while you take a drink, Sammy, unless you plan to make good on that little promise later. If you want to use your lips and tongue on me, go right ahead and keep teasing. Otherwise...rethink.”
That earned him a shocked expression. And it was a hell of a thing to have managed to shock Sammy. But then, that was becoming more and more normal as he stepped outside the box that he had built for himself. As the two of them began to forge new territory. Where he was someone he didn’t recognize and sometimes she was someone he didn’t know, either. He didn’t know that he liked that part of it. Redrawing those boundaries and setting foot onto uneven ground. But it was part of it. And there was nothing that could be done about it. Not now.
Her lips twitched. “Yes, sir.”
And that bratty little comment sent a lightning bolt of heat straight down to the part of him that craved her the most. His gut went tight, his blood running hot. “You think I’m safe,” he said. “Because you’ve only known me as your friend. Because I had myself on a leash every time I was ever around you. Because I decided a long time ago not to be this when I was with you. But you don’t know all of me, Samantha, so if I were you I would tread a little bit more carefully.”
“So many threats,” she said. “So many promises. And we’re still standing here.”
“Do you want to go?”
“Maybe we should.”
“Are you going to leave me again tonight?”
“Are you going to let me?”
He gritted his teeth. “I only let you because I couldn’t think straight. And yeah, that was me retreating. Not knowing how in the hell to handle what had just happened between us. I was being a coward.”
“I thought you told me to quit messing around with cowards.”
“Yep. And I’ll quit being one. You come to my bed tonight, you’re staying all night. Understand me?”
“Well, then I guess I know where I’m sleeping.”
She walked away from the bar and headed back toward the table.
She was intent on tormenting him tonight, and he wasn’t even all that mad about it.
No. Because she would be in his bed tonight. Something had changed. From the sugar cubes to this moment. And maybe it was just good old-fashioned temptation and neither of them were doing a very good job of turning away from it. But then, they didn’t want to. He didn’t want to. Why the hell should he? Really, why? There wasn’t a damn reason in all the world to deny what they wanted. So why should they?
Sure, she didn’t want to do the baby thing now, and that was probably for the best. Because he didn’t want to do the wife and child thing.
He didn’t.
But a chance to explore some of the heat between them? Yes. Now he knew one thing for sure. There was no halfway with him. And he knew that was going to take some doing for Sammy to accept. It made sense to him. A kind of sense, anyway. That they would keep each other in this regard the way that they had kept each other before. But this time, they would share a bed.
He couldn’t care about Sammy any more than he did. And this was... It was new. But he wasn’t going to go ahead and throw that on her now.
She wanted to play it by ear; that was fine.
She wanted to pretend like it could be casual; that was fine, too. As long as in the end she understood that he wasn’t a man who could be casual when it came to her.
He took his place at the table beside Sammy and everyone acted casual like they hadn’t been watching the interplay between the two of them. He got a strange enjoyment out of the fact that they were all clearly slightly more embarrassed that they’d been watching him and Sammy than he and Sammy were by being watched.
He didn’t know why the hell they should care what anyone thought.
That was one thing about living life the way that he had. He had no illusions that his world would ever look like anyone else’s.
He had given everything up at eighteen to take care of his siblings. There was no keeping up with the Joneses. He couldn’t see their yard over his overgrown hedge and dilapidated fence anyway.
There was no worrying about having a life that looked like any kind