Page 66 of Mercenary
But I almost have a knot, just one more slide . . . there.
“Fuck,” he says, pausing briefly before demanding, “Show me.”
I stick out my tongue and display my tongue-work. And in a heartbeat, my insides twist into knots of pleasure as I watch him crack.
A smile, he’s cracked a smile.
Or perhaps it’s more than that, that my tongue trick’s somehow lightened to his spirit. Wishful thinking, that.
It feels like a blast of sunshine breaking through an Oklahoma rain shower. Transforming him into the handsome man from my fantasies. With his all-American good looks—which with him being so fierce, so bleeding intimidating, most people likely overlook—messy blond hair, and a light scruff of hair across his jawline. The high cut of his cheekbones seem less severe. He seems like a guy you meet on a San Diego beach, with a surfboard beneath an arm and a cocky, come-closer-honey air about him. Without his familiar tightly drawn lips, his smile’s an instant panty-wetter. His smile makes me think everything’s going to be fine: we’ll find my sister, we’ll see where this twisted road we’re on takes us.
And the unexpectedness of it devastates me. I’m tongue-tied. Overwhelmed by the immediate chemistry between us. No denying there’s something there. And he feels it, too.
I shouldn’t want him. He’s no easygoing surfer. Hell, he’s a hundred times more complicated than the knot I just tied.
But I do.
God, do I want him.
He stands and moves before me, plucking my cherry off the napkin.
“Get up, baby.”
I stand, nervous in a good way.
He squeezes my cherry between his fingers. Ever so slowly, he brings the squishy mess to my mouth, caressing first my top then my bottom lip, coating them with juice. When he pops the cherry into his mouth, I think we’re done. But we’re not. He steps in closer, running a thumb across the sweet trail he’s created on my bottom lip. Marking me with a sticky stain. Reminiscent of what he’d done with my homemade icing, all those months ago on my birthday.
Before he kissed me.
My first kiss.
The sweetest thing that’s ever happened to me in every sense of the word.
I lift my head, inviting him in for a taste.
Breathless seconds pass.
Until I realize a few things at once. I still have the stem in my mouth. And he’s not going to do it. He’s not going to kiss me. He’s freezing me out.
“Over there.” He turns away, nodding toward the red brick building across the street.
“What is it?” I mumble. The stem combined with my disappointment making it hard to speak.
“An apartment. She might be there.”
I spit the stem onto the ground. “All this time, we’ve been sitting idly across the street, like a new couple on their first Sunday date . . . like two people without a care in the world when it’s the farthest thing from true . . . and my sister might be across the street?”
“Probably long gone by now.”
“What? If you think she’s not in Dayton then why are we here?”
“Hedging my bets,” he replies, his words as ambiguous as I’m-going-to-not-kiss-you actions. Because he wanted to kiss me. That cherry trick of his is no lie.
“Hold my hand.”
“Hold your hand . . . ?”
Without waiting for me to act, he snatches my hand into his own. “Let’s go have a look.”
