Stunning me senseless.
My mind spun at the contact—soft, luscious lips pressing on mine—then rebounded fast to not letting her escape. I grasped her silky hair to keep her there, but before I could deepen the kiss, she dropped back in her seat, chest heaving.
Dammit.
She blinked several times as if dazed, then her head snapped to me. “I’ll ask you once more. Will you get your agent, publicist, or whoever the heck it is, to get the snapshot taken down?”
My mind still caught in the moment of the unexpected kiss, I shrugged. Hell, it was a momentary contact of mouths, and I felt as if I’d been sucker punched.
Her eyes narrowed, her lips thinned.
“Fine.” Then she was back on her phone, her fingers flying. “Done! We are now officially a couple.” She shoved her cell in my face again. I switched the interior light on, took the device, and glanced at the Instagram post, my mind finally connecting with what I was seeing.
She’d taken a shot of us kissing. No one would knowshe’dinstigated it because we both seemed to be into it. And she’d hashtagged it, too:#warcharli #foreverhisgirl #playerdown.
“I would have added the position you play and your number,” she took pleasure in telling me. “But I don’t like sports. And I don’t know anything about you!”
I lifted my gaze to her blistering stare, and I knew she was waiting for a reaction. So I gave her one. “That’s sad, Blue. Very well…” My attention back on her phone, I went into edit mode, made the addition, and returned her cell.
She glanced at the pic. Her eyes popped wide, and her mouth dropped at the added hashtag:#centerman #19 #cheetahs.
“Noooo!”she groaned, like it was the end of the world. “It just hit two hundred likes in two minutes, and it’s increasing!”
“Is that any way to treat the love of your life?” I teased.
She glared at me then flung her door open. Before I could go around to help her down, she was out of the truck, bag in hand, slamming the door and storming off once again. Damn, she was fast.
I sat there, watching her disappear through the gate. She might have kissed me out of frustration, but something had flared between us. Lust, yes…and a deep-seated awareness. And I knew she felt it, too.
So, no, I wasn’t releasing a press statement of any sort. Since she started this, I would go along with it. Besides, if being with Charli kept the damn groupies away, and Amber, the team’s PR and my agent off my back, then I wasn’t saying shit.
Because right now, my chest still felt like a vise had flattened my lungs, and breathing was a damn effort. Usually, I fucked and left, no regrets. Hell, most times I didn’t even recall my encounters, being in a drunken fog.
But this?
Thisencounter left me reeling, stirring everything in me awake. And I wanted a chance to explore whatever this thing was between us.
