His grin is blazing. “You’re on.” He moves a pawn toward the center, his typical opening.
Three moves later, he captures my queen’s knight. He sets it on the table with a precise twist of his fingers before he folds his hands over his flat stomach and lounges back. “Let me see,” he drawls. That dimple tugs. “Am I good in bed?”
I laugh. I can’t help it. “You aresucha man. Yes. Yes, you’re amazing.” My eyes go to his muscled chest and his lean hips in those boxers that reveal more than they conceal and back up to his teasing grin.
His own eyes gleam before he leans forward. “No, Katie,wewere amazing. It takes two.” He taps the stolen piece on the table. “That’s the secret to good sex.”
I shift on the chair. “It felt easy between us.” I chance a look up at him, viscerally aware of my inexperience, but he’s smiling at me, more with his eyes than his mouth.
“Yeah,” he says. “It did.”
I want to do it again, and worse, I’m not certain I’ll ever feel what I felt with Tristan with anyone else.
I look back down at the board and hurriedly counter by stealing his king’s knight.
“Make it good, Bailey,” he croons.
I crack my knuckles. “First time you thought about me naked?”
He chokes on his beer. “Really?”
“Yep.”
His tongue peeks out to pick up a drop of beer on his lip and my stomach dips in response.
“Early,” he says hesitantly. He turns the beer bottle in front of him. “Ah, probably that time you nearly fell off the ladder. You were um, wearing shorts, and I—” He winces, looking sheepish. “Guilty.”
I bark a shocked laugh. “Shorts, really?”
“You have nice legs,” he exclaims before he leans forward, eyes alight. “Let me win and I promise you I’ll treat them very well.”
That champagne feeling is swelling inside me. I move a pawn, pretending to be unaffected. “That was the first day we met, Tristan.”
He moves his bishop. “I wasn’t being a pervert.”
“Your words,” I tease, my eyes on the piece that he’s made vulnerable.
“I just—I noticed, okay? But you needed a friend, not a fling, so you went into the friend-employee box, and then—” He scrubs a hand over the back of his neck. “That boxmust have gotten too full, and well, I don’t think I’m closing it anytime soon.”
“Don’t close it,” I say hurriedly, then look down at my pieces again. I can feel his gaze on my face, and my skin starts to heat.
I want to figure him out, but I definitely don’t want him to know just how badly I want this. How much I want to be part of his world, someone worthy of being claimed by him, of being more than a fling.
I move a pawn, then meet his gaze. He’s looking at me like I’m a puzzle he wants to take apart or a chess game he wants to win. I’m always in the background, but never with him, and god, I never want it to stop.
“Oh, Bailey.” He grins. “Bad move.” He captures my queen, and my jaw drops.
“I was distracted,” I protest. “It’s the bare skin.” I scowl at him. “Normally, I would never.”
He tosses it from hand to hand. “I know. And yet.” His smile is viciously satisfied. “This should be worth two questions, don’t you think?”
“Um, sure.” I’m on my back foot now. There’s a free-falling sensation inside me as he sips his beer, and suddenly I think I’ve been trapped by the game I started.
Tristan Prince wants something, and I’m not sure what. His throat moves in a long swallow before he sets his beer down and cocks his head. “First time you thought aboutmenaked?”
“Early,” I say hesitantly. His brows go up as his fingers dance over the knight in front of him, a clear threat, should I keep trying to control the middle. “Fine,” I sigh. “The first time we went up to the roof. Your birthday three years ago.”
His knight topples, and he quickly rights it. “Two weeks after we met? You thought about me naked thatlong ago?” There’s an odd hitch in his voice that makes me squirm in my seat. I’m being too honest and I’m clinging too tightly and this is definitely going to end catastrophically for me. But I can’t stop. Tristan cracked something open—a protective shell I’ve had around myself for years.
