She squinted up at him, her blood humming and her heart turning cartwheels in her chest. “Okay...but I gotta say, I’m kind of partial to the coat closet plan.”

He laughed and groaned and dragged her to his chest all at once. “Yeah. Me, too. But we’re going slow, remember?”

Via sighed and traced her hands up the lapel of his coat. When she got to his neck, she tucked her fingertips into the collar of his shirt, making him squirm. “At the risk of sounding repetitive here, why the hell are we going slow?”

He quirked a little indulgent smile at her. “Let me think of a way to explain it.” His eyes got distant as he thought, and his hands traced over her back. Via briefly let herself dream of a world where Sebastian Dorner absently touched her with freedom. It made her shiver. He brought those green-gray lasers back to her face. “You like dark chocolate?”

“Of course.”

He smiled at her almost affronted tone.

“Well, you know, a Hershey’s Kiss you can just unwrap and eat any old time, right? Circumstances don’t matter, it’s always—” he shrugged “—pretty good. But dark chocolate? A really nice slice of dark chocolate?” He brushed the waves of hair back from her neck and landed another one of those endless, searching kisses on her throat. “Well, that’s not the way you eat the dark chocolate you’ve been saving.”

He took a second and exhaled against her. “You ever tried to eat dark chocolate when it’s cold? It’s still delicious, better than any other chocolate by far. But if you let it warm up, in your mouth, it melts. And there are fifty—a hundred—times the flavors there. You can taste things you never knew existed.”

She was pretty sure she’d never breathe again, but whatever, it had been a good life. “So that’s what we’re gonna do?” she asked, sounding like she’d just run a mile.

“Yeah.” He kissed her neck again. “I’m gonna warm you up, Via. Until I can lick you off my fingers.”

“Fuh-uck.” She dropped her forehead to his chest and was utterly delighted when he burst out laughing. She lifted her face to his. “I guess I’m not gonna argue with that.”

He slid his hands to hers, their palms meeting for the first time. She gave a deep sigh. She tugged herself away from him and yanked his hand. He loomed over her, barely budging.

“Well, let’s go do the Electric Slide,” she said, making him laugh and follow after her.

They held hands until they made it down the stairs and then she turned to him.

“You don’t have to explain, baby,” he said, reading her mind and making her pulse skitter at the endearment. There was just really something about that word in his deep voice that made her feel like she was lifting off from Earth. He took her fingers and rubbed them over the stubble on his face. “You’re not quite ready for holding hands in front of everybody.”