AMARANTA POV
The movie had been playing for at least twenty minutes and I could not tell you a single thing that had happened on that screen, not the plot, not the characters, not even whether it was supposed to be a comedy or a thriller, because every ounce of my attention was painfully, embarrassingly, completely aware of the man sitting beside me on the sofa.
Correction, the half-naked man sitting beside me on the sofa. Because apparently it was too hot in there to be with a shirt, so he'd cooked in only his shorts, eaten in his shorts, and now was watching a movie in his shorts.
The fire crackled low in the hearth, soft orange light spilling across the living room in uneven waves, warming the room a bit, but it was far away from the temperature in the Sahara desert. We were in the m
