Page 38 of The Risk Taker
He doesn’t answer me, instead he keeps tidying the space, the veins in his forearms popping beneath his skin where he’s rolled his shirt sleeves up. I haven’t seen him wear anything other than T-shirts. But he’s wearing a shirt and jeans tonight. And something about the sight has me imagining what he’d look like in a suit. He looks like he was born to wear one, which is weird considering we’re at the beach.
“Look. I’ll go and leave you to whatever you’re doing. I just came to say thanks. I didn’t know about my dress.”
I turn to leave, and his words hit my back.
“I didn’t look.”
“What?” I turn back and he’s staring at me with his hands on his hips and his chest expanding slowly with measured breaths.
“I saw. But I didn’t look,” he says.
“Um, thanks.” I frown.
I turn around.
“I remember, though.”
My stomach leaps to my throat and I spin back.
Remembers what? My nipples? The way he sucked and bit them last night? The way I moaned and turned into putty in his arms?
He stares at me with a darkened gaze that makes me shiver. Something about him is different, but I can’t work out what.
“I’ve seen that guy pull that same move in that same bar before. Thought I recognized him.”
My mouth goes dry and my stomach sinks. It shouldn’t bother me that he’s not talking about remembering last night, but it does.
“So you’ve interrupted a conversation you’re not a part of and told him to fuck off before?”
“No. First time.”
“Why start tonight?” I shrug like I couldn’t care less what answer he’s about to give me, at the same time hating how my voice lifts with a hint of desperate hope. A tiny clue about how much I want to hear a man say that he’s done something reckless because of me. Because after Callum, God, I want someone to be acting reckless over me.
“You’re the first woman whose dress it worked on,” he replies.
I let out a scoff of irritation, masking the unwelcome disappointment that’s like a sinking balloon in my stomach.
“Yeah, well. Like I said. Thanks, I guess.”
I yank the door open, but a giant hand slams against it above my head, sealing it shut.
He was meters away a split second ago. The guy moves like Superman.
I incline my head and look at him over my shoulder as he speaks.
“Would you have fucked him?”
“What?”
“Tonight, if I hadn’t come over.”
“I don’t know.” I turn back to the door, readying myself to wrench it open before he can stop me again. But then rage bubbles inside me like molten lava.
I spin to face him.
“Yeah, actually. Maybe I would have. Seeing as my last attempt to forget about my ex got hijacked.”
He leans closer, his jaw rigid.
