Page 4 of Property of Whiskey

The movement is instinctive.

So is his response.

He turns his hand inside my grip and wraps his fingers around mine, holding our joined hands between us. He could break my hold. So could I.

Neither of us does.

His skin is warm and rough against mine. My pulse jumps where his thumb settles over the inside of my wrist, and the slightest change in his expression tells me he feels it.

“There,” he says quietly.

His free hand rises.

I should stop him.

I don’t.

His thumb brushes the edge of my lower lip, rough from work and warm against skin still hot from the ring. The touch lasts less than a second.

But it feels like five whole minutes.

He draws his thumb back with a thin red smear across it. Sheila must’ve clipped me harder than I noticed.

Whiskey looks at the blood.

Then at my mouth.

Not breaking eye contact, he sticks his goddamn thumb in his mouth and sucks the blood clean off.

The noise of Heck’s Kitchen doesn’t actually disappear, but my body stops paying attention to it. All I hear for a second is my own pulse and the scrape of his thumb over my skin that isn’t even happening anymore.

I release his wrist.

He releases mine.

“You enjoy that?” I ask.

“Watching you beat somebody up?”

“Putting your hands on a deputy.”

“Seemed like you enjoyed it more than I did.”

“I could arrest you.”

“You keep saying that like you’re trying to convince yourself.”

I step closer, forcing him to straighten away from the bar.

I’m damn near six feet in my bare feet, so not many men get to look down at me. Whiskey is one of them, taller by enough to make the move stupid, but I’ve never found size particularly persuasive.

“You think I’m scared of that patch?”

“No.”

“You think I’m scared of you?”

Whiskey sets his glass on the bar behind him.