Page 18 of Slow Burn
His lips twitched. I wasn't sure if he was holding back a smile or a snarl. "I'd like to see you try." Spinning on his heel with grace no man his size should have, he strode to the fence between our properties and hopped right over it with zero effort.
Big, loud sirens went off in my head. That man was trouble with a capital T.
I think I like trouble.
9
ADAM
I had a damn problem.
And it wasn't just my neighbor's rat who seemed to think I was his babysitter while his human was away during the day.
The little shit had showed up on my doorstep three days ago and no matter how many times I'd carted him back, he kept following me home.
Which in turn meant I had to take him back in the afternoons when my neighbor got off work, or wherever the hell she spent her days. Then of course that led me to spending a few minutes telling my gorgeous but annoying neighbor to keep her dog on her side of the fence while she stared at me with those whiskey eyes, thinking who knew what.
Her open study of me should've made me feel uncomfortable. I didn't like being under anyone's spotlight. But every time she trained her gaze on me, something shifted. I didn't understand it, nor did I attempt to make sense of it. I just knew it was there, simmering below the surface.
Unfortunately, that was only half of the problem.
The rest of it bowled down to the simple fact that instead of coming out in the morning and stumbling across my light-footed neighbor, I now waited for her. Waited like a thief in the shadows to steal a tiny bit of joy radiating off her when she swayed and twirled like no one was watching.
My beach ballerina.
Even though the dancing she was doing was more contemporary than ballet. Yeah, I'd spent an embarrassing amount of time on the internet trying to find out what exactly it was she was doing. And I'd wanted to find out whether it was any kind of dancing that calmed me or if it was only her.
No points for guessing which one it was.
From my current perch behind my sliding door, I caught movement coming from the general direction of my neighbor's yard and I immediately shifted a little more to my left to remain out of sight.
I remained there for about a minute before gingerly opening the door and slipping outside. Long, easy strides carried me to the edge of my property, an unfamiliar zing zipping through my veins.
Until my gaze locked onto her.
In an instant, a sense of calm I had no right to wrapped itself around me like a thick blanket. My chest rose and fell with the deep drag of air I sucked to my lungs over and over again. I wanted to tip my head toward the sun and just be in that small moment of contentment.
The only thing stopping me from doing just that was the woman on the beach kicking up a cloud of sand.
How would it feel to be in the middle of that? To watch her spin and leap around me. To be close enough to learn what her hair smelled like. Or to feel her skin against mine. I wanted to know what that sweet voice of hers sounded like when she was all breathy from dancing for hours and hours.
Yeah, I had a problem all right, and it was painfully obvious who was at the center of it.
And it was because of this problem that I could tell there was something off with her routine. Her movements were sharp and choppy. Almost angry. I felt the shift inside of me, the anxious feeling of needing to know why she was upset.
I brought my hand to my chest and brushed my fingers over the scars beneath my shirt, completely transfixed on the woman slamming her fists in the sand. Her leg kicked back and, in a blink, she was on her feet again, hands reaching for an imaginary anchor in front of her.
I felt her anger, her pain, with every rough jerk of her body. She leaped through the air but instead of landing on both her feet like she usually did, she stumbled to her side before collapsing onto the sand.
Her hands shot out to her ankle, her face contorting with what I could only presume was pain. My feet were moving before my brain had time to issue the command. Sprinting down the little path that led to the beach, I reached her in mere seconds.
There was no conscious thought to my actions when I bent over and shoved my arm under her knees and hoistedher up. Not until the feeling of her body—even though it was just the side of her—was pressed up against me. Standing in a puddle with live wires touching the water from every angle wouldn't have had the same impact as her skin touching mine had.
Electricity zipped and zapped through my body without any sense of direction. I didn't know if I wanted to hold my breath or suck in a deep drag of air.
"What the hell are you doing?" the woman in my arms demanded. And because I couldn't speak, I hefted her higher and started walking toward the path. "Oh my goodness, would you freaking stop manhandling me!"
That did it. The fog clouding my brain dissipated like mist before the sun. In a move that probably wasn't very nice, I roughly deposited her back on her ass… in the sand. "Owww." She had the audacity to glare at me as if I was to blame for her pain.
