Page 13 of The Art of You

“That’s not an answer.”

“Close enough to one,” she chirped.

The challenging little hitch in her tone had me easing up off the pedal. She was still hiding something from me, and I was fairly certain that something had to do with the reporter.

“I can’t let this go, and you know it. First, you mentioned being watched. And then that thing happened with you and Kit. What’s really going on?”

After a few moments of only Teddy Swims’s voice between us, she finally gifted me with hers. “How about you start first? Something had you distracted at the partybeforehand, too. What’s the story there?”

There was only one person in all of human fucking history who could turn the tables on me and get me to bend to their will, and it was the woman parked next to me with pouty lips and expressive light brown eyes.

Not today, though.

“Okay, okay. To be honest, running into Kit tonight made me feel better.”

I faked a laugh. “Didn’t look that way.”

“Realizing she was behind it . . .” She let her words trail off, leaving me hanging.

I gripped the steering wheel tighter than necessary. “Behind what?”

She looked away from me. “We should save this conversation for later. But if you want to talk about your issues, then by all means, go ahead.”

“The mission was a success. Lola’s alive and safe. And, hopefully, all the bad guys in connection to her kidnapping are now either in custody or dead. If not, we’ll deal with it.” I shook my head. “So, the only immediate issue I need to deal with is sitting next to me.”

We didn’t need to talk about my problems when shewasthe problem. Testing me at every turn since our op in Rome. And I was failing miserably at keeping my mind from going there. To all the fuckingtheresthat could ever be involving this woman naked and in my arms as I made her come.

“Seeee.”

Whenever she elongated a word like that, I couldn’t help but wonder how a breathy and dragged-outyeswould sound coming from her mouth instead.

“If you were okay, you wouldn’t be snapping at me.” She pointed at the front window. “And you should have your eyes on the road and not on me so you don’t kill us, thank you very much.”

I pinned her with one of my signature looks—the kind I used to get criminals to talk during interrogation. Somehow, the dark expression seemed to have the opposite effect on her.

Did she realize she was tracing her thumb along the line of her mouth? A mouth I’d thought about doing some problematic things with. I was getting close. Really, really damn close to actually snapping, and not in the way she’d said I’d done.

I was on the verge of begging my best friend’s sister for just one night. One hard, hot fuck. One opportunity to get whatever this was clear from my system so I could stop wanting her all the damn time.

I mean, God help me, how much more could I put up with from her and not give in?

I still had no clue how she’d spent a weekend at my place a few months back without her winding up beneath me in my bed. Without me tearing off that fucking string bikini she insisted on strutting around in. She even went so far as making us grilled cheese sandwiches in those two little triangle scraps of hot pink, like it was the most normal thing in the world. The number of times I had to stroke my cock in the shower so I didn’t ask her to sit on my face was?—

“Hudson.” She reached for the hand on my lap and patted it, too damn close to discovering the bulge that’d formed while I was lost in memories of that weekend. “You seem tense.”

“You’re making me that way.” Double meaning fully fucking intended. “Just tell me what’s going on.” I did my best to wrestle the conversation back to her issues and away from mine. Maybe I really did have more than one. There was no discounting the fact I’d have sworn I saw someone I used to know at the party. No way it would’ve been him. And he definitely hadn’t been on the list. But that uncertainty lingered, pulling at my focus, and my sanity.

“Eyes on the road, not on me. Remember?” She returned her hand to her lap, thank God. “The weather is shit?—”

“The weather is just fine.” That was a lie. I could feel a storm coming, not that I’d admit it. “Now talk.”

She peeked out her side window, searching for something that wasn’t there, like my patience. “Well, it feels like rain is coming.”

“It does, does it?” I finally relaxed my grip on the steering wheel, realizing I was white-knuckling the thing.

She straightened in her seat, hands now chasing up and down her arms as if cold.

I reached out to turn on the heat as she shifted in her seat again, the slit in her dress parting and exposing her entire leg. My hand went still on the control panel, and I momentarily forgot about the road and the heat.

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