Page 7 of Wild Card

That thought alone, layered atop the memory of Sam’s intense stare from fifteen minutes ago, fisted her chest with fresh pain. She stabbed at the elevator call button, the glowing dial blurring past her new tears. “Come on, come on.”

The doors finally slid open. Thank God.

“Jen!”

Sam’s shout was followed by his charging footsteps.

“Shit.” She hissed it while rushing into the lift, pounding just as frantically at the buttons inside. She missed her floor by three digits but there’d be time to correct that once she’d gotten away. “Hurry up,” she ordered the doors. “Come on!”

A hand, powerful and tense, jammed into the opening.

A Scot, hulking and scowling, barged into the car.

And ripped the remaining breath from her throat.

Jen backed into the corner. So not a smart choice. Inside three seconds, she was pinned there, unable to lift her head and see anything but Sam, broad shoulders blocking her light. Smell anything but him, all forest and cedar and leather. Feel anything but his energy, volatile but focused. Completely on her.

“Sam.” Oh, yay. Her inner Sofía still wasn’t cooperating. Saucy and sexy, she was not. Awkward and ridiculous, on the other hand…

“Jennifer.”

For a second, she forgot about being nervous. “Jennifer?”

“Would you prefer Jennifer Josephine Thorne?”

“Would you prefer to keep your teeth?”

The elevator started to ascend. He tilted his head, letting his eyes dip over her face then back up again. Though they glittered brighter than ever, his mouth stuck to a no-nonsense line.

“What happened?” He barely lifted it past a murmur. He didn’t have to. Oh damn, he was so close. So big and hard and—

Don’t do it. Don’t touch him. No matter how tempting that cord in his neck, those slabs of his chest, that plane of his shoulder, or the thousand other places you want to explore…

“What happened when?”

He closed his eyes, as if praying to a higher power for patience. “You know when. Just now, in the bathroom, with Mattie and Viv. They walked in not long after you, then came back out lookin’ like their eggs had two yolks.”

“Huh?”

“Too far left of themselves.”

“Huh?”

His lips thinned. His gaze sharpened. The expression might’ve been only nominally daunting if he didn’t reinforce it by leaning in close, bracing his forearms to the lift’s walls over her head. “Just tell me what happened.”

Jen forced down a breath. Another. She watched his pulse throb at the base of his throat. Let her gaze descend to where his taut, golden skin disappeared into the V of his shirt. “Why? Because it’s suddenly your business?”

He was silent. For way too long. Which only curled his heavy, dark growl deep into her blood.

“Jen.”

She gulped again.

“Jenny.”

God. When was the last time she’d been called that? Never. And had it ordered at her in that deep purr… Her senses felt punched through the elevator’s roof, up the shaft, into the endless stars outside.

“Wh-what?”

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