Page 21 of The Scout

My stomach dropped.

I should have been offended. I should have been furious. But I wasn’t. I was on fire.

Ryker’s words felt like gasoline, and my body was already burning.

“I wasn’t looking at him like anything,” I managed, my voice softer than I wanted it to be.

His lips parted slightly, like he was about to argue, but then?—

His hand moved.

Slow. Deliberate.

He reached for my wrist—the same place Matt had touched—and when his fingers grazed my skin, everything inside me went taut.

Heat. Electricity. A slow, winding current that shot straight through me, settling deep where I had no business feeling it.

Matt’s touch had been warm. Playful. A passing moment.

Ryker’s touch was a brand.

A slow, searing claim that made my skin burn where his fingers pressed, like he’d always meant to put his hands on me—like it was only a matter of time.

I inhaled sharply, but I didn’t move.

I couldn’t move.

I’d known Ryker for years. He was Will’s best friend, a fixture in my life, always watching from the edges. But I had never touched him before. Not once.

Not a passing brush of fingers, not an accidental bump of shoulders.

Not this.

And now that I had? Something in me shifted. Something that could never shift back.

Ryker felt it, too.

His grip on my wrist tightened, just slightly. Not enough to hurt—just enough to hold. Just enough to make sure I felt him.

His thumb traced over my pulse, and I swore he noticed how it skipped.

I exhaled, my lips parting, my entire body going still beneath his touch. “Ryker …”

He didn’t let go.

Instead, his other hand lifted—slowly, like he was giving me the chance to stop him—and settled on my hip. His fingers pressed in, firm and sure, like he was testing the way I fit beneath his hands.

A quiet gasp slipped past my lips.

Holy shit.

I had no defenses against this. Against him.

The world shrank, the sounds of the lobby fading into nothing. All that existed was the weight of his hands, the tension pulling so tight between us I thought it might snap.

He leaned in, his lips ghosting near my ear. “If you’re gonna let a man touch you, Isabel,” he murmured, his voice deep and quiet and dangerous, “make sure it’s one who knows what to do with you.”

I shivered.

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