Page 136 of Ignition

Electricity zinged through me, short-circuiting my nerves.

He chuckled, low and rough, and the smirk deepened, as if he knew.

Bastard.

“Come on, let’s see if you can bowl a strike.”

A hand on my waist guided me back towards our friends, fingers curling into the soft flesh, pulling me a little against his side, until he surely felt my panicked heartbeats reverberating against his ribs.

Chapter forty-two

Mia

The ball approach looked different, brighter, and sounds had turned up in volume—from the dull thuds of the balls knocking down pins, to the electronic beeps, whoops, or womp-womps.

Raised voices greeted us from our table, and my eyes pinged open, apprehension tangling my insides.

“The other one has better nachos!” Pri snapped, rolling her eyes and shooting me a sideways wink.

“No way!” Mark shot back, running his hands through his hair in exasperation.

“I’m telling you, the crunch—so much more satisfying,” she huffed, crossing her arms over her oversized red sweater.

I blinked fast, glancing from one to the other.

“Maybe yours was a bad batch. I’ll get another. For testing.”

He let out a put-on sigh, though his eyes glimmered, and the corners of his mouth twitched.

“Let’s go. They’ll bicker until tomorrow,” Josh chuckled near my ear, nudging me forward with a light press of his palm to the small of my back.

“Are they actually arguing?”

He rewarded me with another laugh, rich and deeply amused.

“Of course. Nothing more important in a relationship than nacho consistency and crunch,” he drawled, eyes crinkling at the corners.

A “no” would’ve sufficed. Asshole.

I shrugged off his hand and darted to the ball return, where my unlucky orange one was spinning lazily.

“Round two,” he purred. “You with me?”

The curl to his lip made me want to smack him again.

“I don’t need any more lessons.”

I tried to ignore the way every nerve prickled with awareness as we leaned down to grab a ball each and our arms brushed. Neither pulled back. He grinned wolfishly, as if I’d fallen into a trap he’d laid for me, and pressed his shoulder into mine.

“Come on, you don’t think you can do it?” he taunted, in that patronising lilt that made me want to both shove him and pull him closer.

I saw red.

Gripping the ball with a touch more force than necessary, I focused on the grounding sensation of the cool plastic and not on his heat brushing my shoulder. He arched in—the little shit—and dropped his voice, reminding me he knew exactly what he was doing.

“For a strike, you want to hit right there,” he instructed, pointing to the pocket between the first and third pins.

“Completely ignore the first one,” he added on a whisper that kicked up pinpricks of awareness down my spine.