She shoves playfully at my chest, the touch making me crave even more of it. Without the barrier of my shirt between us. With nothing but her skin against my own. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I know.” I grin, loving how relaxed she looks in this moment. “But I mean it.”
Her eyes soften to the warm bourbon color I could drink down all day but rarely see. This is how they look when she isn’t worrying, when she’s let go of being the Bishop she thinks she needs to always be and allows herself to be the one she wants to be. The one she deserves to be. “I’d rather just call you Gage.”
“That works, too.”
And hearing it again—my name from those beautiful lips—makes me simultaneously wish I had never met this woman and that I could spend every waking moment with her.
BISHOP
Something changes in Gage’s gaze.
The warm, welcome depths of his blue eyes suddenly shift to something darker. Something harder.
Like he’s shutting down, shifting away, and then he does so physically, moving back slightly and putting some space between our bodies.
I immediately miss the heat, the weight of him on top of me, that leather and spice scent of his invading each breath.
A chilly breeze floats over me, and I shiver as I reach to zip and rebutton my jeans before anyone who might be out here randomly strolls by and discovers what we’ve been doing.
Holy shit, Bishop…
Gage clears his throat, then reaches back and grabs the bottle of wine and takes a long pull from it, offering it to me as he swallows.
The mood has changed.
The balmy night air now feels cold, raising goosebumps all over my skin.
Reality comes back in a rush.
I scrub my face with my hands, trying to figure out how the hell I just let that happen. When I reopen my eyes, he’s holding the bottle out in front of me, and God knows I need it to try to help me make sense of it all.
How did I go from being suspicious of this man to coming on his hand?
The answer isn’t clear, but the little flashes he gave me of himself tonight somehow coalesced into a completely different view of him. And the way he seemed to see right through me left me feeling exposed and raw.
I snag the bottle from him, focus on the water, and take a huge drink.
The heavy tannins and sweetness of the red wine splash against my tongue as the vision of him licking my release off his fingers flashes through my head.
My pussy throbs, my clit pulsing in a way that has me shifting to try to relieve some of the pressure.
This was a mistake.
I don’t know how I let myself get swept up in the moment, in the attraction between us, when I know damn well that the last thing I need right now is a distraction dressed in leather. Especially when there was this sudden change in him the moment it was over.
An awkward silence falls over us, and Gage glances at me out of the corner of his eye.
“What?” I raise a brow at him. “Why are you giving me that look?”
One corner of his mouth curls up into a half-grin. “Just trying to figure you out.”
I shake my head. “There isn’t anything to figure out.”
The last thing I want is him trying to root around in my head any more than he already has tonight. In such a short amount of time, he’s unraveled so many things that have been tangled up inside me for so long that it’s terrifying what he might do if given another opportunity.
“Oh, I beg to differ.” He accepts the bottle again. “There’s a lot going on inside that head of yours.”
