Staten Renault is made of beauty, brains, and an ambitionto prove everyone who ever doubted her wrong. She can’t be boiled down to Leif’s secret admirer—it’s an insult to her worth, her capabilities.
This time, Staten’s engineer-type logic can’t compete with a heart stuck in yearning. She’s the first person who’s ever given me the chance to be more than just the hockey meathead the media paints me out to be. She understands me—understands how exhausting it is trying to vie for acceptance from a person who will never give it to you.
Her gaze rakes over me slowly, as if she can’t imagine that I, Knox Mulligan, just divulged my deepest, darkest secret in the midst of a stranger’s bedroom. I can tell she wants to believe me, but I also don’t miss the way that she compartmentalizes her anxiety like a collection of nesting dolls.
She attempts to defuse the air with a flat chuckle, pulling away from my palm. “You’re drunk.”
“I still mean it.”
I already mourn the feel of her soft skin beneath my calloused hand.
Right here—in the afterglow of the muted party—I don’t shun the forked tongue of lust that licks up the length of my spine. I’m not a religious man, but prayer comes easy to a parched mouth.
There’s a magnetic pull happening between us, evident in the way her body is still half turned toward me. Instead of cupping the side of her face like I previously had, my hand detours to a heat-curled ringlet of her hair—one she probably spent fifteen minutes perfecting. She doesn’t flinch away from me. In fact, she allows me fuller access with a stretch of her neck.
My breath scrapes over every inch of perfumed skin. “Why don’t you wear your hair up more often?”
Aside from the first tutoring session we had and when I saw her at Dusky’s, the ponytail has never made a comeback. Don’tget me wrong, I think she looks great with any hairstyle, but I’ve definitely noticed a preference.
She cracks a half-watt smile. More show than intention. “Because I look like a Founding Father.”
It takes me a second to even register what she’s saying. She’s wrong. She doesn’t know how fucking wrong she is.
Tone sandpapered by a stint of anger, the cords of my muscles tighten in accordance with the growl that bubbles up my throat. “Who told you that?”
Staten is far too nonchalant for my liking, and she simply shrugs, as if this has been some universally agreed upon rule regarding her hair. “Leif.”
In a perfect world, my inside thoughts stay, well,inside, but my mouth is on a warpath tonight, led by a rage so blisteringly cold that it could freeze hell over. I white-knuckle the edge of the bed, my incisors drilling into my bottom lip as my scruples liquify.
“I’ll kill him.”
It’s not a bluff—it’s a promise. The more I learn about Little Shit Stain Leif, the more I want to shove his head through drywall until the ground is lacquered in a new coat of red.
Staten sighs like she’s negotiating with a murderous child. “Please don’t kill him.”
“Why do you put up with his crap?” I snap, righteous indignation sharpening its teeth on my already-serrated edges.
“He probably didn’t mean it.”
I don’t give her the chance to play devil’s advocate. She’s fed herself this false narrative that’s only ever going to do more harm than good, and I won’t stick around to watch it destroy her.
“Do you knowwhyI like your hair up?”
A puckish simper emerges on her lips. “Because you’re kinky?”
I snort, leaning closer to gather a handful of her hair andsweep it away from her neck. “Because it accentuates your features. The shape of your face, your bone structure, even the tiny freckles that you swear nobody notices. When you wear your hair down, all those details disappear.”
Staten’s eyes frost over with another invasion of tears, her voice a tinny whisper. “You noticed my freckles?”
God, I want to kiss her so badly right now. But if I start, I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop.
“I notice a lot more than you think I do.”
Her expression falters, and I watch in real time as she descends with no parachute to cushion her fall. She inches ever so closer to me, to the point where our foreheads are one clumsy-bodied bump away from brushing. Our breaths mingle, our heartbeats sync into one; I have to will my stomach to stop turning.
“Please tell me you feel this,” I whisper desperately, needing an excuse to sever our unorthodox contract and worship her with raw abandon. I know that reeling a confession out of her will be harder than trying to cage a storm.
Instead of Staten denying me, the door to the bedroom swings open with an ungodly amount of force. A couple mid-make out stumbles upon our humble abode, so swept up in each other that they almost don’t realize the space is occupied.
