Page 122 of Power Play

“It is seven.”

“It was seven two minutes ago.”

I grabbed my cropped jacket from the bed and pulled it on before checking the red marks around my waist. The skirt covered most of them. My tank hid the rest.

I checked my makeup next. Mascara hadn’t moved. Lip gloss was still even, and nothing in my face revealed the twenty minutes I had spent measuring myself.

Everything was fine because everything looked fine.

Ryan’s footsteps reached the hallway while I was still staring at my reflection. He appeared in the bedroom doorway with one shoulder against the frame and stopped.

For several seconds, he didn’t say anything.

Ryan had dressed like Ryan, which somehow made the fact that he had clearly made an effort worse for my nervous system. Dark jeans fit low on his hips, clean black sneakers replaced the beat-up pair he normally wore around town, and the sleeves of a fitted black shirt stopped high enough on his arms that almost every inch of tattoo below them was exposed.

His backward cap should’ve made the whole thing casual. Instead, the black-on-black combination made him look like the kind of guy mothers warned their daughters about right before their daughters made terrible decisions on purpose.

His eyes moved over me slowly, and I immediately wanted to pull the jacket around my waist.

Ryan’s mouth curved. “Holy fuck.”

Heat climbed into my face. “What?”

“You.”

“That isn’t helpful.”

“It wasn’t supposed to be helpful.”

His gaze traveled down the skirt again before returning to my face, and nothing in the way he looked at me was polite enough to mistake for a compliment he thought I needed.

“You look fucking beautiful.”

The woman in the mirror had been disgusting five minutes ago.

Ryan looked at her like he wanted to eat her alive.

My brain refused to reconcile the two.

“You like the skirt?”

“I like you in the skirt.”

“That was smooth.”

“That was accurate.”

He pushed away from the doorway and came toward me. Instead of reaching for my hand the way he normally did, both of his settled around my waist.

My breath caught when his fingers pressed close to the marks beneath my clothes. He drew me against him and lowered his mouth to mine with the easy confidence of someone who had stopped questioning whether he was allowed to kiss me weeks ago.

Nothing about Ryan was shy, which was one of the things I loved most and understood least.

He didn’t glance toward windows before touching me. He didn’t wait until doors closed before taking my hand. If somebody caught him kissing me in a parking lot, his first instinct wasn’t embarrassment. Ryan seemed offended by the idea that wanting me should be something either of us needed to disguise.

His mouth moved over mine slowly, his thumbs pressing into the curve of my waist while I slid my hands up his chest. I had expected a hello kiss. Ryan apparently had other plans because he deepened it until the last few minutes in front of the mirror dissolved beneath the warmth of his body and the familiar taste of coffee on his tongue.

When he finally eased back, his forehead rested against mine while his eyes dropped to my mouth.