Page 8 of A Vicious Love

His jaw flexed. I knew he hated it. But, it made him feel approachable. Jamison Crow sounded was a dynasty threat. Jamjam sounded like a guy who might look at me one day and smile.

He didn’t look up.

“What?”

“Can you fix my bow?”

His eyes shifted from his screen to my waist.

For a second, he just stared.

“It’s crooked,” I explained quickly. “I did it in the car, and I can’t see it properly.”

“Then leave it.”

I laughed lightly because I was very good at making mean things sound like jokes. “I can’t. It’ll bother me all night.”

“It’ll bother you,” he repeated, flat.

“A little.”

He exhaled through his nose, set his glass down with more force than necessary, and stepped closer. My whole body went still before I could stop it.

Jamison’s hands came to my waist.

Large hands. Tattooed fingers. He didn’t ask me to turn. He moved me, himself, one hand at my hip, the other catching the bow’s trailing ribbon. I looked down at his knuckles while he retied it, rough and impatient, but accurate. Jamison did everything accurately, even when he did it like he hated the task.

The brush of his fingers through the ribbon made my stomach flutter.

Which was ridiculous.

The man had just said he needed whiskey before dealing with me, and I was standing there getting butterflies because he was fixing my bow.

“There.” he said.

I looked down.

It was perfect.

“Thank you.” I smiled up at him. “You’re good at bows.”

He stared at me like I had said something in another language.

“Christ,” he muttered, and reached for his whiskey again.

That didn’t ruin my mood either.

It should have. I knew it should have. A normal girl would have gotten quiet. A girl who understood dignity better than hope would have stopped offering little pieces of herself to a man who kept dropping them.

But I was me.

And the night was still pretty.

So I stayed beside him.

“I had a busy week,” I told him, “Rehearsals started earlier than usual because of the sold-out show.”

He looked at his phone.