Page 4 of The Spice Play

“That’s, uh, certainly the mostforwardoffer I’ve ever received,” she chuckled, her lower lip slipping between her teeth as I rose to my full height beside her. She barely reached my shoulders. “But my Uber will be here any second.”

“Stay,” I insisted. I leaned back on the bartop, patting the stool I’d been sitting on with my palm. “At least let me buy you a drink since you bought so many for your friend.”

Her lips parted on a hitched breath as she looked between my hand and the door, her phone clutched between her fingers. “I’ll have to pay a fee if I cancel my Uber…”

“I’ll pay it.”Am I really stooping that low for some company?“And I’ll pay for the replacement one later.”

Her plump, rosy lips rolled between her teeth as she tried to stifle a laugh. “Okay, now youreallycan’t be serious.”

I held her gaze as she flicked her eyes to mine.Hazel. That’s what that color’s called.“I’ll send it on PayPigeon right now.”

The first knuckle of her forefinger rubbed against the tip of her nose, making it bounce back and forth as she eyed me warily. “You’d need my number for that.”

I fought the muscles in my face, trying to keep my lips from turning up. “Did you think I wouldn’t ask you for it regardless?”

The shade of her cheeks only deepened.

She hesitated for a moment, mulling the options over in statuesque silence amongst the dull sounds of the bar, but then her thumb was moving, hitting theCancel Ridebutton on her screen. A second later, she hoisted herself up onto the barstool beside where I stood.

Her initial reluctance told me everything I needed to know: she didn’t know who I was, and she wasn’t throwing herself at me like the puck bunnies, orflames, as we liked to call them. And God, that made her so much more likable.

“What do you like?”

Her lips popped open again, her eyes going wide. “Uh… I mean, that’s,wow, right to the point.”

“Right to the point?” I asked, taking a sip from my glass and raising a brow.

She tucked her hair behind her ears and avoided my gaze, those freckles becoming harder and harder to see as her face heated further. “Confidence, I guess, and external stimulation…”

I snorted hard enough that I could feel the burn of my whiskey in the back of my nose. “I was asking aboutdrinks. So that I can order you one.”

“Oh my God.” Her elbows came down on the bar, her face slumping into her waiting hands.

I tried to bite back the rising laughter in my throat, but I succumbed, something between a chuckle and a cackle escaping as I pushed my glass on the bartop toward her elbow. “It’s fine. It was cute.”

She shook her head, her forearms moving side to side, and when she finally lifted her face just an inch from her hands and peeked at me through her lashes, her lipstick had smudged across her cheek from her palms. “No, it’s insane.”

“It really isn’t,” I laughed. With the buzz of alcohollowering my inhibitions, I slipped my hand between hers and her face, cupping the soft line of her chin with my thumb and fingers. Her breath hitched when I turned her head to look up at me. “You’ve got lipstick on your face.”

“Like lipstick in a place that it’s not meant to be? Or are you just being observant?”

“A bit of both.” Pushing her hands out of the way, I used my thumb to swipe at the smear while keeping her locked in place.Shit, I made it worse.

She eyed me warily, her brows narrowing as her gaze flicked between my arm and my face. Her pulse thrummed beneath my fingertips, heavy and fast and unsettling, and the way her lips parted just enough to see a hint of her teeth had me imagining all the filthy things I wanted to use her mouth for.

I didn’t even know hername.

“Hold still,” I instructed. Bringing my free hand to my lips, I dropped my tongue, dragging my thumb across it on instinct like I did for Matty when he got food all over his face.

She leaned back, breaking my grasp, and I stilled. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” she laughed, but her gaze dropped to my lips, hovering. “Donotput your saliva on my face. Who knows what kind of diseases you’re carrying?”

“Don’t act like you weren’t considering options that would involve mysalivain far more nefarious places,” I deadpanned.

She swallowed.

A little mirror appeared almost out of thin air, and after she’d wiped the smudged lipstick from her skin with a precision that held me captive like I was watching the greatest movie ever filmed, she dropped it back where it must have comefrom — her purse.

I hadn’t stopped thinking of the toy she kept in there.

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