“Are you ready for our lunch date?” he asked her.

She approached his side and couldn’t help but smile. The way he stood up to Andy and defended her mom’s honor…it was hot. All she wanted at the moment was for Bellamy to take her in his arms and ravage her.

“We just finished breakfast,” she replied, trying to hide the eagerness in her voice.

Bellamy placed a hand on Rose’s hip and the warmth of his touch made a burning handprint on her skin. His very touch sent her body to the top, all her senses on high alert. In a good way. In a way she never really experienced before. “Well, I was hoping to spend the day with you. If you’ll have me, of course.”

Rose swallowed hard, a dry choke of air that elicited no verbal response. All she could do was nod and let Bellamy’s hand remain where it was as she made her way to her room. There was just something about this guy…

Something she couldn’t get enough of.

Besides, her mind was tumultuous and the emotional weather in her mom’s apartment would only make it worse if she stayed. Bellamy, on the other hand, felt like the eye of the storm. He was almost supernaturally cool. Had been all along, whether dealing with the gunmen, the cops, with her own prickly behavior when she’d first met him or with Andy just now. The latter was perhaps her favorite of all because he’d defended her mom like someone out of a history book would have done, appealing to decency and chivalry and respect for one’s elders and other out-of-fashion things a brat like Andy would dismiss with an eye-roll and a bored “whatever.”

She put her black and white Converses on and grabbed her wallet from the drawer in her bedside table. Then she called into the kitchen on her way out, told her mom she’d be back sometime later that day. No reply. Rose led Bellamy down the several flights of stairs to the ground floor, occasionally glancing back and catching his eye. They didn’t speak. His golden hair was a little less tidy than it had been yesterday. His movements seemed slightly looser, too, freer and faster, more spontaneous, as though he was trying to copy her. It was an unusual energy. Almost enthusiastic. It made her like him even more because she could tell he enjoyed being with her.

Rose smiled at him. His returning grin spread to his eyes, and he couldn’t help it. A youthful beam shone through the experience. He looked more like a surfer than ever, or some kind of athlete. One of those guys who’d started early and been really good at his chosen profession for so long that he had the wisdom of someone twice his age and an infectious enthusiasm that would always be there.