Page 77 of Wicked Intentions (Wicked Games 3)
My laugh sounds nervous. “Jesus. And I thought I was temperamental.”
“Oh, smart. Insults and sarcasm are a great choice right now. Just keep digging that hole, cowboy.” Mariana nods slowly, her eyes pinwheeling in full serial killer mode. “Because I’m about to shove you over the edge and bury you in it.”
She’s still advancing, I’m still retreating, and I’m starting to sweat.
I had no idea that five and a half feet of female could be so terrifying.
Maybe she’s about to get her period?
In fear for their life, my testicles scream at me in no uncertain terms that I shouldn’t make that observation aloud. Instead, I start to toss out rationalizations like a nervous zookeeper might toss raw meat into the alligator moat, hoping to pacify all the snapping, ravenous teeth.
“It’s not like I could waltz into the fleabag motel and interrupt your planning! Knock, knock, who’s there, it’s your kinda-sorta boyfriend who you keep runnin’ out on! Hey, look, shiny object, you don’t have to hit the museum after all!”
“That’s exactly what you could’ve done!” she retorts hotly, steam billowing from her ears.
“You ran out on me!”
“You crossed an ocean to find me!”
“You needed time to miss me!”
She rears back with an expression of shock and horror, like I just shoved a big, rotting rat corpse under her nose. “What?”
At least she’s stopped advancing.
In my best macho-dude-who-is-NOT-intimidated-by-his-woman impersonation, I fold my arms over my chest, brace my legs apart, and peer at her down my nose.
“You heard me,” I say, then exhale in annoyance, wishing I didn’t sound like somebody’s elderly, prissy aunt.
Birdlike, Mariana cocks her head. “You wanted me to miss you?”
I narrow my eyes at her suspiciously rational tone. “Well…yeah.”
“Why?”
Now the heat crawling up my neck is embarrassment. Trying to maintain a shred of masculine dignity, I say stiffly, “I wasn’t sure if you would.”
When she just stands there staring at me in confounded silence, I figure the cat’s already out of the bag, so I might as well go for broke. “So, did you?”
“I don’t know,” she says, sounding thoughtful. “Is that what you call it when you think about someone every second of every day, dream about him every night, know without a doubt you’ll never experience anything quite as wonderful as the way he made you feel? When you ache that it’s over, yet still feel privileged to have experienced it anyway?”
I have to swallow before I answer, because someone has shoved a rock down my throat. “Yes.”
Her smile is so beautiful it could end wars. “Then I definitely didn’t miss you.”
That rumbling sound echoing through the kitchen is the growl emanating from my chest. It only serves to piss me off even more that hearing it makes her smile grow wider.
“And if you want me to decide I like you again and start telling you the truth, you better count me in on any plan you have regarding Capo, and tell me everything from here on out,” she says, full of sass and tartness. “Including,” she adds when I open my mouth to talk, “any other things I’ve been instructed to steal that you already have in your possession.”
My eyes narrow to slits. “You better sweeten that demand with a kiss, woman.”
She lifts her chin and looks at me the way one might look at a piece of debris in the gutter that fell off a passing garbage truck. “You’ll get your kiss when I get my promise.”
My brows shoot up my forehead. “You think you can blackmail me?”
“Yes, Ryan,” she replies with supreme confidence, a queen addressing her lowly subject. “That’s exactly what I think. Now, do you want your kiss or not?”
“I’ve negotiated with terrorists before, you know.”
