Sloane snorted. “Please. He always looks that way. It’s a permanent case of PMS.”
“Uh, no. I have to agree with Naomi. He looks like he wants to murder someone and that someone might be—”
“I told you to stay put,” Lucian snapped at Sloane.
“And I told you to kiss my ass. I guess neither one of us does what we’re told,” she said, enjoying her vantage point over him.
“Oh boy,” Naomi whispered, tilting her bag of popcorn in my direction.
I took a handful.
Lucian reached up, hooked his hands under Sloane’s arms, and scooped her off the table. She yelped, then struggled as he held her at eye level for just a beat before lowering her to the ground.
“I love it when a guy can do that,” I said.
“Be more careful,” Lucian growled. The man was a foot taller than she was and he used that height to loom over her.
Sloane, however, had no intention of being intimidated.
Fire burned bright in her eyes as she went toe-to-toe with him. “Right. Because me dancing is a provocation. I was basically asking for some drunk moron to put his hands on me.”
Naomi crunched loudly next to me.
“If you don’t want me to get involved, stop making it impossible,” he snarled.
“Read my lips, Lucian. I don’t need you anywhere near my life. So you can stop pretending you care. We both know the truth.”
“Damn,” I whispered, helping myself to more of Naomi’s popcorn. “Did his eyes just change color and get more dangerous?”
“Oh, definitely,” Naomi agreed.
“He looks like he wants to take a bite out of her,” I observed. The fact that neither one of them was writhing on the ground electrocuted by the sparks they fired off at each other was a miracle.
“I know, right? I can’t believe they haven’t torn each other’s clothes off and hate banged yet.”
“When they do, I bet it’ll shift the earth’s axis and send us spinning off into space,” I predicted.
Nash stole our attention from the picnic table standoff by clapping his hands in the center of what had been the dance floor. “All right, everybody. It’s still a party. What are y’all doing just standing around?”
He gave the band an impatient signal and they immediately launched into Thomas Rhett’s “Die a Happy Man.”
Knox appeared in front of us. With one tug on Naomi’s hand, he had her falling over his shoulder. “Let’s go, Daisy.” He put a hand on her ass and carried her laughing to the dance floor.
Other couples joined them. I was alone on the picnic table, thinking I could use another drink, when someone snagged my wrist. Nash Morgan looked up at me.
“Get down here,” he ordered. His eye was puffy from Williams’s fist and there was a drop of dried blood at the corner of his mouth. Two of his knuckles were split and bleeding. He looked so damn heroic I would have swooned…if the rest of him wasn’t so annoying.
“I’m fine where I—”
He moved fast for a guy still healing from bullet wounds. Before I could fight it, he lifted me off the table and set me on the ground in front of him.
“I’m not dancing with you,” I said as his hands settled at my waist.
“Least you can do after that trouble,” he said as he gave another pull that had my hips meeting his. Those blue eyes smoldered and I wondered if my underwear was in danger of catching fire.
“You don’t look like you want to dance with me,” I said as my arms found their way around his neck.
“What do I look like?”
“Like you want to throttle me.”
“Oh no, Angel. I was thinking of something much worse.”
For once in my life, I had no intention of poking the bear. I’d seen too much of him, felt too much for him. I was standing on the edge of a precipice that I didn’t want to fall from.
We swayed from side to side to the tick-tock beat of the song, never breaking eye contact. He pulled me closer while I used my elbows to push him away, each of us applying more and more force.
“How’s your face?” I asked as my arms started to shake.
“Hurts.”
“I was handling it, you know. I could have hit him myself,” I said as my elbows lost the battle and he pulled me against his chest. Once again, Nash Morgan had gotten closer than I wanted him.
He traced the tip of his nose around the outer shell of my ear. “I know you could, baby. But I was in a better position to do more damage.”
“Clearly you’ve never been punched by me.”
We were swaying flush against each other. My elbows were on his shoulders, my hands looped behind his neck.
“Williams has a glass jaw. Everyone knows it. All you need is one shot to the right spot and he goes down like a ton of bricks. Hit him there after he assaults an officer when he’s already had two similar charges and the situation cleans itself up real fast.”
I pulled back to look up at his face.
“Okay. Maybe I’m a little impressed.”
“With what?”
“With you. I was mad. I just wanted to make him bleed. But you were fueled by rage and still had the capacity to run those calculations.”
“I had good reason to do it the right way.”
“Why’s that?”
“He touched you.”
He said it so simply, as if he wasn’t delivering the truth with the strike of a hammer. As if I didn’t feel it inside me like a thousand tiny electric shocks. As if my stupid heart didn’t fall right out of my stupid chest and land at his damn feet.
He touched you.
And just like that, I toppled right off that precipice into free fall.
A short, blond Robin Hood popped up next to us. “Hey, Lina? We’re running low on raffle tickets and I can’t see shit. Do you know where—”
“I’ll get them,” I volunteered, all but jumping out of Nash’s arms…out of his gravitational field.
Without waiting for a reply, I hauled ass toward the library. Inside, I slapped a hand to my chest and headed for the stairs. I liked my walls. I liked being safe behind them. But Nash was breaking through, and it scared the bejeezus out of me.
I took the stairs at a jog and found the second floor dark, but I didn’t want the light. I didn’t want to see the truth of what was happening. I couldn’t possibly be falling for Nash. I barely knew him. We’d had more fights than civil conversations. Two steps forward. Two steps back.
We hadn’t even had sex.
I headed for the back office when I heard the footsteps on the stairs behind me and I knew.
It was inevitable.
We were inevitable.
But that didn’t mean I was ready to face that fact.
As quietly as I could, I raced toward the office. Beyond it was a large supply closet where the raffle tickets were stored. Where I would be cornered.
He was coming fast and I had to decide, but panic made me foolish. I veered off into the small employee break room.
I didn’t make it two steps into the room before Nash caught me. Those big, rough hands settled on my hips as if staking a claim.
My back was flush with his front, every glorious inch of it. And the rightness of it had me wondering why I bothered trying to escape it in the first place.