Page 33 of All Our Nevers

I try to stride past him but he sidesteps me, planting himself squarely in my path. “Okay, well I am too.”

“Just give me like twenty minutes. I hate feeling sweaty.” I step to the right.

Owen mirrors me. “So do I.”

The glimmer in his frigid blue eyes tells me everything I need to know. He doesn’t really care about showering first. He just can’t pass up an opportunity to piss me off.

“You’re really gonna fight me on this?”

“I sure am.” He plants his hands on his hips, pushing the hem of his workout tee up just enough to reveal a sliver of skin.

And suddenly, inspiration strikes.

Why fight fair when I know exactly what will knock him off-kilter?

“Hmm,” I muse, taking one step back. “What a shame. You’re too slow. You see, I’m already half-naked.”

Before he has time to process, I reach down for the edge of my tank top, pulling it over my head. The cotton shirt lands on the floor with a soft flop.

Bullseye.

Owen’s face melts, expression slackening as his eyes travel down my body of their own volition. And I may not like him, but I love this. The power. The control. My posture is perfect, shoulders back, leggings clinging to my thighs, breasts pillowing over the top of my purple sports bra, as I watch this fully-grown man with an Ivy League law degree be intellectually cowed by a pair of tits.

But—to his minor credit—he doesn’t capitulate quite yet. He shakes himself awake, then reaches for the hem of his own shirt.

“Funny,” he says as he pulls it off and tosses it aside. “So am I.”

And this is a surprise.

Owen’s appearance has always been… uninspired. Perpetually overdressed and sternly professional. Gray pants. White shirts. Black shoes. Generic rich-man watches. Even when he mentioned having tattoos, I was envisioning something rigidly structured. A uniform style, evenly spaced.

Instead, I see a free-flowing patchwork of black ink scattered across his chest. Not everywhere, but throughout. Words and images, simple linework and full shading, eclectic but… lovely. A caterpillar on his chest. Cursive script across his ribs. A snake looping around his collarbone—

“Like the view, Amelia?”

My gaze snaps up, cheeks warm.

Dammit. He will not win this round.

My chin dips an inch, eyes narrowed to slits. He’s ready to play, and so am I.

Wordlessly, I hook my thumbs into the waistband of my leggings. The spandex shimmies down my legs until I kick them to the side and I’m left standing in nothing but my thong and bra (I really hope my friends and brother don’t wake up right now, but I’m unwilling to lose this fight for the risk.).

And it pays off.

Owen has lost all subtlety. His eyes scan every inch of my body—my legs, my stomach, back to the breasts he was ogling before, cycling through on repeat, buffering, buffering, buffering...

“Like the view, Owen?”

Unlike me, he’s slow to react to the words. His gaze traces a languid path up my body until he meets my eyes.

I expect to find embarrassment in his expression, or even anger. But no. A cocky smile pulls at the corner of his mouth, head shaking slowly like he loves whatever this is—the challenge, the temptation. We’re writing the rules of today’s game in a language neither of us speaks fluently. It’s new and wild and thrilling.

“You should’ve been a lawyer,” he says, voice a warm drip of honey.

“Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

“For my benefit.” Two thumbs tuck into the waistband of his shorts. “I so rarely meet someone to really go toe-to-toe with, in the courtroom or otherwise. But you? You’re vicious.”