His gaze drops to the waterline where it skims my chest. He doesn’t linger long, but he doesn’t pretend not to look, either. Heat rises under my skin before I can stop it.
“Get out of the pool,” he says.
I blink at him. “What?”
“Now.”
The word is low and even, not loud, but it lands with more force than if he’d barked it.
I open my mouth to push back, and he reaches down, snatches up the towel from the chair, and snaps it open with both hands.
It’s the holding it open that gets me. He doesn’t toss it, but holds it. Waiting.
The move is so unexpectedly practical—and so annoyingly intimate—I go still.
He glances at the duffel at his side. “You can glare at me after. I might spank your ass for it, but you can glare.”
I hate that a laugh almost comes out.
I hate it more that my nipples tighten in the water, and he definitely notices. Nash has to be close to forty. He’s old enough to be my father, damn him.
It’s absolutely the cold, and not the authority in his voice and every line of his voice, that’s making my nipples tighten and liquid curl between my legs.
I push off from the wall and wade to the steps slowly, aware of every scant inch of wet fabric clinging to me. The patio air hits my skin. I climb out with water streaming down my stomach and thighs and stop just short of him.
He doesn’t move back. His gaze travels down my body, lingering on the areas where the water has left my underwear wet and essentially transparent. Then he lifts his gaze to my face.
“You don’t know what you’re playing with, baby girl.”
He holds the towel open, arms braced, gaze on my face now with all that dangerous discipline that makes me wonder what he’d do if I leaned in the wrong direction.
For one insane second I think about testing it.
Instead, I step forward, right into the towel. Right into his space.
His knuckles brush my shoulder as he wraps it around me, not accidental enough to ignore. Heat flashes through me, sharp and low. He smells like soap, clean cotton, and something darker under both—male and warm and impossible to separate from the memory of him in that office.
My breath catches. I hate that too.
He feels it. I know he does.
His voice drops, close enough to rough my ear. “You’re shaking.”
I yank the towel tighter around myself and look up at him. “I would say I’m cold but we both know I’m furious.”
“One doesn’t cancel the other out, you know.”
He steps back then, just enough to put air between us, and the loss of heat makes me instantly meaner.
“Start talking,” I say.
His gaze cuts once more to the duffel on the chair, then back to me. “You leave tonight, alone, with half a plan and a target on your back, and best case you make it to sunrise without anyone noticing. Worst case, somebody notices first.”
“Somebody meaning Deacon.”
“Deacon,” he says. Then his jaw shifts. “And maybe not just him.”
The words pull me up short.
