She scoops up the leftovers into a container, puts it in the fridge. “Well?”
“Well what?” I ask, being deliberately obtuse.
“Well, share all the gory details, my friend.”
“Maybe I will.” I wipe my hands on a towel. “For the right price.”
Eleven
Ky
“Pr-price?” I stutter.
He sets the towel aside and moves toward me, all lean, coiled strength and grace personified.
On the ice, he moves like liquid silk.
Off it, he’s power and finesse and?—
He stops, the toes of our shoes brushing, his body mere inches from mine.
“For a kiss,” he murmurs. “I’ll tell you what the guys give me shit about.”
“I—”
God, what would it be like to kiss this man?
This man who’s so beautiful and gentle and kind and who has a streak of mischief in him that calls to the sassy little sister in me. I want to tease back.
I want to shock the hell out of him, want to lift up on my tiptoes, press my lips to his, and kiss the hell out of him.
But even as I shift forward, the weight moving to my toes, my heels lifting ever so slightly off the floor in preparation of closing the distance between our mouths?—
Fear slices through me, its talons breaking skin, the grip so sudden that I can’t brace for it, so fierce it’s almost a physical pain.
Because the last time I kissed a man, he?—
I drop back onto my heels, skitter back a step.
Then another.
Because I haven’t been this close to a strong, powerful man who I want to kiss, a man who could hurt me…
Not since that night.
Since that man had hurt me.
I back up further, gasping in pain when the sharp edge of the counter jabs into my hip.
“Kylie. Kylie!”
The volume, the sharpness of my name on Colt’s tongue tells me that this isn’t the first time he’s called out to me.
Then he’s suddenly in my face, reaching for me.
I flinch back. “Don’t!”
I know he won’t hurt me, but the past and present are tangled together, the nightmare too close, too ready to take over.
