“Oh. Lusting after me?” He smirked, cocking his head. “Tell me something I don’t know. The ladies like the overall package.”
“It’s an impressive package,” she admitted coolly. “But it only goes skin deep.” She paused. Let it sting. It did, but in such a good way, he wasn’t quite sure how to process it. “This lady isn’t interested in your six-pack abs,” she said, a little too fast, “or your broad shoulders…” Her voice thinned slightly. “Or that Adonis belt.”
Her chest was still rising and falling from the dance, the flush in her cheeks blooming hotter. She just stood there like she hadn’t meant to say all that out loud.
Breakneck shoved the hoodie off his head. His damp hair clung to his forehead, steam still rising faintly off his skin.
“Oh, you’re not, huh?”
His voice was lower now. Rough silk. Amused. Curious. Challenged. Aroused, but not only in his dick. She affected him all over.
He stepped closer, slow and sure, his gaze locked on her face. She didn’t back up, and that told him everything.
“What exactly is an Adonis belt?” he asked, voice low, goading, already knowing.
He took in the scent of her, sweat, something floral beneath it, something Blair. His battered body inched closer, aching in more ways than one. What would it feel like to be touched by her for real? Not in the aftermath of blood or bruises. Just... wanted.
She’d touched him before. His skin remembered, and he’d been craving it like hell since.
Her gaze dipped, a quick flick to his torso, and he caught the exact moment her breath stuttered.
“Oh,” she said, trying to recover. “The man with the full package doesn’t know which muscles turn women on?”
He grinned, cocky and slow. God, he loved her sass. “I know one that works really well.”
Her breath hitched again, barely audible, but she didn't allow him any ground.
“Your ego doesn’t count.”
The laugh that broke out of him was real. Sharp, unexpected, and impossible to hold back. For a moment, she completely disarmed him.
Then her hand lifted, casual but unhurried, and she reached for him. Her fingers brushed the damp hair on his forehead, fluffing it like she didn’t even know what she was doing, like she just wanted to touch him, and that desire slipped through the cracks of her mask.
She smiled. “You should do that more often,” she murmured.
The look in her eyes nearly floored him.
“I have a feeling it’ll happen a lot more around you.”
Her jaw was tight, her posture still bristling with whatever storm she’d been holding onto, she wasn’t ready to let it go yet. But something in her eyes shifted. Heat. Intention. More challenge.
She took his hand. Her fingers were warm, her skin soft in places, calloused in others, her palm slightly rough where she gripped her firearm, her trigger finger tougher than the rest.
He liked that. Too much.
“The Adonis belt,” she said, tone casual but not soft, “is the group of muscles that give you this very male, devastating V-cut.”
Then she moved his hand, directing it down his side, slow and deliberate, tracing the sharp line that cut across his lower abdomen, just above his groin. His breath shortened instantly. Every nerve fired like he’d taken a hit to the sternum.
She dragged his hand up the opposite side, following the same path in reverse, and the motion set his pulse hammering.
She was a goddamn tease, and she knew it, and still, he let her.
Every muscle in his body reacted, not to his own touch, but to her control. To the heat in her skin. To the way her voice barely held together. To the undercurrent of fury that still sparked beneath her tenderness.
She was dangerous like this, and he was already in too deep.
But he didn’t want to lose any of this.
