“Then what would you call it?”
“A power move.”
The corner of his mouth totally twitched. “And what do you know about power moves?”
“I know that men believe they have a monopoly over them that usually involves grunting or punching.”
This time, it was his thick eyebrow that did the amused twitching. I loved it. Fucking loved watching him try so hard not to enjoy whatever I did or said and utterly fail.
“Is that all you think we do? Grunt and punch?”
“And swing around your dicks like it’s some fucking wild card and life is a big game of Uno,” I quipped fast, sealing my smirk closed with a sip of citrus bubbles.
Eyes cut from the sun itself dropped to my mouth, tracing down the column of my throat as I drank.
“How eloquently put.”
“Says the man stashing a mammoth of a wild card in his pants.”
A pebble of orange juice stuck to my bottom lip as I pulled the glass away, my pinky finger pushing the plumpest part of it behind my teeth to suck it off.James watched the entire display with a clenched jaw.
The breeze played with his dark hair, tugging that fishhook curl in the front free to drape over his forehead. That sweetened stare of his corrupted with slow-acting heat, darkening as if the clouds overcast the sun. His focus on my mouth wasn’t even a lingering but a shameless obsession he couldn’t look away from, which meant he got to watch as victory peeled a closed-mouth grin up across my lips.
Unbidden enjoyment ran a blurry line across his eyes as he gave a slow shake of his head.
“Your smile is fucking devilish, you know that, right?”
My wicked smile broadened for him, and he absorbed every glowing second of it.
I casually pointed my chin up at him, thriving in this languid current of tension moving between us.
“You never did answer my question.”
This all felt so fucking good, so easy to be swept up in him and him in me.
He was the water, and I was the salt of the ocean. He was powerful and magnificent while I was a potent and bitter speck. I stung his existence while he soothed my relentless burn, converging into a force of nature more fundamental than life itself.
And I wanted to keep going, keep bleeding into him and see just how good James Reyes could make me feel.
He gave a resigned sigh and leaned back in his chair, smoothing his hand down his jawline. “Well, I definitely haven’t fucked in a church.”
“So then where?”
A battle he’d already lost and knew it too played across his features, and I simply waited for his fold. It came after a thick swallow and a distracting squint up at the sun.
“Work.” James showed me his strict profile, elaborating as if unwilling. “One of the interrogation rooms.”
Images of him bare-chested and fucking like a stallion pile-drove through my mind. Unexpectedly, a stunning brunette slipped into the sweaty moving pictures behind my eyes, long golden legs spread on a table for James as he speared his hips between them.
Rebecca. He was most likely talking about a tryst he’d had with Rebecca when they were dating and worked together. A peculiar wave rolled through my stomach, curling around the bubbles I’d consumed and popping them all.
I still couldn’t see how he and her were ever together. They were so different. I couldn’t see them kissing and hugging and fucking like lovers.
Or maybe I just didn’t like picturing it.
Trying to refocus on the conversation, I mused, “I wonder if it was one of the rooms Dad used to stick me in when he worked late and Mom didn’t want me around.”
James slung his arm over the back of the empty chair next to him, contemplation stringing thoughts across his golden gaze. His attention was wholly and undividedly mine, something of significance dotting his pupils.