“I don’t keep very many friends, Ty.”
“Sounds like a good reason why you should add a few.”
Hard as he was working to crack me, he made me want to.
I halted, and he took a few steps before turning back to me.
It was better when we’d been walking side by side, when I didn’t feel like his face had been perfectly crafted as some weapon to be used against me, to tear through my defenses, invade my senses.
“Give me your phone.” Ty’s words were an order.
“My phone?”
“So I can put my digits in there. Come on. Sexy guy like you must be used to getting numbers all the time.”
“Flattering me to get my cell?”
“Maybe just flattering because you deserve to be flattered.” A slick smile formed across his lips, this confidence in his expression like he knew how hard he was for me to resist.
I reached into my pocket, fished out my phone, and passed it to him.
“See, that wasn’t so hard, but apparentlythatis,” he said, his gaze drifting to the bulge in my pants—an effect he had on me, whether either of us liked it or not.
He keyed away on my phone. “There. Not even gonna text myself.”
“What do you mean?”
“That means you have to make the next move. To just hang, chat…or whatever.”
He winked at me. Standing there, grinning, he looked so goddamn proud of himself for how he’d managed to charm my phone from me.
I couldn’t help but laugh as he handed it back to me.
As I took it, his fingers grazed mine, and warm as it was that night, I felt a deeper heat, something that penetrated my very being as he looked at me as though he’d had every intention of touching me like that when he gave me my phone back.
I had to fucking catch my breath, something I was able to disguise as I slid my cell back into my pocket. “Oh, Ty, I feel sorry for the man who falls for you. He’s gonna have his work cut out for him.”
He beamed. “Now who’s the one flattering?”
“Well, you deserve to be flattered too.”
As he snickered, I looked into his disarming gaze, lost in his sights.
It was a moment like the one inside Eric’s condo, one that seemed to stretch out over a lengthy span of time, even though it was only seconds. I should have pulled my gaze away, but I kept looking, trying to etch that face into my memory, carve it into my fucking brain so that I’d never forget it.
“Night, Liam. For now…” And he walked past me, toward Eric’s condo.
Don’t turn around, don’t turn around.
But I did, and he was glancing over his shoulder, still smiling, as though he knew he had a hook lodged in my cheek, ready to reel me in with that sexy ass of his.
