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A tiny giggle got free. “And how is that?”

He leaned down to whisper in my ear, “Oh, I don’t know, beautiful. There’s just an edge about you that you don’t normally possess. Like maybe you’re looking to get dirty.”

He looped an arm around my waist when he said it. I inched even closer, wanting to feel something. To feel that spark that I’d only ever truly felt for one other person.

For something to be different.

Because I wanted to grow.

Fly.

Soar.

Take the reins the way I’d been desperate to do and just…

Jump.

My mind tumbled, and I searched around inside myself to see if Dice’s touch was inciting it at all.

But felt nothing.

Was this flat feeling because my emotions were suppressed by the alcohol or was there just not anything there?

“You’re fucking sexy as hell, you know.” The murmur skated down the side of my neck, and his mouth was suddenly in that spot, just barely brushing up and down.

But it wasn’t Dice’s breath that was lifting chills across my flesh.

Nope.

It was the flashfire of severity that collided into me from behind that hit me like a full-body blow.

A cataclysm.

The blood in my veins igniting with the scent of butterscotch that filled my nostrils.

That and the big, powerful hand that settled at the middle of my back and the growl that cut through the dense, writhing air. “Step the fuck back.”

There.

There was that feeling I was searching for.

A shock of need and relief assailed me at the possessive, fierce touch.

A touch that I wanted to mean something so different than it actually did.

Except I remembered his face from this morning. The hinged lust and desperation, his enormous erection trapped beneath his sweats.

He’d wanted me.

I knew it.

This man who would die for me.

But would he ever truly fight for me? Fight for me in the way I wanted him to?

Because I couldn’t bear to stay stranded in this limbo any longer.

TWENTY-EIGHT