She’s heat and life and clutches on to me like she’s holding tight to a lifeline. Her fingernails rake gently at my chest through the fabric of my shirt, and I want nothing more than to feel them against my bare skin.
No…it’s not that I want it. I need it.
Her energy infuses me along with her scent—and underneath that, something else.
A richer musk. A wrongness. A layer that doesn’t match the rhythm we had on the dance floor.
My jaw tightens. I understand, on some base level, what she’s trying to do. She’s trying to decide if I’m as real as whatever happened in that bathroom.
My arms band around her waist on instinct to keep her close.
Or maybe she’s trying to convince herself of something else. Scrub it away.
The tunes change behind us, the seething tide of people a blanket of heat and noise. But this isn’t seduction. It’s not play.
It feels like… a rewrite.
My instincts flare hotter as I kiss her back, tongue gliding against her lips before she opens for me with a sigh. I scan for answers—her breath, her tremble, the faint vibration of panic at the edges of her arousal?—
What the hell happened in that bathroom?
I pull my mouth off hers just enough to look at her. While I’m holding her, my eyes travel. Over her shoulder. Past her hair. Past the hallway.
Into the bar.
I sweep faces. Hands. Shadows near the bathroom door. Men standing too still. Men watching too hard. My pulse ticks up, that old animal part of me waking and stretching.
A growl burns my throat, and my hands curl into her shirt. The moment she pulls back, I let her go, releasing her into the space between us before I do something stupid.
Reva stares at me in a way that makes my stomach dip, and I force a half-smile to my lips, allowing it settle into my trademark charming grin.
“What’s the matter, Yank? Do I kiss that bad?”
She’s looking at me like she’s trying to place my features in a memory—one that doesn’t belong to me.
Her brows furrow. The next wave of laughter sharpens her expression, juts out her chin. She’s barely in control, and the shadows underneath her eyes are hollow.
“No! You kiss…I…we should go,” she says roughly.
I give a single sharp nod. The only thing I know for certain is the need to get Reva safely out of the bar and figure out what the fuck just happened—without lighting her up so bad she bolts.
Ishake it off, shielding the flaring need to simultaneously protect her and throw her over my shoulder. “Sure thing. Whatever you want.”
My fingers brush the small of her back—gentle but firm—Reva moving where I guide her like she’s half asleep, half feral. The rest of the bar melts away, and any lightheartedness I’d been wearing drops like a discarded sweater.
Her gaze latches on her feet. One in front of the other.
Mine doesn’t. Mine keeps cutting left and right, cataloging.
Who was close enough. Who moved when she disappeared. Who’s watching her walk out like she’s prey.
Outside, the mugginess of the night wraps around us. I pull open the truck door and boost her up with a hand to her elbow. “In you go.”
In the cab, silence stretches.
Reva’s spine remains rigid. Upright. Her stare fixes on something through the windshield like she expects it to move. High beams illuminate a curving blacktop drawing us away from the comforting lights of the bar and into the unknown.
I shouldn’t have left her alone to grab drinks. But I did. And now I’ve got questions I don’t like.
