Opening the door, I stepped inside and had to squint to see clearly. The only light streaming into the barn was from the cracks in the roof, so it was dark compared to the bright sunshine. The familiar smell of hay and wood hit me as I turned to see if Cage was still in here. I’d had my back to the window when Daddy had been in the kitchen so it was possible he’d left and I’d missed him.
“Looking for something?” Cage asked from behind me.
I turned around to face him and almost swallowed my tongue when my eyes met his naked chest. I’d admired it from afar but never up close. It was better up close.
“An engaged lady shouldn’t be looking at another man like she wants to take a lick.” The teasing tone in his voice told me he didn’t really mind my gawking at him at all. He was enjoying it.
“Who said I wanted to take a lick?” I replied, surprised at my own response. Was that flirting I had just done? I wasn’t sure I’d ever flirted.
Cage ran a hand through his hair and let out a short deep laugh. “Maybe we ought to change the subject.” Cage was nervous. Had my comment just made him nervous?
“You brought up the licking Cage, not me.” I waited to see how he’d react this time.
“Yeah, I guess I did,” he drawled and took a step toward me. Okay, so maybe I hadn’t made him nervous. Guys like Cage probably didn’t get nervous. “If you really want to talk about licking, I’ll happily oblige.”
Oh, my. Now, I was nervous. Cage reached out and took my left hand in his. The warmth from his callused palm made my entire body tingle. “Only problem with talking about licking with you is that it gives me ideas. I start thinking about things I shouldn’t be thinking about. Things that will only torment me ‘cause I’ll never know just how sweet you taste. I may be a lot of things Eva, might even be a few of them names you called me but I’m not gonna touch what belongs to another man.”
I opened my mouth to say something and stopped when Cage lifted my left hand to his mouth and kissed my ring finger. Then his tongue darted out and just barely skimmed the top of my hand. He grinned wickedly.
At some point, I’d stopped breathing. When my lungs started burning I took a deep breath and Cage let my hand fall back to my side. “Sorry, I had to take one small taste.” Then he winked at me and turned toward the door.
I stood silently as he walked back outside into the summer heat.
Chapter Six
Cage
I drove as far away from that damn barn as I could get. When the lake came into view, I pulled over and jumped out of the truck. Then I started for the water. I needed to cool the f**k off. I’d wanted to stop Eva from anymore of her flirty little remarks and damned if I hadn’t just screwed myself. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
I started unbuttoning my jeans.
“Hey, if you plan on stripping give me time to get gone first.” I spun around to see Jeremy walking over from his side of the fence. Not exactly who I wanted to see at the moment. My head was all kinds of screwed up over his future sister-in-law.
“It’s hot,” I replied. The annoyance in my tone was unavoidable. I was pissed. I had no reason to be but I was. Why hadn’t I just banged Becca Lynn and took the edge off? It would have given me physical relief and pissed Eva off. If she went back to hating me then she’d stop hunting me down and saying shit she had no business saying.
“Yeah, it is. We don’t get much of that gulf breeze out here like y’all do down on the coast.”
I wasn’t in the mood to talk about the weather.
“You working?” I asked before I told him to run the f**k off so I could strip.
“Nah, I’m done. Going fishing with my dad this weekend. Thought I’d come down here and check out the fence line before we headed out.
Just his dad? He’d never mentioned his brother. Not once. That was odd.
“Your brother going too?”
Jeremy’s easy smile vanished. “Uh, no.”
“He not live around here? I’ve never seen him at Eva’s.”
Jeremy stuck his hands in the front pockets of his jeans and his frown deepened. “What do you know about my brother?”
“Nothing except he’s engaged to Eva.” What was the deal here? Why the weirdness about his brother? It was a simple question.
“Eva tell you that?” Jeremy asked still frowning.
“Yeah.”