Where were these looks when I needed them earlier?
Locating my knife next to the plate, I slice through my French toast like butter. “Colten isn’t going to be very happy with me if I bring you two home all sugared up and hyper.”
He’ll already be pissed off that I’m going to kick his ass in this little game.
Which reminds me—
I peek up from my plate. “Hey, what time is it?” I ask Tristan.
Picking up his Switch beside him on the booth cushion, he clicks it on, his gaze darting across the screen. “7:50 p.m.,” he tells me.
My chest erupts with a little bit of adrenaline.
Ten minutes until eight.
Tristan arches a brow. “Why do you keep asking me the time?”
I place a slice of toast in my mouth, crunching through the buttery bread. “No reason.”
Someone at the booth behind me moves, shaking the wall my back is resting against. A large figure appears in the corner of my vision. When I tilt my head up, my eyes clash with those vibrant green eyes that instantly consume mine. With one look, it’s as if I just took a nosedive off a cliff into glacier-cold waters that sequester my entire body and turn it into ice.
My stomach somersaults. In excitement or fear, I’m not sure.
Fuckity, fuck, fuck, fuck.
One side of Colten’s mouth crooks maliciously. “Your lack of belief in my ability to find someone is amusing.”
My lips part, my throat so dry that I couldn’t speak even if I wanted to. He sucked all the damn moisture out with just his daunting presence.
“Colten! Look at what Miss Taryn let me get for dinner,” Elena shrieks cheerfully. “The nice woman working gave me extra whipped cream!”
The sides of his eyes wrinkle while a raspy laugh shakes his chest.
The moisture is back in my mouth now.
He slips his hands into his pockets. “I can see that.”
I’ve decided that his genuine laugh is my favorite sound. It nearly distracts me from imagining all the possible things he could do to me later. I lost. My punishment for challenging him is on the horizon, and I’d be lying if I said I don’t get a trill of exhilaration behind my hip bones just pondering his threat.
He places an arm over the back of the booth, leaning into it. His spiced leather and woodsy scent overpower the sickly-sweet smell of pancakes and French toast wafting from the table.
Oh God. His cologne, natural scent, or whatever it is, makes me squirm in my seat.
I can’t keep the whine from mingling with my tone. “How the hell did you know we were here?”
Lowering his body to the booth, he uses his strong frame to shove me closer to the wall so he can sit with us. The equivalent would be him sliding an empty cardboard box across the floor.
He settles in, getting comfortable. Colten’s arm brushes against mine, shooting off all sorts of chaotic sparklers that dance across my skin.
A touch so simple, yet mind-bending simultaneously.
“Isn’t it entertaining to not know the answer to that? How about we make this even more interesting?”
I knit my arms together, the tops of my breasts breaking out in gooseflesh when his attention lands on them.
My response is flat. “And how would you do that?”
His eyes find mine. “This is the first place I checked.”
