That warm hand reached for me again, this time to rub a soothing stroke up and down my tense forearm. “Because you’re hotter than sin already, but somehow I know you’ll be a different soul when you smile.”
My lips twitched with disbelief, nervous humour spreading through me, betraying the stoicism I was usually so good at. “I don’t smile much.”
“I can tell.”
“How?”
The man shifted on his stool, tipping his water bottle to his lips, taking a long drink before he answered me, and I became instantly fixated on how his throat worked as he swallowed. On the auburn scruff that covered his jaw. The lean, corded muscle of his arm. Something inside me switched—that lightbulb I’d been searching for. I mean, Jammo was a good-looking lad, but this dude?
No words came close to how I felt as I stared at him.
Spellbound.
Enraptured.
Aroused beyond belief.
“You have a serious face.” The dude eventually lowered his water bottle. “And your whole posture is locked up. Not saying it’s a bad thing, but I reckon there’s more to you than most people ever notice.”
“Or I’m as uninteresting as I look.”
The man’s stare intensified, if such a thing was possible. He screwed the cap back onto the bottle and pushed it away. “That’s not what I said. And I don’t much care what people look like anyway. It’s how you feel, right? Like this...” He dragged his fingertips along my arm again. “I felt that as soon as I saw you, and it had nothing to do with your appearance.”
If there was a compliment in there somewhere, I was missing it. But I didn’t mind. He’d left his hand on my arm and my body was rebelling against every thread of control I had. Goosebumps covered my skin and my nervous pulse tripled.
Lacking any better ideas, I took his advice and drank the water whilehewatchedme, and my usually stagnant imagination played a game with my nervous system. Allowing me to picture a world where he was as transfixed by my throat as I was with his.
I set the bottle down, not daring to move my other arm—or even look at it—in case he remembered his hand.Say something.“What’s your name?”
Brilliant. Though, I supposed it could’ve been worse.
Couldn’t tell why the dude took so long to think about it, mind. Or why I noticed the fleeting flicker in his gaze. Maybe I’d messed up by asking him a personal question. Maybe that wasn’t allowed. But Christ, for whatever reason, I was hooked on his answer.
“Folk.”
“Hmm?”
The man grinned again. “Folk. It’s my name.”
“Folk? As in... uh, Folk?”
A low laugh rumbled between us, as gently masculine as the rest of him. “That’s the one. Wanna tell me yours?”
Greene, the name I answered to most often, snared in my throat, the other one I’d earned on deployments jammed behind it. They called me Decoy because I was a good wingman, but that wasn’t who I was tonight. I didn’t want to be the man who watched everyone else have a good time. I wanted to beme.
I held out my hand.“Seth. Nice to meet you.”
Folk took my hand, wrapping his fingers around mine in a firm grip, his other handstillon my arm, even as he rose from his stool and tugged me to my feet. “Nice to meet you too,Seth. Listen, I’m not here long, so can I give you some advice?”
He had the kind of face that was ageless. He could’ve been twenty-five—like me—or ten years older. But the wisdom in those blue eyes riveted me, and I couldn’t look away as Folk leaned in, his shoulder brushing mine, his electric touch soothing the abrasive angst I’d carried since I was fifteen and I’d popped wood over the wrong classmate.
His lips came so close to my jaw I felt his breath on my skin. “This thing that has you all tied up, waiting for it doesn’t get any easier. Sometimes, you have to let it find you.”
He pulled back without waiting for an answer, and I felt the loss of his nearness everywhere. The oppressive heat of the bar evaporated and I feltcold. Like I’d lost something I’d never get back unless I did something extraordinary. Something that I’dcome hereto do, and yet this stool and my solitude had become my sanctuary anyway.
Until he walked in.
And now he was walking out.
