Chapter 16: Angel
It was surreal to sit on Onyx’s bed as he sat beside me, half-dressed and entirely focused on the screen of his laptop. I was self-conscious as it was, sitting here in my PJs, and had he not been the most annoying man on the planet, I maybe wouldn’t have been irritated at being so incredibly distracted by the six-pack he was showing off.
His body was . . . perfect. He was lean but still strong and toned. His biceps had definition even as he clicked on his mouse. His forearms were golden with sparse brown hair. His hands were smooth with long, almost delicate fingers ending in a perfectly manicured fingernail. But I remembered too well those same hands wrapped around a baseball bat as he brought it down on Dave’s car and, later, Dave himself.
“If you take a picture, it’ll last longer,” he commented softly beside me as he searched through the images on the screen.
“What?”
“You’re staring.”
“I . . . I wasn’t!”
“If you say so.”
Shit.He caught me, fine. I should own it. But the sheer smugness of him sitting there, knowing I had been admiring — no,notadmiring,considering— him, pissed me off. “Idosay so.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Onyx, I wasn’t staring at you.”
“Okay,” he murmured as he typed in a string of gobbledygook, and the screen changed to a different angle.
“How do you know how to do this?” I asked him as I leaned closer to the screen.
“I have a lot of skills,” he answered easily.
“Yes, I know, you’re God’s gift to everyone,” I said with mild exasperation, “but how do you knowhowto dothis? You’re a sports agent.”
“Transferable skills.”
“It’s impossible to talk to you. You’re a dreadful man.”
I saw the corner of his mouth tilt upward, and I knew I was amusing him.
“I’m going to bed,” I declared loudly and cringed immediately at how ridiculously brash I sounded.
“I asked you to sit here for a reason, not to give you an opportunity to drool over my abs and then become defensive about it.”
“You don’t even need abs,” I snarked at him.
Taking his attention off the screen, he turned to look at me. “Really? So, because I’m an agent and not a player, I don’t need to be healthy?” He flicked his gaze over me again.
“I didn’t say that,” I mumbled as I picked at the hem of my PJ top. “It was stupid. I’m tired. What did you want me in your bed for?”
An eyebrow rose. One very long, slow look was cast up and down my body, and I felt the heat racing up and over my chest to my cheeks.
“I, uh, I didn’t mean in—”
His lip curled in amusement. “I think we both know that you did.” Onyx turned his attention back to the screen. “Here.” He pointed at the screen. “Does this look like a person to you?”
“Can you move the screen closer to me?”
“No, you move closer. I don’t bite.”
“Well, we both know that’s a lie,” I quipped before I thought about it. Holy shit, what the hell was wrong with me tonight?
“I think someone is missing Bob.”
