Caged (Gold Hockey Book 11) by Elise Faber (romantic love story reading TXT) 📕

“Like you saw me.”

Chapter Seventeen

Dani

“Like you see me.”

The words had burst out of her in an unconscious blurt.

The truth.

But still, something that revealed too much.

Except . . . did it truly reveal too much? Ethan had been pretty fucking clear about how he felt about her, more now that she could recognize since she’d decided to yank the blinders off, grasp onto the attraction, the mutual like, and to take a leap of faith.

She’d spent so long being dissatisfied and lonely and sad.

Enough was finally enough.

She needed to buck up . . . or accept the loneliness.

And since that bitter isolation had grown to be a heavier burden, a tighter corset, squeezing the life from her more by the year, she’d bucked up.

Which meant she would have to accept that the whole bucking up process meant that she would be saying revealing things such as like you see me.

What she wasn’t prepared for was his reaction to it.

The way the car slid to an abrupt stop, the emotion in his eyes when he snagged her hand from his thigh and brought it to his chest, resting it over the spot where his heart pounded below—a rapid thrum-thrum that matched her own pulse.

“I see you, sweetheart,” he murmured. “And it’s the prettiest fucking thing I’ve ever had the privilege to lay eyes on.”

Thrum-thrum.

Thrum-thrum.

Thrum—

Knock-knock.

She jumped, the seat belt tightening around her shoulder, heart pounding for a completely different reason. Ethan’s lips formed a curse, and then he gently released her hand and turned to lower the window.

“Hey, Tim,” he said, shaking hands with the man who’d approached the car. “Thanks for doing this.”

“You sure you don’t want me to hang around and drive you back?”

Ethan shook his head. “I’ve got it covered.”

“All right then.” He released Ethan’s hand, tapped on the frame of the door, eyes coming to Dani, and his lips turning up. Even in the dim illumination from the moonlight, she could see he was a handsome man with thick, dark hair and a winning smile along with curiosity written all over his face. Though to his credit, he didn’t probe, just nodded at her in hello and said, “Park up ahead.” Another tap. “Everything’s ready for you.”

Then he stepped back, and Ethan drove forward, parking in the shadows next to something that appeared dark and forbidding—except if she squinted and turned her head to the side, she could see a few lights up at the top.

“Why do I feel like I should circle back to questioning you about your kidnapping tactics?” she asked as Ethan came around and opened her door. “Is this where you take women who’ve pried out your deepest darkest fantasies as punishment?”

He ran a finger over her cheek. “That one fantasy is hardly the deepest and darkest one I have about you.”

A little shiver of heat skated along her spine. “What other ones do you have?”

His hand found her waist, drew her close. “Why don’t you tell me one of yours?” More heat, embers coalescing into tendrils, those threads growing and twining together into a thick, heavy rope.

Her cheeks were hot.

Her pussy was wet.

But that was beside the point.

Well, maybe, maybe not, because one point—a really important one—was that she wanted him. Badly. The other important point was that even with the desire burning within her, a perpetually burning flame that threatened to incinerate her, she wasn’t sure if she could share any of her fantasies with this man.

They were too deeply entrenched, hidden behind walls she wasn’t sure she could allow him to breach . . .

This was still too fresh and difficult to accept.

And . . . maybe she was just too shy.

The backs of his knuckles brushed her cheeks, drawing her focus to his face, to the clean lines cut by his beard, the silver cast of his skin from the moonlight, the flash of white teeth when he smiled gently at her. “Rain check?”

“Wh-what?” she sputtered.

“Rain check on whatever fantasy or fantasies are bouncing around that brain of yours.”

His light tone had her smiling. “I’m neither agreeing nor disagreeing to this.”

Another brush of those knuckles. “I think I can tempt it out of you.”

“You could try.”

Laughter, warm and heady, filled the night air as he tugged her up an incline. “I think I might know a way to succeed.”

He was probably right. Hell, he was right. Ethan most definitely could find a way to tug the information out of her mind.

“Rain check,” she murmured.

A husky chuckle. “Deal, sweetheart.”

“Tell me about your parents?”

He nodded, shifting her closer, and Dani found herself resting her head on his chest. She was far too short for it to rest on his shoulder, but it felt nice to be nestled in the crook between arm and side, for the sound of his steady pulse to fill her eardrum, his voice rumbling through his body, vibrating against her as he answered her question.

“Mom’s so fucking smart that sometimes I feel like I only understand half of what she’s saying, especially when she’s talking about something with regards to her work,” he said, his voice filled with a warmth that she was coming to recognize.

Because she’d felt it directed at her.

“What does she do?”

“Russian literature and its intersection with early eighteenth-century American works.”

Dani paused. “I only understood half of that.”

He kissed the top of her head. “Join the club.”

“And your dad?”

“He’s also a professor. His specialty is higher mathematics. Think calculus but on steroids.” A laugh. “I understand even less of his work. It has more letters and symbols than numbers.”

“Sounds intense.”

“It is.” He smoothed back her hair. “And they ended up with a son who is an athlete. Two of the great brains of their time, and you’ve got me.”

There was an interesting note in his tone, but it wasn’t remarkable in a good way. Instead, it bristled along her skin, making her feel as though she’d been yanked backward through a hedge. It spoke to the insecurity inside her,