He doesn’t answer me, instead he keeps tidying the space, the veins in his forearms popping beneath his skin where he’s rolled his shirt sleeves up. I haven’t seen him wear anything other than T-shirts. But he’s wearing a shirt and jeans tonight. And something about the sight has me imagining what he’d look like in a suit. He looks like he was born to wear one, which is weird considering we’re at the beach.
“Look. I’ll go and leave you to whatever you’re doing. I just came to say thanks. I didn’t know about my dress.”
I turn to leave, and his words hit my back.
“I didn’t look.”
“What?” I turn back and he’s staring at me with his hands on his hips and his chest expanding slowly with measured breaths.
“I saw. But I didn’t look,” he says.
“Um, thanks.” I frown.
I turn around.
“I remember, though.”
My stomach leaps to my throat and I spin back.
Remembers what? My nipples? The way he sucked and bit them last night? The way I moaned and turned into putty in his arms?
He stares at me with a darkened gaze that makes me shiver. Something about him is different, but I can’t work out what.
“I’ve seen that guy pull that same move in that same bar before. Thought I recognized him.”
My mouth goes dry and my stomach sinks. It shouldn’t bother me that he’s not talking about remembering last night, but it does.
“So you’ve interrupted a conversation you’re not a part of and told him to fuck off before?”
“No. First time.”
“Why start tonight?” I shrug like I couldn’t care less what answer he’s about to give me, at the same time hating how my voice lifts with a hint of desperate hope. A tiny clue about how much I want to hear a man say that he’s done something reckless because of me. Because after Callum, God, I want someone to be acting reckless over me.
“You’re the first woman whose dress it worked on,” he replies.
I let out a scoff of irritation, masking the unwelcome disappointment that’s like a sinking balloon in my stomach.
“Yeah, well. Like I said. Thanks, I guess.”
I yank the door open, but a giant hand slams against it above my head, sealing it shut.
He was meters away a split second ago. The guy moves like Superman.
I incline my head and look at him over my shoulder as he speaks.
“Would you have fucked him?”
“What?”
“Tonight, if I hadn’t come over.”
“I don’t know.” I turn back to the door, readying myself to wrench it open before he can stop me again. But then rage bubbles inside me like molten lava.
I spin to face him.
“Yeah, actually. Maybe I would have. Seeing as my last attempt to forget about my ex got hijacked.”
He leans closer, his jaw rigid.
