I giggled and then made the mistake of looking at his disgruntled expression and laughed even harder.
His eyes widened, and before I could dodge him, he’d reached out and drew a wide line of white paint down the front of my chest.
“Hey,” I complained, lunging for him. I barely made contact with the sleeve of his shirt, but his biceps and elbow got the same treatment as my chest.
“Actin’ like a couple of teenagers,” my dad announced as he turned his wheelchair and went back into the house.
I scrambled to my feet as Daniel stared at the paint on his arm. He dodged quicker than I expected when I swiped at his face.
“I don’t think you want to do this,” he warned as he rose.
“You started it.”
“That seems to be your go-to response, huh?” he said as he stalked me through the yard.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I replied loftily, lowering my center of gravity a little as I moved around his car.
“That was your excuse when you were talking at the breakfast table about some kid who got his hand down your pants,” he reminded me.
“Jealous?” I taunted.
The grin on his face could only be described as wicked.
“Baby, I doubt he had his fingers in your ass.”
My mouth dropped open in shock.
“And he sure as fuck didn’t taste your blood. So, no, I’m not jealous.”
“You sound jealous,” I wheedled, still carefully backing away.
“There’s nothing to be jealous of,” he said easily, his arm shooting out to put a matching stripe of paint down my arm. “You’re mine.”
“Maybe he was better with his hands,” I countered, swinging my brush so little droplets splattered the front of his shirt. “Did you think of that?”
His laugh was deep and throaty and delicious.
“There’s no fucking way,” he replied. “But keep it up, mate. I don’t mind proving you wrong.”
I saw the change in the way he was distributing his weight a second before he lunged, and I was already spinning out of his reach. Using the car as a barrier, I ran like hell around the back of it and toward the backyard. I could hear him behind me,laughing under his breath, and I screeched when I felt his fingers or the brush against the small of my back.
“You’ll never outrun me,” he warned as I jumped over a pile of rocks that Seamus had built for his RC cars.
“I don’t have to outrun you,” I panted, twisting toward the barn. “I just have to outthink you.”
I cut the corner into the barn door and grinned when I heard him bang his shoulder into the doorway, and then I was climbing like my life depended on it. There was a series of moves that Ian and I had developed over the years. Hopping onto the workbench along the wall, I ran across it, praying that I didn’t step on anything sharp, and then leaped for the top of an old metal cabinet. It swayed under my weight, but I didn’t stop to steady it. I just kept going, tossing the paintbrush ahead of me before jumping just high enough that my gut slammed into the floor of the loft. As soon as I caught the board that was a little less than an arm’s length from the edge with my fingertips, I pulled my lower half to safety.
When I’d recovered the paintbrush—that was now absolutely filthy—and spun around, Daniel was standing just inside the doors, staring.
“What the fuck was that?”
“What?” I asked breathlessly, unable to keep the huge grin off my face.
“You’re like a fucking cat.”
“You could try to follow me,” I told him, crossing my legs and bracing my elbows on them. “But the cabinet would never hold your weight. Or, you know, you could use the ladder.” I nodded toward it. “But I’d probably jump down before you made it up here.”
He moved further into the barn, his head tipping back to keep me in sight.
