“I think I like you, Brinley Webber.”
It might have come out a taunt, but I was the motherfucking fool who meant it.
Huffing, she ripped her arm out of my hold. “Screw you, Silas Mercer.”
Distrust and hate blazed out of her as she took three steps back.
“And for the record, it’s pretty gross, you getting that close to me, when you have a kid and a wife or a girlfriend or old lady or whatever the hell you call her. But I guess that’s just another waybikersoperate.”
A kid and a girlfriend?
I couldn’t help the smirk that climbed to the edge of my mouth, because her words were pure disgust peppered with a little of something else.
“Ah, the things we discover when we’re sneaking around,” I goaded.
Of course I was aware she was stumbling along behind me through the woods when I walked away from her last night.
There was no escaping the heat of those eyes.
I realized then the assumption she made.
I didn’t correct her.
Instead, I crossed my arms over my chest and canted my head to the side. “You jealous?”
A fluster of revulsion and loathing flashed through her face, but I felt the rest of it, too.
Attraction.
Whatever that wired, swarming energy was that she emitted.
I figured it had to be just as dangerous as the rest of her.
“You wish,” she tossed out.
It might as well have been a lasso. One where she got me right around the neck.
Because I was stalking forward again. Coming to within a foot of her. My stupid hand reaching out so I could trace a single finger down the side of her face.
I was nearly overcome with the need to dip all the way in. Hands itching to sink into her flesh.
What I really needed to do was grow a fucking conscience and step away.
But I was inhaling it. The curious desire that wafted off her skin and filled my nostrils with that sweetness.
Almonds and apples.
A confectionery drug that would poison us both.
And still I was muttering, “Wondering which one of us is really doing all the wishing.”
Brinley’s mouth parted on a wheezed exhale. Those wild curls kissing her pink, overheated cheeks.
Clearly, I was a masochist.
A glutton for punishment because there was no stopping myself from brushing the pad of my thumb across her plump, pink lips.
Only thing it seemed to do was hasten the stirring of her storm.
