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I chose to look toward him.
Neo faced me too.
As both of us were lathered, my heart beat a mile a minute. I couldn’t seem to look away. Apparently, he couldn’t either. My massage therapist pulled the blanket down around my waist, tucking it. Neo looked down the length of me. It wasn’t a quick glance, and he didn’t hide it. When his eyes wandered back up to lock with mine, I knew.
I hadn’t imagined whatever had passed between us last night. It wasn’t wishful thinking. The look Neo had just given me wasn’t one of a big brother or an old friend.
My core clenched as he continued to watch me. There was no “Neo grin” now, just the look of a man who liked what he saw. Probably, I imagined, like the one I was giving him.
As his masseuse’s hands moved, I imagined they were mine. I wondered what it would be like to feel those biceps beneath my fingers. To allow my hands to slide to his shoulders and back, and then slip under the blanket. I’d see the fine ass that was now provocatively just beneath the edge of the damned white blanket. I willed her to pull it down, to reveal all. She wouldn’t, of course. And if she did, I’d probably pop up from my table and bitch-slap her.
I smiled, thinking of such a thing. I’d not so much as crossed words with a woman even once in my life. No one was as proficient at avoiding a confrontation as me, for better or worse.
“What?” Neo said quietly, now smiling too.
I shook my head.
“Tell me,” he mouthed.
“No,” I said, careful to keep my voice quiet to fit the mood of the room.
“Yes.”
“No.”
“You will tell me before the end of the day.”
I would tell him what I’d been thinking as soon as I spilled about the conversation Garrett and I had been having when Neo picked me up. Meaning, never. Both were locked tightly in a vault that couldn’t be opened. “You think so?”
“I do.”
He was goading me. But after that look, I didn’t care. About anything. Nothing in the world mattered except the fact that Antonio Grado lay next to me on a massage table and he absolutely, unequivocally, had been looking at my chest.
Honestly, I wasn’t sure how to react, though my body had a pretty decent idea. It was so primed right now that I cursed the fact I hadn’t brought a vibrator with me. That was so dumb.
Here went nothing. For better or worse, as if I had a choice now. “Sounds like a bet to me.”
His eyes immediately hooded. This Neo, the one lying next to me right now, was not the same Neo I’d known my whole life. It was like the gloves were off.
“You’re on, Burke. What do we bet?”
I nearly laughed out loud. Like I’d take that on. I glanced up at his masseuse. A consummate professional, she didn’t bat an eye at our conversation.
“Your choice,” I said.
“A truth,” he said finally.
“If I don’t tell you by the end of the day,” I clarified, “you have to tell me a truth. And if I do, it’s vice versa.”
“Exactly. But, it has to be something we don’t already know.”
Except, Neo knew everything about me. All of the important stuff, anyway. With one glaring exception, of course. Little did he know his truth and a dare amounted to the same thing.
Now, to just think of something else, something less damaging to my relationship with the Grado family, that I could share. Surely I’d think of something by the end of the day.
“You’re on.”
ELEVEN
