“It's a good move,” Miya said. “I wish everyone asked first. I just thought you'd say something charming or sexy.”
Lance eyed her with a skeptical quirk of his brows. “It's incredibly charmingandsexy when I ask a woman if I can kiss her.”
Miya rolled her eyes. “I'm sure it is.”
“Here's the best part of my move—and I'm not bragging.”
“None of this sounds remotely like bragging.”
He snorted but continued. “She expects me to be nervous, because women I like make me incredibly nervous, and they tend to pick up on this.”
“Shocking.”
“I'm not by then. It's an entirely different experience than anyone might expect. That's what makes the move so good.”
“Different how?”
“I surprise people, Miya.” Lance held her gaze with his kind eyes. “I'm very confident when I kiss a woman.”
The guilt of her objective ate through her charade. “I bet you're one of those men who learns every single thing a woman likes, and you never stop giving it to her.”
The joking vanished from the conversation. She'd taken him off guard. Stripped away the lightheartedness to what lay beneath that veneer.
“Yeah,” Lance said, surprising her, like he claimed he often did. “Every single thing.”
The night fell quiet enough to hear each breath. They hadn’t moved, but he felt so close now, with his stare melting into her own. With that quietness blanketing him—the quietness before a kiss or a touch, the kind that silenced allelse. The kind that left her wondering if while he looked at her, he tried to figure out every single thing she liked.
The shifting happened in that instant between heartbeats, not so different from drifting to sleep. A shifting in how he breathed and looked at her. He wanted to kiss her. Wrap his arms around her and learn how she felt. The want emanated from him and warmed that sliver of air between them. What surprised her most was he made her feel it too, even if only in fleeting curiosity.
Then an irresistibly boyish smile twisted the left corner of his mouth. One that didn't lessen the tension or the look in his eyes. “That's my move.”
He almost impressed her. “You ruined it.”
“No, no. It's all part of it, Miya. If I ever do kiss you, you'll realize how great my move is.”
Kissing him might be nice. Better than kissing countless people who never cared about how she felt. “Fine. I'll take your word for it, if you tell me one thing.”
“Tell you what?”
“How do you ask? I want to see it.”
“No way. I'm too embarrassed.”
Miya fell back against the shed with a sigh. “Please, you owe me this. I sat through three hours of you explaining your big move. Tell me or I'll kiss you and kill you with a heart attack.”
“That's not funny. You think I'm joking.” The way he glanced down her face told her he was more of a flirt than he gave himself credit for. “A few months is all I need for most women. For you? A couple of years.”
“Years?” Covering her face, she chuckled and groaned at the same time. “So cheesy.”
“You make me really damn nervous. Why do you think we always smoke?”
Miya was confident. Lance did not just come home from war. That changed a person. If the Krowe's used that story as a cover, then why was Lance here? Why bring a gentle giant into their home at a critical time like this? Unless Lance was family and the story about war covered up an embarrassing secret.
If the captain wasted her time…
“Why does it feel like there's so much you aren't telling me?” she asked in a quieter voice.
He watched the stars now, not looking away from them when he spoke. “Because there's so much you aren't telling me. We don't trust each other yet.”
