Page 158 of Catfish

“And?”

"And nothing. Yes, I almost married Grant Hardison, but then I knew I'd be selling my soul for someone who…" I wait, and she doesn't offer anything else. Quickly, I balance my options before I let my negligent one win.

“Who what?” I press.

“Who would never let me blossom.”

There it is, the truth. Right from her own lips, and it makes me elated that she felt comfortable enough with me to voice it.

She would eat Grant Hardison alive. Shit, she batters down my defenses so I couldn’t imagine how good ‘ole Golden Boy handled it.

Obviously, he didn't.

"Can't imagine you being anyone else other than who you are now," I convey. "One less of a pain, yes, but you're creative. It'd be a shame not to have you on my side."

She gives me a weak grin. “Wasn’t for my fuckable dresses, huh?”

“Oh my God—” I look up at the ceiling of my SUV. “—seriously impossible.” She laughs and sits back in the seat while the cool breeze from outside comes into the compartment.

“I like to keep you on your toes, Governor. Might be one of my favorite parts of the job.”

“I thought annoying me was the first.”

"Close second," she mutters. "Keeps me entertained and not thinking about those assassination ideas I had the previous night."

I turn my head to face her, the side of my skull resting on the seat. “And what button or reaction are you trying to provoke, Miss Shelton?”

Her eyes never leave mine, but in the dark, I can see them glimmer against the lights outside my SUV. The soft pink that trudges up her cheekbones and lies there, contemplating on how to answer me.

“Any one that I can,” she utters. “I got you to react once, didn’t I?”

She means our kiss, the second one where I pulled her into me, and I know she felt my cock hardening into her abdomen.

And I honestly don’t fucking care.

You'd have to be blind not to see how beautiful Reagan is. How perfectly her hair matches her skin tone. How her eyes could suck you in and keep you there.

She's everything that beckons a thirst for a woman in every sense of the word, and a man could easily lose himself completely in it. Grant was a fucking fool for doing whatever it is that he did, and at the moment, I don't care.

All I care about is that his failure to keep her was my gain to be able to have her in my car while getting to hear her smartass mouth.

“You mean when you kissed me?”

I want to hear her say it. To remember every feeling and ache it awakened for her as much as it did me.

“Yep,” she replies while popping her “p.” “That.”

“That.” I replicate. “Do you always act on impulse, Miss Shelton? I sense a hint of regret in there.”

That fucks my stomach up.

I’ve been rejected in my life, felt the sting it left behind. But being casted away by Reagan, not sure how I’ll come down from that. I might hit every jagged edge on the way down from the mountain that I feel like I’m on when we’re together.

“I don’t regret it,” she counters while tucking her head into her chest. “Just not trying to fuck shit up for you is all.”

Because you will, but I started it.

“I’d have to give you the power to do that, remember? All dominant and power-hungry.”

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