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“Maybe he’s busy.”
“Maybe,” the man says, “he is. But I’m here, so can I get you a drink?”
I hold up my wine. “I have one.”
The man slides a finger up along the outside of my arm, and then he slips it around at my elbow and down to my inner wrist. The skin on the inside of my arm is super sensitive. I put down the glass with a wobble, his touch sending sparks of fire everywhere.
When he reaches my inner wrist he circles it, his thumb drawing patterns that make my libido skip and soar.
But I tamp that all down. The man might have the eyes of the devil, the kind that offer wicked delights, but I’m not interested. I can’t be, not now, and anyway, there’s something about him that lurks beneath that beat of attraction, like a flash of warning that rubs my senses the wrong way.
This man’s dangerous.
And even if he isn’t, I don’t have the bandwidth for flirting.
Not when I’m on a mission.
“As I said, I’m waiting for someone.”
The smile that touches his lips is cocky and controlled. He releases me and leans back in the high-back stool. The fingers of both strong hands are ringed. He picks up his glass and lifts it to sip, and I catch the complex smoky notes of the whiskey as he does so.
“What if I’m that someone?”
A bright shot of heat slashes through my senses, and I force myself to stay stiff-backed, outwardly calm.
I look at him and try to picture him as a crime lord, the owner of a sex club. And I can’t. In my head, this JM is old and fat, a man of power who can command others to his bidding. Who can protect. Who can, I hope, find out who’s threatening my father.
This man is young—older than me, maybe by ten years, but still young for his type of reputation—and the kind of gorgeous that says life comes easy. Why the hell would a man who looked like him be running a sex club? He looks the type to be shaking women off him. Hot, gorgeous women.
Everything in me goes still.
So why is he here, flirting with me?
“I don’t know,” I say. “Are you?”
The smile shifts into predator territory.
“Do you want me to be?”
My breath’s caught in my lungs and can’t find a way out. I stare at him.
“Now there’s the deer,” he murmurs, not bothering to move in as he takes a sip of his drink. He’s taking up too much room, too much air, and maybe that’s why I can’t breathe. “Trapped. In my headlights.”
He pauses. Out of the corner of my eye, the bartender polishes a glass, clearly focused on our exchange. But something tells me if the blond god did anything, the friendly bartender wouldn’t lift a finger.
They don’t look at each other. There wasn’t a hint of them knowing each other when he ordered. But somehow, I know. The man next to me is in charge and the other one knows it.
My breath rushes as my body throbs with a need I don’t understand.
“Question is,” he says, “what are you going to do now?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I think I’m going to leave.”
I get up on quivering legs, but all he does is rake over the length of my body with his smoldering gaze, then shrug. “Your choice, Scarlett.”
My blood goes hot then cold at his acknowledgement of my name. “Who are you?”
“I think you already know the answer to that question.” He leans toward me, his breath hot against my face. “Don’t you?”
