An exasperated pfft sputtered past my lips. “My dad won’t fire you if you phrase it right. Just tell him you jumped off of the cliff to save me after I fell and were being all heroic and shit.”
It’s the dumbass truth, after all.
He lifted his head off of the tree trunk, leveling his glare to me. “But he will fire me for letting you out of my sight long enough to allow you to fall off a cliff in the first place.”
“Just say I jumped for the hell of it. He’d believe it.”
Agent Reyes stared at me for a second more, and behind him, the sunset streaked the sky a raw red, backlighting the glow of his irritated gaze. It was as though the sky had been sliced by the shards of narrowing light and was bleeding out, and his eyes were the beating heart of it all.
“We shouldn’t be out here anyway.” He shook his head and the look from his eyes, digging the heel of his shoe into the grass. “This was dumb. This was so fucking dumb.”
“Reyes, chill. I can hear your teeth grinding from over here.”
That hard-set jaw of his somehow clenched harder, and I could have sworn I heard bone cracking beneath.
“It’s kind of hard to chill when I’m stuck in the woods at night with a woman intent on killing us both.” He plucked a leaf from above, folding it over with his fingers.
He has half a point there.
“I promise to try and not fall off any more cliffs if you promise to be on your best boy scout behavior tonight.”
“If I was on my best boy scout behavior, I’d find some rope and tie you to a tree tonight,” he grumbled, chucking the leaf he’d mutilated in seconds to the side.
I cocked my head, observing Agent Reyes with his offhanded comment pulling between both ears. Interesting. First his likeness to choking and now a mention of tying me up.
That, blended together with a dominance that leveled the elements to a standstill, created quite the enticing equation. Not to mention his entire being was a rugged handsomeness that even I couldn’t deny with his tall, broad frame and striking features.
“You know, if I didn’t loathe you so much,” I started, still eyeing him. “I think I’d be really interested in fucking you.”
Reyes’ focus on his heel in the grass ripped up, nostrils flaring wide as his stare practically fucking screamed with fire. He didn’t speak, and my mouth curled up on the side at his silence, enjoying how I’d caught him off guard and the answer that blared through his silence.
He’d thought about fucking me too, and maybe just might if he wasn’t who he was to me.
If we weren’t pitted against each other. If he didn’t work for my dad and I didn’t hate every breath that flowed through my lungs.
The bite of his stare grew sharper teeth as he angled his head low, eyes peeking beneath thick, angry brows.
“Don’t say shit like that to me.”
I tilted my chin up. “I can say whatever the fuck I want.”
“Doesn’t mean you should.”
“And why not?”
“Because it’s inappropriate,” he snarled.
“That’s your opinion. It doesn’t fluster me like it flusters you, sir.”
Warning flashed across his stare, as dark and as foreboding as the blackening sky behind him. “Don’t start.”
Ah, but I already had, and I wouldn’t stop now because James Reyes worried me.
The short-fused, callous man I’d met just days ago was beginning to slip away, and I had absolutely zero desire to meet whoever was beneath. I refused to let go of the first version of him; I’d sink my claws in until he howled and forgot all about how he talked to me like he didn’t hate me and touched me like I was fractured glass.
How he spoke to me during our walk through the woods, wanting more personal information than was right to want, was unsettling. It wasn’t right.
I wanted silence or mayhem for us. There was no place for anything in between.