Page 25 of Resurfaced Passion

“After he leaves.”

The hairs on the back of her neck stood on fucking end.

She’d waited and waited for any kind of sign from him that he wanted to take her out of the friendzone. They spent Christmases together, for flips sake. He bought her birthday gifts and cake and he was always there if she needed something and in all this time, it was nada on the romantic front.

She’d accepted it.

Now she didn’t know what this behavior meant. Big brother over protection?

It was mortifying, is what it was. She sent Carson an apologetic smile and found him scowling at her.

She’d felt no attraction whatsoever, and suspected it was the same for him, but she thought they’d been having a nice conversation.

She climbed to her feet and both men looked up.

She gave her attention to the broody one with the beanie hat pulled down almost over his eyebrows and his aura spiking her libido like she was a drum and he had the sticks and rhythm.

“I’m going to use the restroom and you’ll be gone by the time I come back, Reaper, so I can continue with my date.”

She left them both there and rushed to the ladies with her red face and her insides tight with knots.

She wasn’t mad.

She wasn’t.

Not even an inch of crossness.

Nope.

She was shaking when the door behind her suddenly swung open. Expecting another girl needing the facilities she straightened to see Reaper closing the door behind him.

“Oh my god. Are you seriously deranged right now? You can’t follow me into the bathroom, Reaper. What’s going on with you?”

“Get rid of him.” He all but growled striding forward until she was forced to back her feet up, her butt hit the ceramic basins.

His beast was showing beneath his otherwise quiet skin and Paige was… enthralled by his ruffled fur.

In contrast to his obvious discomfort? Anger? Whatever it was, Reaper reached out and moved a strand of hair against her cheek.

Fire flash-flooded through her.

His infrequent touch was mind-fucking her so hard she didn’t know whether she’d need to be tested for some sexually frustrated disease afterward.

She craved his attention like a drug.

It was so unfair, so flipping unfair, all those emotions and sexually unfulfilled feelings poured out of the box she kept them in, because they werefriends. And nothing more.

A man that …competent, she just had a feeling he would be spectacular in bed and for that pussy-melting thought she’d always had to lock most of her feelings for him away.

Now it was like a runaway train between her throbbing legs.

For a split second he looked so desperate that guilt pinched at her nerve endings but before she knew it, she heard him mutter ‘fuck it’ and he whipped her around to face the long mirror. She gasped as he wrapped her hands on the cold ceramic, moving his body into her back, she was hyper aware of his heat stroking through her clothes. So much so that his image appeared in the mirror behind hers and Paige stopped breathing.

“You see that woman there?” He never broke his gaze, his mouth practically brushing against her ear as he leaned over her shoulder. “You see how her cheeks color at the slightest provocation? They do that when she’s happy, when she’s mad, or embarrassed. They also turn that pink when she’s aroused.”

That air Paige couldn’t find? Yeah, it whooshed right back into her lungs like a speeding bullet on a plummeting aircraft. She wanted to tell him he couldn’t say things like that, not to her, not after he’d placed her in the friend box long ago.

It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right.

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