She glanced up at it, then back at me, her eyes lingering.
“More than you.”
Damn, this girl knew the way straight to my heart.
“That’s a bold claim.”
She turned away, ostensibly to set down her dish rag, but I saw the color on her cheeks before she could hide it.
“It’s a factual one.” She faced me again. “Why? You want to find out?”
I stretched—I mean, I flexed and made it look kind of like stretching.
“I don’t know. What do I get out of it?”
She crossed her arms over her chest and, yeah, her tits looked great too, just the shadow of her nipples visible through her white shirt.
“How about a bet, then? If I win, I get those big muscles to help fix the AC unit on the back of the shack.”
“I’ll do you one better. How about you can use me however you want until the end of your shift today?”
As I said it, her eyes darkened, and her tongue flicked out beneath those plump lips.
Oh, so she isn’t just flirting.
Good.
I had no intention of letting her get away again. The part of me I’d been suppressing, the one that changed into a fourteen-foot-long apex predator, had been circling her since last night, dying to get a bite. And with her arms crossed, hip jutted out, and a challenge on her lips, she had no idea of the danger she was in.
“And if you win?” she asked.
I smiled. The smile that was all over my Instagram. El Tiburón’s smile.
“I’ll think of something.”
She raised an eyebrow but didn’t object. Instead, she stepped out of the small side door of the shack.
“Fine,” she agreed, lining up beneath the bar. “Ladies first.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Selena
How dare he.How dare this stranger—whose name I was very sure wasn’t Tibby—look even better in the daylight than I remembered. I’d half convinced myself I’d hallucinated the thick biceps and neck tattoos as some part of approaching-ovulation madness, but no—here he was, looking like some Instagram fuckboy with his cut-off sleeves, his goddamn lip piercing glinting in the morning sun, and his cap turned backward. That was practically like walking around in lingerie for hulking guys with cute smiles.
He caught my gaze, smiling like he knew exactly what I was thinking about. Did his face ever get tired, smiling like that?
I was thinking about the plan. The plan. That was all I was thinking about.
“Ladies first,” I said again, because he was still smiling and I needed to be doing something.
I rolled my shoulders back, shook out my hands, and jumped up to the bar. My grip found it automatically, the worn smooth wood familiar under my palms. I did these every morning. I did them before the tourists arrived and after they left and sometimes in between if a customer made me want to climb the walls. This bar and me went way back.
I felt him watching and started my count.
The first ten pull-ups were easy, chin clean over the bar each time, controlled on the way down. I heard Tanner say something behind me, but my focus had narrowed to the bar and my breath and the burn starting in my lats, the good kind, the kind that meant I was pushing myself.
Fifteen.
