Every pair of eyes had been on her when she’d lost herself to the music, and she didn’t have a fucking clue about any of it. Men and women studied her from all angles, and that shit irritated me more than I cared to admit.
A bead of sweat rolled from the base of her neck down over her chest, and a knot of desire I couldn’t ignore lodged itselfin my throat as I followed its trail, unable to help the way my tongue ran out to taste my own lip as though I was actually about to taste her.
“Henry?”
The sound of my name on her lips made my eyes rise to meet hers.
“You’re staring,” she said coolly, her chin raised in defiance.
I hated what stared back at me. Phoebe had no time for me, clearly, and I had no idea what the fuck to say while she waited for me to speak.
“Okay,” she sighed. “Good chat.”
The moment she tried to turn her back on me, I reached out without thinking, circling her wrist with my free hand, pulling her back around to face me. She spun with the grace of a ballerina, only to stumble at the last moment and land a little closer to me than either of us intended. Her bright, wide, innocent eyes stared up at me with surprise before she slowly glanced down at my hand wrapped around her delicate wrist, and for just one moment, she remained eerily still, looking at it as though the contact burned.
I thought about how to say what I needed to say, only for her to pull her arm out of my grip and take a step back as she glared up at me again with murder in her eyes.
“I am so sick of this shit with you already,” she snapped. “Get off me.”
“Have you always been so fiery?”
“Funnily enough, no. Seems you bring out that side of me far too easily.” She ran the fingers of her other hand over the wrist I’d just grabbed, making me frown.
“Did I hurt you?”
“What?”
Without thought, I dropped my almost-empty beer bottle in the sand and stepped forward to reach for her wrist, only this time I kept my touch tender when I picked it up to rub her skin.
Her expression changed immediately, her breaths coming in and out of her quicker than before. “What are you doing?” she asked quietly just as the music switched up to Faith Evans, “Love Like This”,making the entire crowd around us bounce. “Henry…”
“I know you think I’m an arsehole, but if I hurt you physically, I promise you, I’d hate myself more than you ever could.”
She scowled.
“What?” I asked.
“Where did that come from?”
“You were rubbing your wrist just now.”
More heat rushed to her cheeks, and Phoebe quickly pulled herself out of my touch for the second time in a matter of minutes. “I didn’t know I was doing it, okay? Stop making a big deal out of nothing all the time.” She took a few steps back and tucked her hair behind one ear before she began to search the crowd, looking everywhere but at me.
“Phoebe?”
“What?”
“Do I make you nervous?”
She huffed out an incredulous laugh before finally making eye contact again. Fuck, those eyes. They were the kind a man could get himself in a lot of trouble for. “You think very highly of yourself, don’t you, Cohen?”
“Cohen? You’re calling me that now?” I hated it from her, preferring Henry wrapped around her tongue.
“It’s either that or dickhead. You choose.”
“I prefer it when you call me Henry.”
Her obvious confusion grew, her brows knitting together. “Why?”
