The flash went off. The photographer gasped, ecstatic. “Yes!Yes!This is perfection!”
She didn’t move. Neither did I.
I should’ve stepped back, but her scent was right there again, warm and addicting, and my instincts dragged me closer. “You still do,” I whispered, letting the words slide between us like a secret. “Get under my skin.” My thumb stroked once, absentmindedly, across her ribcage.
She turned her head slightly, her words ghosting my jaw when she murmured something back for the camera, “You know what I think, O’Riley?”
“What’s that?” My fingers drifted around to her covered stomach. I didn’t miss the inhale she tried to hide.
“You liked losing to me.”
I grinned. Couldn’t help it. “Only because it meant I got to chase you after.”
Flash.
Flash.
The photographer was practically levitating. “This is divine! Desire! Stay like this!”
Her laugh was silent, but it vibrated between us, right through me. We were toeing a dangerous line now. Half a breath closer, and it’d stop being a pose. Half a second longer, and I’d forget we weren’t supposed to mean it.
“I was top of the class. Of course you were going to lose to me.”
I scoff into her hair. “You were second at first, remember?”
“Like you’d ever let me forget that.”
I chuckled quietly, my breath brushing against her ear still. “You still bite first and think later.”
“I don’t bite.”
Without a thought, I lifted my hand to guide her face to mine. “I wish you would.”
Our faces were inches apart. Her ocean eyes were glowing with that same determination I’d seen for four years. My other hand slid from her stomach to her hip without thought, holding her there.
“Maybe you just never got close enough to find out.”
The camera clicked, but it was faint, drowned out by the thumping organ behind my ribs. “Mon dieu! This is everything!”
Neither of us moved. We stayed locked in that spell swirling around us, both pretending we weren’t straddling some kind of line. But that had always been what we did—pushed until one of us snapped.
Finally, she leaned back a fraction, smile cool and razor-sharp. “You still hate me, O’Riley?”
I grinned, then licked my lips. “Hate’s not the word I’d use, sunshine.”
She finally stepped back, head high, eyes glinting with that victorious spark that used to make me furious, and now, it just… made me want her.
The photographer clutched his camera. “Brilliant. You two arefantastico.”
“Still with the nickname huh?” she said, voice uneven.
Yeah, it was like muscle memory, calling her that. She hated it, and I loved pissing her off… At least that was the reason back then. Now, it slipped out for reasons I couldn’t quite explain. “It suits you,” was all I could manage.
I cleared my throat and forced my hands behind my back before I did something stupid, like reach for her again.
“Break,” someone called out. The crew started moving around us. Teddy turned on her heel. “We have one more setup, then you two are free to go.”
The lights cooled, but my skin didn’t. My palms still held the shape of her waist, phantom-warm, and the smell of her clung to my shirt, pulse thudding like I’d just played a full match.
