Page 69 of Ace of Spades

“You can’t look at me like that, Sienna,” I say, my voice like sandpaper.

She lifts her chin.

“Would you prefer I look at Joshua Hicks like that instead,Captain.”

There she goes, hitting every button like she knows exactly which ones will make me combust.

She noticed me noticing her.

I drag a hand through my hair, trying to find some kind of control.

But it’s gone. She took it the second she landed in my lap and looked at me likeshe felt it too.

“I keep telling myself to stay away,” I mutter. “But you keep showing up in all the places you don’t belong. At my shop. At my poker games. In my goddamnlap.And I’m running out of excuses.”

She doesn’t say anything, just looks at me like a woman who holds all the power.

Because she fucking does. And she knows it.

“That sounds like a you problem, Levi.”

I let out a heavy sigh.

Because it very much is ameproblem. The problem is that I want a woman nearly half my age. A woman whose father happens to be my closest friend.

And now she’s working for me.

It’s fucked up on so many levels.

“Look,” she says. My eyes falling to her pouty lips for a split second. “I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit that I’ve thought about us doing… more.”

“More what?”

She reaches for the buckle of my belt and pulls me toward her so that our bodies are touching.

“Don’t play coy, Levi. I may be young, but I’m not innocent.”

I lower my head so that our faces are nearly touching.

“Don’t stoke a fire you don’t want to burn, Sienna.”

“What if I want to burn?” she says.

For one suspended moment, we juststand there.

The tension between us is pulsing. Building. Then a door slams down the hall.

Footsteps. Voices.

I swear and step back, just enough to breathe.

“We should get back,” I say, even though every part of me is screaming to do the opposite. “Before someone notices.”

“Yeah,” she says, barely more than a whisper.

The disappointment drips from her lips.

We nod at the Thunderhawk staff as they walk past us with suspicious looks.

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