Page 23 of The Beautiful Collision
Seven. Eight. Nine.
But a few times, I’ve nailed it, a well-timed joke or a witty comeback. And when she laughs… well, I’m not going to say some cliché shit like ‘it’s like angels singing’, but when sheactuallylaughs—not that surgical exhale but the real thing—it’s messy and beautiful.
Ten. Eleven. Twelve.
I hear her chair scrape against hardwood, but don’t think much of it, until I can literally smell her getting closer, the scent cutting through my post-shift marinade. She materializes in my peripheral vision, stopping just outside the threshold of my bedroom like she’s honoring vampire rules.
And then, she watches.
Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen.
I don’t say anything. Don’t even acknowledge she’s there. If she wants a show, then I’m happy to oblige with something that’s Marines-commercial perfect, hopefully givinghersome of the frustration and attraction I’ve been feeling for days.
Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen.
“Peacocking for an audience of one, Hamilton?”
Her remark makes my overheating skin even more scorching, but I focus on keeping my form textbook—chest kisses bar, full extension, controlled descent. The last thing I need is for her to think she’s got me rattled, but as I try to load a comeback to her quip, I make a critical error.
I meet her eyes.
And there it is.
For half a heartbeat, maybe less, something else bleeds through her expression. The smirk holds position but her eyes betray her, tracking down my chest with heat-seeking focus. They pause at my abs, where sweat pools in the grooves, and linger at the V where my sweatpants barely cling to hip bones.
Then they snap back up, but not before I see what was in them.
Want.
Raw, unfiltered, rapidly buried want.
The revelation hits like a crosscheck to the lungs. Maya Hayes—the unmovable object to my unstoppable farce—just inventoried me like I’m on the menu. And, suddenly, what I thought was a one-way spark of attraction is now a two-way inferno.
That does it. My concentration shatters and my rhythm dissolves. My right palm, suddenly slick as black ice, loses purchase completely. Gravity claims me and I plummet—knees buckling, left hand scrambling for the doorframe to avoid a complete catastrophe, and my ass hits the floor.
She raises an eyebrow, her sense of victory clear in that knife-edged smile. “Really committed to that dismount,” she says. “Points for creativity.”
I open my mouth to give some smart-ass retort and recover my dignity, but I’ve got nothing. Maine Hamilton, who’s never met a silence he couldn’t fill or an ass he couldn’t outsmart, is sitting on his ass with sweat cooling into embarrassment and smelling like garlic.
“Yeah, well.” I push up to standing, trying to salvage dignity from this car wreck. “Gotta give the people what they want.”
It’s a weak-ass comeback, and we both know it.
“The people.” She tastes the words, lets them hang, her silence telling me what she thinks of my return of serve. “All one of me.”
She takes a step closer. The hallway contracts. She has to tilt her face up to maintain eye contact—I’ve got thirteen inches on her—but somehow she’s still winning this altitude contest. I can smell her, and that damn bra-and-tank top combination is trying to pull my gaze down to her cleavage like a tractor beam.
Goddamnit.
I can’t even escape her in my bedroom.
“You missed a spot in your… enthusiastic… cleaning performance earlier,” she says. “There’s marinara splatter that’s five days old.”
One second she’s eye-fucking me, the next she’s critiquing my food sanitation. “Tomorrow,” I manage, my voice finding something close to steady. “Scout’s honor.”
“You were never a scout.” Another smirk. “Scouts have discipline. Follow-through. The ability to complete pull-ups without requiring medical attention.”
The flirty artillery lands right on target.
