"Morning." He goes back to his phone.
I pour my coffee slowly, letting the robe slip a little more. "Sleep well?"
"Fine."
"I didn't hear you moving around last night. Do you actually sleep, or do you just stand in the corner like a vampire waiting for dawn?"
That gets me the barest twitch at the corner of his mouth. Not a smile. But something.
"I sleep," he says. "Light. Old habit."
"From prison?"
Now he looks at me. Those dark eyes, unreadable as ever. "From a lot of places."
I want to ask more. I want to know everything. I need to know what he did, why he did it, what those eight years were like. But I also don't want him to know I care, so I just shrug and take my coffee to the living room, making sure to put a little extra sway in my hips as I go.
I can feel himnotwatching me.
Somehow, that's worse than if he'd stared.
***
By noon, I've escalated. The robe is gone, replaced by yoga clothes that barely qualify as clothes. A sports bra that's mostly straps and tiny shorts that show the bottom curve of my ass when I bend over. Which I do. Frequently. I set up on the back deck with a mat, running through a routine I learned from a private instructor who charged four hundred dollars an hour and definitely wanted to fuck me.
The sun is weak but the air is warmer than it's been, and I work up enough of a sweat that my skin glows.
He finds me an hour later, mid-downward-dog. "You're in a sight line from the road."
"It's a private road."
"It's still a sight line." He's standing over me, and I have to crane my neck to look up at him. From this angle, I can see the tattoos disappearing under his t-shirt collar, the strong line of his throat. "And you're going to freeze out here."
I stand up slowly, stretching my arms overhead, watching his eyes not drop to my exposed stomach. "I live most of my life in New York. This isn't cold."
"It's sixty-five degrees."
"Like I said. Not cold."
His eyes drop for just a second to my chest. To where my nipples are pressing hard against the thin fabric of my sports bra.
"Your body says otherwise."
Heat floods my cheeks. I cross my arms, then uncross them because that's admitting defeat.
"Inside." It's not a request.
"Make me."
The words hang in the air between us. I watch his jaw tighten, his hands flex at his sides. Those hands. I've been thinking about those hands for three days—the size of them, the scars on his knuckles, the way they look like they could hold me down without even trying.
"Miss Sterling." His voice is lower now. Rougher. "Inside."
"I told you to call me Diamond."
"And I told you to go inside. One of us is going to get what they want. It's not going to be you."
He waits. I wait. The ocean crashes against the cliffs below, and neither of us moves.
