Page 102 of Take It Offline

“All right,” I set up. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

She breaks, and it’s not bad. It’s also not great.

“Little rusty?” I ask.

She flushes, the color deep and dark, like a secret I want to keep.

Fuck, she’s gorgeous.

I take a long pull of my beer and rein in the urge to push her up against the wall and have my way with her in the shadows. With nothing sunk yet, I take the easy shot, pocketing the fourteen in the top right. I follow it up with the ten. I check myself before I run a trick shot on the nine, pulling my stroke just enough that it’s not obvious I’m holding back.

“You’re good at this.” Emma hovers over the table, stalling before taking her shot. She hits the two, but it catches on the pocket and doesn’t fall.

“I’ve had a lot of practice. Reese went to vet school one block over.” I sink the nine but purposefully miss the next shot. “During those years, there wasn’t a week we weren’t here. She and Mae hooked up in that bathroom,” I say, pointing to the door with my cue. “About time too. They circled each other for a year before finally admitting they liked each other.”

Emma lines up a shot directly in front of me. The way she leans over the table pulls her trousers tight against her ass. If it’sa trap to destroy my concentration in this game, then I might as well hand her the win now.

I take a long drink to distract myself.

She then skips the cue ball off the edge like a leapfrog.

Oh, come on. It’s not possible to be accidentally this bad.

“Give it up.” I huff, stepping up beside her. “I’ve watched you destroy a decade’s worth of procedure in ten minutes. You can stop playing.”

“Iamplaying,” she teases, smiling around her beer.

I tear my gaze away from her lips, willing my heart not to take off at a breakneck speed. “You know what I mean.”

The laugh she lets out goes straight through me, slipping through the cracks of my beaten-up heart.

“This place feels like a time capsule. My mom would love it.” She props her cue against her hip. “Before I was born, one of her hobbies was following bands on tour.”

Ah. The walls here are plastered in band posters, not a spare inch in sight. They spill out into the hallway, the bathrooms… “As far as I can tell,” I say, “he doesn’t take the old ones down before he puts new ones up. Scrape back far enough, and you could probably find out how old Rocky is.”

“Like tree rings,” she says.

A smile splits my face as I survey the space. I like it here with its don’t-give-a-fuck attitude. It’s open late, only faintly smells of spilled beer, and right now is giving me something to do with my hands that won’t get me in trouble.

When she fumbles another easy shot, I have to call bullshit, saving the black from a premature death. One look at the mischief in her eyes tells me she knows she’s been caught. She’s beaming with joy, which, fuck, only makes me like her more.

I reset the table. “All right, enough with the games. Let’s really play. And this time I’m not gonna go easy on you.”

Emma steps in close, sultry. “Bold of you to assume you have a shot at winning.”

My heart trips over itself. She’s right. When it comes to her, I lost a long time ago.

She leans the cue against the table, rolls up the sleeves of her pale blue shirt past her elbows, loosens a button at her collar.

She’s never been sexier.

“You like it?” she asks, brow raised as she fingers the neck of her shirt. “I learned this trick from you.”

This time she breaks on the second ball, shot as sharp as she gets when she’s breaking a problem down.

Damn. This is my kind of foreplay.

“I knew you were holding back,” I say.

---