Page 291 of Disarm
“You remember the rules?” Caleb’s voice drifts from somewhere ahead. Closer now.
“Color system. I tap out, you stop.”
“And?” he prompts.
“And this is not a cry for help,” I say. “It’s you being a kinky little bastard.”
Caleb laughs, low and delighted. “Good,” he says. “Just wanted that on record. You know, insurance purposes.”
On the far side, the small deck opens up: two chairs, a low table, and a view that’s just an expanse of night broken by a darker line of ocean.
Empty.
I turn in a slow circle, my shoulders prickling with heat.
“Pretty boy,” I sing-song softly. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
“You don’t get to call me that when I’m the one hunting you,” he murmurs from behind me.
I whip around.
Nothing.
Fuck.
“Color?” he asks again, almost gentle.
I inhale slowly, letting the wind fill my lungs. It smells like damp earth and salt. My heart’s racing, but it’s not a free-fall, it’s more like being right at the top of a roller coaster, waiting for that magical rush of adrenaline.
“Green,” I say.
“I like green,” he says, his voice closer, clearer.
Something brushes my forearm—just the rough tickle of a hoodie cuff—and then it disappears. My breath catches.
“You’re terrible at hiding,” he teases. “You breathe like the final girl in a horror movie.”
“Oh, that’s rich, coming from you,” I say, aiming my voice at where I think he is. “You’re six one and a half on a good day, and you stomp around like an elephant when you’re annoyed.”
“Six foot two in my heart,” he counters. “And you love my stomping.”
“Debatable,” I say.
Something grabs my hips from behind and yanks.
I slam back into a body that’s all heat and hoodie and hardness, my hands catching the railing for balance. Cotton-covered chest against my back. Thighs bracketing mine. Breath hot against the shell of my ear.
The mask presses into my shoulder as he leans in.
“Found you,” he whispers.
Everything in me lights up.
The neon glow against the black plastic is bright even in the dark, that stitched-mouth grin flashing in the corner of my vision, catching the fairy lights. It shouldn’t be sexy.
But fuck me, it is.
The sight hits every wired-into-my-brain circuit at once.Halloween. My breath on his neck. His hands on my thighs and the way fear and arousal tangled until we couldn’t tell one from the other. Now it’s him behind the grin, not me pretending to be some abstract monster. No, this is him deciding when and how and where.
