“You’re not people,” he said, a tad moresoftly.
“What amI?”
“I was hoping you could help me definethat.”
Even though I stood in his shadow, heat still pricked my skin. I suspected it had little to do with the sun and everything to do with the loomingmale.
“Why did Liam tell me to fuck off, Ness? What exactly happened back at the inn? What did you promisehim?”
I pushed my hair off my face. “I promised him that I would stop . . . whatever it is we’d started . . . to prep him for hisduel.”
His dark eyebrows dipped. “Why would you have to stop seeing me to prep him for hisduel?”
I averted my gaze, studied a dusty clump of grass next to August’s heavy-duty work boots. “He wants a hundred percent of myattention.”
August snorted. After a stretch of silence, he muttered, “You forgot to flickme.”
I returned my gaze to his. Every time he’d grunted in the past, I’d flicked him to show him how often he resorted to making that caveman noise instead of using words. “If I touch you, your scent”—spice, wood, earth, heat, home—“it’ll rub off on me, and he’ll know I sawyou.”
A muscle flexed in his forearm. “Sowhat?”
“So he’ll fight Cassandra without my input.” I rolled the hem of my dress between myfingers.
“I’m not sure whether to be offended or fucking jealous that he wants you back so badly he’d lure you away with blackmail.” His warm breath fanned against my forehead. “Look at me,Dimples.”
I raised my gaze to his, but not because he’d asked. Because he’d called me that nickname that made me feel knee-high to a ladybug. “August, you know I can’t stand thatnickname.”
“And I can’t stand that my girlfriend is breaking up with me over her ex’s bruised ego. So I’ll call you what I want to from now on, the same way you did what you wantedyesterday.”
I sucked in a breath that burst right back out of my mouth. “August, I didn’twantthis. His confidence was going to get himkilled!”
His green gaze flared so brightly it became almost phosphorescent. And then my stomach acted up, performed a slow roll that had me pressing my palm against it. The warm wind blew August’s intoxicating scent into me. Instead of easing the tension, it increased it, made my skin desire the long fingers that gripped his bent elbows to brush overmyelbows,myarms,mywrists.
This wassonot the right time to concoct racyscenarios.
I shifted from one foot to the other, hoping he couldn’t guess all that was going through mymind.
“I need to know something.” His voice was so rough it spurred my smutty contemplations. “Am I going to loseyou?”
“Lose me?” I snapped out of mytrance.
“To him? Am I going to lose you to him?” His words whispered over my nose. “You’re worth fighting for, but I need to know if it’s a fight I have a chance ofwinning.”
My heart climbed into mythroat.
“I’ll step back, Dimples”—the nickname didn’t sound very childish suddenly—“even if it goes against everything I want, I’ll step back, but you have to ask me. Do you want me to stepback?”
“No,” Iblurted.
His stance softened, which wasn’t to say he slumped or unwound his arms. He was just more timber than steel. “But I can’t step forward, canI?”
I gulped and shook myhead.
He bobbed his head as though he was filing the rules away. After a beat, he said, “I don’t share what’smine.”
Those words were like lighter fluid poured right into my core, igniting something fierce and deep. “Good, because I don’t shareeither.”
A smile ghosted over his lips, bumped straight into my heart, made it beatfaster.
