Page 12 of The Marriage Deal
She makes a noise of feminine frustration that is cute as hell, flipping the scissors around on a finger as she takes a step toward me. “You’re so?—”
I take my own step and her words die on the tip of her little pink tongue. My pitch drops as she inhales a sharp breath at my sudden closeness.
“Do you remember why I took your scissors, Lilah?” I don’t miss the surprise that flashes in her eyes at my use of her name. I also don’t give her time to fumble for an answer before I give it to her. “You were being unsafe with them. Unsafe in a way that could get you hurt.”
A quick flash of something I don’t like ignites hereyes. She hugs the scissors to her chest, shuffling back a step. “Is that a threat?”
What the fuck?
“No.” How could she have mistaken my words like that? “I would never hurt you. Hence why I took your scissors in the first place.”
She expels a breath that tastes faintly of fear. “I don’t think I like you.”
“The feeling is mutual.” It’s not exactly a lie. I’m attracted to the woman, but she drives me wild in a way I can’t say I like.
Still, I can’t take my eyes off the sour puckering of her pretty pink lips or the wrinkle in her furrowed brow. With a shake of her head, she tears her eyes easily from me to return to her pot. She holsters the blue scissors in the pocket of her shorts and clips a wilting flower with the pink scissors.
I wish I could look away from her so simply, but the woman is hard to look away from. It’s more than her beauty, though. It’s the raw wild that surges beneath. Like a riptide, just waiting to pull an unsuspecting man out to the sea of her. Waiting to drown him in an ocean of obsession and reluctant need.
I slide my hands into the front pockets of my jeans, unable to keep from watching her as I lean against a timber pillar. “Have dinner with me.”
She shoots me an evil eye. “I thought you didn’t like me.”
She clips another flower. I watch.
“I don’t need to like you to have dinner with you.”
She straightens, narrowing her eyes. “Are you fishing for hate sex, Mr. Alder?”
I almost choke on the raw wave of her that those words slam into me. The vision those words evoke of her, naked and bent over as I pound every ounce of hate I have into her. I clear my throat. “I proposed dinner, not sex, Ms. Bellamy. I’m open to negotiation, though.”
The woman doesn’t even bother to blush. She regards me with the kind of wild a man can’t hope to contain. The kind of confident wild that inspired her to jump from that cliff into the water at the end of the burning falls. It’s the kind of wild that inspireslivingat its core. The kind of wild I’ve never managed to capture for myself. Probably never would.
Her hand slides up to her waist, hiking the hem of her shirt high enough to give me a damn good visual of the curve of her hip, and the outline of the scissors she put there.
“Why do you want to have dinner, Mr. Alder?”
“Briggs, Lilah. You’ve called me Briggs from day one, when you tortured me with the experience of meeting you.”
She rolls her eyes, but there’s a reluctant twitch to those soft, full lips that I memorize. “Why are we having dinner, Briggs?”
Hell, I like my name on her lips.“I have a job proposition for you.”
“I have a job.”
“A better job.”
She takes offense to my words. “I like my job. I don’t have to deal with you while I do it.” I cock a brow and she amends on a cute as hell pout, “Usually.”
“Hear me out,” I implore as she turns back to her plant.
She sighs, but doesn’t spare me a look. “I’m listening.”
This woman.“Over dinner, Lilah. Hear me out over dinner.”
I like the sound of her name on my tongue, too. The way it rolls. The soft, seductive weight of it.
She’s trouble and I’ve always been so careful to steer clear of trouble.
