He turned to her, his black eyes narrow and unreadable, and then her reason kicked in. Ava clasped her wet shirt to her chest. “You – you can’t just come in here.”
He took a step toward her, one long stride that brought them within two feet of one another. “Relax.” He smirked. “Not like I haven’t seen it all already.”
Blood rushed into her face, flooding her skin with hot shame. Yes, he’d seen it all, and how did she stand up to him when his mouth had been on every inch of her?
She straightened to her full height, thrust out her chin, and said, “What do you want, Mercy?” Still holding the shirt over her breasts.
His eyes went to the damp linen, and what she sought to conceal with it. “Shit, I spilled that all over you. I’m sorry.” He shrugged and looked contrite, almost boyish, as his hands went in his pockets. Boyish in a way that involved being six-five, sporting tatted arms and sinister brows.
This was the lethal cocktail of Mercy Lécuyer: his baffling good humor, and his veiled fury. A wolf who chose to domesticate himself amongst Labradors, who pretended to be one, most of the time.
“What?” she repeated, agitation thickening her voice. “I need to get dressed.”
“You can’t even give me five minutes?”
“Five minutes forwhat?”
He shifted forward, and she tensed in reaction. But he didn’t move closer, only past her, as he lifted her vest, set it further up on the blankets, and sat on the end of the bed. The crappy old mattress dipped beneath his weight. His long legs stretched out before him, the soles of his black boots a few inches from her sandals, close enough for her to see the dried white blob of gum stuck between the treads of the right one. He folded his sun-bronzed hands together and let them hang between his knees, elbows bracing on his thighs as he leaned forward and pinned her with his most earnest, serious look.
“I talked to your dad today,” he said, his tone gentle, like he was speaking to a frightened child. “He asked me to think about transferring back here.”
She didn’t want the words to hurt like a gut-punch, but they did. She felt the breath leave her, felt the sharp pain at her breastbone. She didn’t owe this man anything, not even curiosity. But she said, “And what are you thinking?”
His face – his fierce, beloved face – warmed with a slow, sad smile. “I’m staying, Ava. Here in Knoxville. If my president needs me–”
She lifted a hand, halting him. “You don’t have to explain it to me. I know how it works.”
His smile turned up at the corners, a brightness coming into his eyes. “Yeah, you do.”
She didn’t want him to look at her like that and acknowledge her in any way. It made being this close to him too hard.
She was too cold, the wet linen of her shirt chilling her skin. She felt her eyelids twitching with anxiety. “So?” She shrugged. “So you’re back – what’s that to me?”
“I dunno, sweetheart. But I thought it was the right thing to tell you myself.”
“Right?” She knotted her hands in the shirt and felt it gathering, slipping down from the gentle slopes of her breasts. “Nothing about either of us has ever been right.”
His grin widened, white teeth flashing. “No, I guess not.”
“I’m glad this is all so funny to you,” she said through her teeth. Fuck him, at this point. She pulled her shirt down, shook it out, and struggled back into it, the wet fabric catching at her face and elbows. “What’d you do the last five years in Louisiana without any little girls to torture?”
Her bra was still plainly visible through the top, so she needed the vest. Which meant she would have to get even closer to Mercy, close enough to touch, to smell him, to see the thin gold filaments in his black eyes.
She pointed to the vest. “Hand me that.”
He sat back, hands braced behind him on the bed. The mattress groaned a protest. “Say pretty please.”
“Like hell.” She squared up her shoulders and stepped to the side of the bed. Keeping her eyes on the vest, refusing to look at him, she leaned forward, reached for it –
And his hand caught at the front of her shirt, holding her fast in this vulnerable, pitched-forward position. She was, appropriately, at his mercy.
Ava lifted her head, her pulse pattering in her ears, her stomach turning over and over. She looked at his face, which was much too close to hers now. His smile was a frozen, stiff thing, his lips parted, a thin wedge of teeth still visible. She was close enough to see the dark stubble on his chin and cheeks, the tiny pores in his nose, the few stray hairs at the fringes of his brows. His long lashes.
“Let go of me,” she whispered.
“I missed you.”
“You don’t get to miss me.” She trembled all over. She couldn’t keep staring at his eyes; she’d crumble if she did.
