The Geographer's Map to Romance (Love's Academic #2)

by India Holton

tedium was best described as an opportunity for imagination.

Gabriel went on gazing at her, however. He was unblinking, uncompromising, not setting her free. All the air in the carriage seemed to vanish. Elodie began to feel dizzy, her pulse thundering in her ears. She tried to look down, for relief, but Gabriel’s attention had always been her own personal gravity. She could not deny it. She could not even breathe. Would he lean across the table and kiss her? His eyes suggested it. They spoke of lips brushing, tongues

stroking, and a foot sliding up beneath her skirt. Alas, none of this occurred. But Gabriel’s gaze did intensify, and Elodie realized all of a sudden that his eyes truly were suggesting things. He was communicating with her, albeit wordlessly. His heart was in that fierce gaze—exposed, honest, and offered freely to her. I want you, it plainly said. I cannot stop thinking about you.

The sky was blanched and cold, strewn with diaphanous cirrus clouds that drifted across a pale, swollen sun. White-gold light girdled the world, dissolving it gently into a dream.

But the rest of her was absorbed in the truth that had been her magnetic north for the whole of her adult life. And if this moment were to be the last she ever had, she wanted it filled with that truth.