One look, and I was a damn goner.
Everything inside me wanted to coax a smile from her. Hell, even an eye roll. But she didn’t give me anything. She simply looked right past me before her attention swept back to the screen as she slowly continued to sip her beer. Like I was nothing more than a fixture of the bar she’d noticed.
That… that had never happened before. Not even in my awkward yet cute prepubescent stage.
I leaned against the bar, knees almost weak as I let that settle.What the hell is that?I felt Marie’s gaze on me but ignored it as I tried to get my crap together. I had an overwhelming need to touch my chest, as if the organ I had been born with and lived with for over three decades was suddenly deciding to act weird.Or start working for the first time?
She’d looked right through me as if she hadn’t felt what I had! And for some reason, that pissed me off. I scratched the erratically-beating spot.
Off night.I shrugged it off. My head had been in a funky space, and Marie talking about the curse had fucked with me. That was all. It wasn’t the stunningly beautiful woman or how something inside of me, deep down to the marrow of me, recognized her as something more than a warm body I wanted to snuggle close to after fucking her until both our voices went hoarse.Fuck this.I was about to turn and get back to my seat when I saw Griff’s bearded ass start to look in her direction again. I frowned and turned.
The hell I would sit around and let him take her from under my fingers.
Before I knew it, I closed the few feet between us, and she turned again. Her bored gaze kissed mine for a moment, and I knew I didn’t have long before she turned around again and pretended I wasn’t there.
“Austin,” I said, extending my hand. She didn’t even blink.
“Not interested,” she answered easily and without emotion as her attention returned to the TV, leaving me stunned as hell.
“Not…” I started to repeat as I took the empty barstool next to her. “How would you know?”
“Oh, I know.” She sighed like she was exhausted.
I should have walked away.
It didn’t matter that this visceral reaction was flowing through me like it was lighting me up from the inside out. Notwhen all my usual self-defense red flags were shouting at me to retreat. Go home and pretend I never saw the beautiful vixen.
But I didn’t.
I couldn’t. Not when the thought of never seeing her again felt like the wrongest thing in the world. Instead, I sat there staring at her. Silently and probably creepily begging her to look at me. I wanted to say something fucking smart or funny, things that usually slipped past my lips with women, but that didn’t seem right with her.
“Guess you’re the kind of man who needs an explanation?” She turned to look up at me again. Fuck, sitting there, I was still taller than her, but her eyes… Jesus, her eyes unmanned me.With one look?
“I don’t usually, no.”
“I bet you don’t,” she said, and this time, her lips quirked upward just a smidge. It was hardly a smile, but the hint of one was there. “Guy like you probably has to fight girls off you.”
“Excuse me?” I blinked. This was not going at all the way I’d thought it would.
“Good-looking guy, most eligible bachelor in town.”
“Most eligible… Do I know you?” That earned me a laugh. Probably not a sincere one, but the sound still made me feel something, and if I had been standing, I was man enough to admit it might have made me a little weak in the knees.
“Probably not. I’m Elizabeth. My sisters call me Liz. I’m as local as you are.”
“Wait, you grew up here? In Moonlit?”
“Yup.” She nodded. Her gaze was tired yet a little more intense than a few moments ago. She lifted her bottle and took the last long dreg of her beer.
“And you live here?”
“Yep.” She nodded again, setting the bottle on the counter and making me lose her gaze again as she stared off in front ofher. “So, if you thought you were trying to pick up some strange—“ she started to say as I lifted my beer to my lips.
“Pick up some strange?” I repeated without thinking because it seemed sitting next to the most intriguing yet uninterested woman turned my brain into mush.
“Pussy,” she clarified. I coughed, shocked at her bluntness. She carefully patted my back, like a trained professional would. Unbothered and unfazed. “I’m not your girl,” she laid out with a look that should have made my balls draw up and make me run away. She wasn’t mean about it, just… honest.
Refreshingly so.
