A Reckless Note (Brilliance Trilogy #1) - Lisa Renee Jones Page 0,55

swallow hard and unbidden anger follows. He’s with Sofia, chasing our family heritage. He knows I don’t approve. And when he gets back, I will hurt him.

Anger is decidedly more comfortable than fear. I embrace it. I hold onto it. I shove my phone into my purse and set it on the sink. I do what I came in here to do, and wash up, only to groan at my image in the mirror. I’m with the most gorgeous man I’ve ever met and I have lipstick on my nose and my hair looks like I stuck a finger in an electrical socket. Worse, my purse is so small that I have nothing to fix the damage with me but a stick of concealer and a tiny comb. I put both to use and just in time. Kace knocks on the door.

I open it to find him, and like he was back at Riptide, he’s standing right in front of me, his dark hair rumpled, his blue eyes warm. His big body deliciously half-naked. “Just making sure you weren’t about to make a run for the door,” he says.

He’s worried I’m going to leave? Obviously, he is or he wouldn’t be standing here. I mean, he said as much, but I didn’t think he was this literal but clearly, he was. Kace August is really worried that I will leave. And he doesn’t want me to. I don’t quite know what to do with that, but stay. “I like your T-shirt,” I confess. “I was plotting a run for the door before you could take it back.”

He catches my hips and walks me to him. “You can keep the T-shirt if I can keep you.”

It’s teasing, I tell myself, but it doesn’t stop the flutter of my belly. “Do I get tacos in trade?”

His lips curve. “You most definitely get tacos.”

“Well then,” I say. “A T-shirt and tacos. I’m a keeper.”

He catches my hand and walks me to him, the rush of attraction between us in that touch. “I liked you better with the lipstick on your nose,” he says, his voice pure masculine seduction.

So much so that it takes me a moment to process what he’s just said, at which point, my eyes go wide. “You knew I had it on my nose and you didn’t tell me?”

He chuckles and leads me past the living room. “Hard to miss. It was right there on your nose.”

We are teasing and laughing as we return to the living room we’d left, and he convinces me to sit on the rug in front of the table and closer to the fire. Once we’re cozy on the rug, he opens the lid to two boxes of six giant tacos. “Who else are we feeding?” I ask.

“I wanted you to get to try them all.”

It’s a sweet gesture that I don’t miss. “I doubt I can eat even one of those tacos. They’re huge and you ordered twelve.”

“Twelve good bites might equal most of a taco. If you really dig in.”

I shake my head, smiling, and I don’t recall smiling so much with any other human being so easily. He starts explaining all of the sauces and I relax into the next half hour, munching with him, and trying everything.

“One more bite,” he urges after I have had my twelve bites and then some.

I wave him off. “I can’t eat one more bit. I only ate what I did because the food was so good.” I turn away from the table, offering it my side view. “Now I have to workout extra this week and it’s your fault.”

He shuts the box and rotates to face me, one leg up, at my side. “I have a great home gym here that I use every day. You’re welcome to it but I do believe I could keep you otherwise occupied.”

“You are bad.”

“I am, Aria. For you.”

My lashes lower and then lift. “So you keep telling me. Maybe it’s me who is bad for you.”

He moves then, dragging me to him, his hand tangling in my hair almost roughly, his lips now a breath from my lips. “You are bad for me, Aria. Because you make me forget things I can’t afford to forget.”

I make him forget.

I suddenly want to make him forget. Greedily, against all that I have been taught all of my life, of what is expected of me, I want to know this man. I want to push him to let me know