Bang! There it is, folks:
“The bed's big enough for two,” he murmured, “if we cuddle. Or if one of us stays on top!” he added with a chuckle.
“No.”
Her voice wasn't tickling any longer, and he pulled back from her, blinking quickly. “What-? But-!” He swallowed, hard. “You said that you liked me.”
Amber's expression of unease changed abruptly, as she laughed; Ross didn't think the sound of her high laughter could screw him so deeply in his guts. But it didn't linger in the air; she turned strangely tender again a second later, and then said something even stranger after that:
“I do like you!”
He snorted. “Just not enough to go to bed with me. Is that it?”
She laughed again, the same incredulous sound as before. “You must be joking,” she said. “We barely know each other!”
He tried to draw her close again, circling his arms around her in a loose but coercive embrace that had worked so many times before. “I know that you're beautiful,” he told her. “And darling.” Recalling the taste of her lips from only a moment ago, he tilted his head, seeking with his mouth to savour it once again. “And I want to take you to bed,” he whispered.
But she pulled away, shaking her head and narrowing her eyes at him. “You have a strange idea of romance, Mister Finch,” she muttered.
Romance? Ross felt ready to start tearing at his own hair. “Jesus, Amber!” he growled as he stood back from her.
She blinked. “What?”
“What in hell do you want from me?”
“What are you talking about? I don't want anything-”
“Of course you do!” he said, leaning in to her again, though the move was anything but intimate. “All women want something. They want a puppet, or an ego boost, or to make some other bloke jealous.” He gave a rough snort through his nose. “You obviously don't want to have sex with me, so just tell me what it is that you do want!”
She blinked again, silently, and the look that passed across her face was so hurt, so...broken...that it made him feel suddenly guilty, though he wasn't quite certain as to the reason why.
She gave another low shake of her head. “What happened to you,” she murmured, “to make you so cynical about things?”
He pressed his lips together tightly, willing himself to keep quiet. Because it had taken long enough for him to put all of that humiliation and heartache behind him, and the thought of dredging up all of those old wounds all over again made him feel ill in his stomach and chest.
But still there was something about the troubled look in those hazel eyes, the warm part of those pink lips, the sad shift of those slender shoulders as she cocked her head down to one side, as though to examine him more closely, that made him mutter:
“Ask Sam.”
Still loving these two, though, and the world that's forming around them. It breaks my heart a little bit, to know what's coming for them, but I still want to do them justice and see them through.
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