pouts. “You’re a tease.”
“I’m only a tease if I don’t follow through…later,” I add, brushing a finger along her jawline.
She sighs softly, her eyes flickering with desire. It takes all my willpower not to lean in. But discipline’s my middle name. I pull away, nodding toward the trail. “Next cache?”
“If you can handle more of my geocaching excellence,” she says.
“And I thought we were a team.”
“I guess I’m competitive,” she says with no remorse. But she has no idea how competitive I can be.
“I can handle it.”
Her eyes sparkle with the thrill of the challenge as we continue down a narrow path.
We’ve been out for a couple hours, and somehow, we haven’t talked about my job. Maybe because there’s so much else to talk about—the trails, the park, where we should look. “So, you’re doing Birdie’s photos?” I ask, breaking the comfortable silence.
“I am. She wants them at the coffee shop, high-kicking on the counter. I think I love her,” Leighton says, laughing as we walk along a small creek.
“That’s Birdie’s style for sure.”
“I can’t wait. It’s exciting to shoot different types of photos.”
“You do more than boudoir?” I ask.
She nods. “Well, I’ve only just started out. I graduated from college last year,” she says. “But I apprenticed while I studied, and over the past year, but I just returned to San Francisco a few months ago. I’ve done a few boudoir shoots and want to do more, but I do some sports, lifestyle, fashion, headshots—whatever feels right. And honestly, whatever pays the bills.”
It hits me—she’s a whole decade younger than my thirty-three. I sort of guessed that, but didn’t know it till now.
There’s no point in pretending we’re the same age. “I graduated more than a decade ago. A decade and a year.”
She laughs. “That’s specific.”
But that’s all she says, so I suppose she’d already figured out there are some years between us. “And you do sports photography too?” I ask, returning to that. Sure, Birdie said not to discuss my job, and that’s fine by me. But I don’t want to leave out details that might matter to her.
“I do,” she says. “I did that in college for the school paper—online of course—which is where I really learned to shoot.” Then she pauses, giving me a serious look. “But we don’t have to talk about work, Miles. ”
And that’s clear—she doesn’t want to. “Fair enough,” I say, and I guess Birdie really does know best, so I’ll keep following her advice. And I should give credit where it’s due. “Confession time,” I say, glancing at Leighton who’s walking next to me.
“Oh, is it now?” she asks, clearly intrigued.
“Birdie said I should take you geocaching. I’m pretty sure she engineered this whole date. Wouldn’t surprise me if she’d called that model and asked him to cancel.”
Leighton smiles knowingly. “She asked me if I was single.”
I crack up. “She’s about as subtle as an anvil. And I’m going to seriously owe her.”
Her eyes lock with mine, glimmering with mischief. “You are.”
There’s that confidence that hooked me the other day—that flirty, bold side of Leighton. It pairs beautifully with her more vulnerable side. I reach for her hand, tug on it, and pull her close to me again, stopping her on the trail as trees canopy us, and birds flicker from branch to branch. She lifts her chin, her gaze challenging. I slide a finger along her bottom lip, and she bites the pad of it, just enough to send a charge through me.
“Soon, soon,” I whisper. “I swear I’ll kiss you soon.”
“So you say,” she says.
I graze my thumb along her jawline. “I will. I’m the guy who was going to keep coming back to the shop just to run into you.”
“So you’re about as subtle as an anvil too.”
Damn, she can keep me on my toes. “I like to think of it as determined. I had a plan to ask you out.”
“What was your plan?”
“I didn’t ask you that first day because you got a call. ”
“My dad. I was having lunch with him that day.”
I smile. It’s nice that she’s close to her family. “I figured I’d keep showing up till I saw you again. Hell, I was going to show up the day of Birdie’s photo shoot if I had to.”
“Fine, fine. You’re determined.”
I take that as the compliment that it is. Determination has brought me to where I am in life. Grit, too, has powered me through a nearly career-ending ACL tear when I was with Vancouver, and given me a second chance with a new team after Vancouver said see you later . So, yeah, determination is my strong suit. “I’m not afraid to go after what I want,” I tell her, then nod to the path. “Now, we’d better get moving because someone very much wants to be kissed.”
She narrows her eyes at me as we resume our pace. “Tease.”
“And you like it.”
“You’re the worst,” she says.
“You like that too.”
“You’re not at all subtle.”
“Also, you like that,” I say.
She rolls her eyes. “Oh my god, do you have to win every conversation?”
I smile smugly. “Says the woman who turned geocaching as a team into a competition.”
“Your fault. You took me geocaching.”
“For someone who wants to be kissed so badly, you’re taking an awfully long time finding the next cache.”
“You and your opinions.”
“You like them too. Almost as much as I like yours.”
“Fine, you win.”
We continue on the path, wandering across a footbridge, then walking along the small stream it arches over. Leighton spots our quarry, a small, metal lockbox hidden next to a rock near the water. “There’s a lock on it,” she says, crouching down.
I join her. “Smart. They don’t want just anyone picking it up,” I say, checking the app for the code. I punch in the combination, and the padlock clicks open.
Leighton’s breath hitches as she pulls out a silver chain with a vintage heart locket, holding it up so the heart’s swinging back and forth. “It’s beautiful,” she says softly, wonder in her voice. “Can I open it?”
“Go for it.”
She flicks the locket open, and a folded piece of paper falls out. I catch it before it hits the ground.
“Fast reflexes,” she says, impressed.
“Yup.” I don’t mention they’ve been honed over a lifetime of sports, including a decade in the pros. I unfold the note and read it out loud. “A treasure for a treasure.”
Her blue eyes widen. “They want us to take it?”
“Looks like it,” I say, looking for a proper trade. I run my thumb along the faded vegan leather bracelet I wear on my right wrist. “We should leave something in its place. All I have is this. My brother gave it to me when I moved here.”
And on the inside is an inscription— You’ve got this . I needed that reminder when I moved to San Francisco. Tyler knows better than anyone how tough the sport can be—he plays hockey, too, in Los Angeles. But I keep those details to myself.
“Too special to leave behind?” she asks gently.
“Kind of,” I admit. “But we can come back and trade again for it.”
She touches my wrist lightly. “That sounds like it means a lot to you, and it might not be here then.” She lifts her hand to her right ear, where one of the long teardrop earrings hangs, but now I can see she wears more earrings. Little silver studs of stars and a skull climb up her ear. She must think the better of leaving those, though, since she lifts her wrist and shows me a slim silver bracelet instead. “This is from a flea market I went to with friends. I could leave this.”
“You don’t have to,” I say softly, meeting her eyes, not wanting her to leave anything behind.
She smiles, running her fingers over the locket in her hand. “It’s part of the game. You give something up but get something in return. And I want to.”
“If you insist,” I say.
“I do.”
I kneel before her, taking the locket in my hand, and dusting it off with the cuff of my shirt. “Let me put it on you.”
She lifts her hair, her expression briefly nervous, as though she’s expecting me to notice her hearing aids. But I didn’t when she touched her earring, and now I’m focused on her face, like I suspect she prefers. My fingers graze her skin as I loop the chain around her neck then fasten the clasp. Being this close, the urge to kiss her is almost overwhelming, but I hold back, letting the anticipation build even more as I touch her once again. The scent of her hair drifts past my nose, mingling with the warm, September air, and the late summer scent of the forest.
“Beautiful,” I whisper, but my gaze isn’t on the locket or the trees.
She doesn’t look away from me as she touches the necklace at her throat. “I’ll return it soon.”
I see an opening, like a breakaway on the ice, and I go for it. “Sounds like we need a second date to give it back then,” I say.
Her eyes sparkle. “We do.”
Then she slips off her bracelet, leaving it in the box with the note it came with—a promise, and a plan for us to see each other again. When she closes the lockbox, she turns back to me. Her eyes have darkened. “You’ve made me wait long enough. Are you going to kiss me now?”
I reach for her hair, careful to touch her just past her temples, letting my fingers slide slowly through her soft strands. “Yes, but I’m going to need something from you.”
“What is it?” She sounds breathless.
“I want you to take a picture of it, like I can’t look away from you. Like I have to have you. Like you’re all I’ve been thinking about all fucking day.” I pause as her cheeks flush with color. “Because you are.”
She swallows, then grabs my face, shakes her head, and says, “Now.”
Fucking love her desire. But I think I want to edge her just a little more. I like her need far too much. “I left my watch at your studio,” I point out, covering her hands with mine, holding her tight.
Her lips part in surprise, maybe delight. “You did that on purpose.”
I nod in admission. “I did.”