James didn’t move a muscle, just broke out into a smile.
“What if I pour this over your head? What do you say? That way we can see if the bullshit you spew is water-resistant.” I provoked him, motioning at my cocktail.
He laughed then ruffled the hair falling on his forehead without taking his eyes off mine.
“Why aren’t you in a swimsuit?”
“I’m sure that there’s enough bare skin to go around here to look at and paint.”
“Maybe that’s not what I want.”
I’d definitely heard that wrong. The music was too loud—so loud that it was piercing my eardrums and making me hallucinate.
I watched James kneel in front of me. He crouched down and looked at me from below.
“May I?”
He took two paintbrushes out of his swimsuit pocket, and I scowled.
“But you have to tell your mom that I have a talent.” He put the thin brush between his teeth and moved the other one along my inner thigh.
I shivered.
“What are you doing? Get up. Aren’t you uncomfortable?”
James lifted his bright eyes up. Seeing him smile from below had a strange effect on me. Surrounded by the darkness, he looked like a tempting devil with eyes that glittered like two sparkling gems.
“You know what? You’re right, White. Come with me.”
That was something else I learned and should’ve written in my Notes app—time and distance get shorter when there’s alcohol in your system. And that was exactly what was going on then. My head was spinning. I felt drunk. One minute, James and I were in the middle of the drunken crowd, and the next we were in a bathroom where the chatter and music were more muffled.
Someone was around us, scattered conversations between people who came and went, but I didn’t have any way of understanding who and what was surrounding me because James carried me and sat me down on the sink. I could feel the heat of his body get closer to me before he even grazed against me as he situated himself between my knees.
A thought shot out from my head and spilled into the pit of my stomach, holding me in a vise that screamed to be careful. His scent was unmistakable, a clean, musk scented with vanilla and hormones. It was no joke; I really had to be careful of James.
If I’d been recklessly moving closer up until now, I couldn’t anymore. And not because of what Amelia had told me, but because I barely understood the sort of power he had over my body, one that I couldn’t control. There was something destabilizing about him, even though I despised him every time that he opened his mouth, every time that he messed with me or suddenly attacked me.
I was lost in my thoughts, and when I came back to reality, I looked at my hands and noticed that they were being maneuvered by colored tubes. He spread the color on his brush and then stroked the wet bristles against my bare skin. The tremors in my body multiplied.
“James . . .”
I was breathless.
“I’m not touching you,” he murmured, licking his lips.
I was suddenly gripped with fear. Not of him but of myself. It would’ve been enough to run away but I didn’t. I was hypnotized by his magnetic field, by his presence.
James continued to compose colorful fantasies in a burst of neon colors on my thighs.
“Take off your tank top now, Snow White.”
I burst out laughing. “Sure, and you take off your pants, Hunter.”
James stared at me. He seemed amused by my quick response, but then he got serious.
“Okay.”
He brought his hand to the edge of his swimsuit.
