Page 28 of Assassin's Game
I didn’t get it—I was a good ten years older than Eli Agozi. I shouldn’t be any more interested in him than I was in a Hollywood star on the cover of a magazine in a checkout line. Those men had always been too “pretty” to me, a fantasy, not reality. Eli was gorgeous. Andyoung. There shouldn’t be a powerful tug in the pit of my belly drawing me to this particular man. He was a flirt trying to distract me. Given the amount of information we didn’t have about him and his brothers, he was quite possibly the enemy.
And I was on the verge of becoming that sad cliché, the older woman fooling herself into thinking a younger man might actually be interested her.
My irritation burned brighter at the thought, a powder keg waiting to go off.
We moved toward the Humvee, which the two of us—and the dog—would take to alert Titus and my sister and have them follow us in. Levi had refused point-blank my request to turn off the jammers. Apparently they were set to ignore certain signatures, since I’d seen the asshole on his own cell a few minutes ago, but not ours, so a drive it was.
Eli reached the truck just ahead of me. Instead of going around to the driver’s side, he grabbed the passenger door handle.
Powder keg, meet spark.
He’d barely cracked the door open before my outrage burst from my lips.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
I circled around him, noting the strangest look crossing his face at my use of the wordfuck. Shock? No, not shock, but I didn’t care to analyze further. If he was under the delusion that I was a pampered female whose lips had never been sullied by a curse word, then shock was the least of his worries.
The look faded with a shake of his head. He pulled the door open wide. “Being a gentleman.”
I raked his body with my gaze, keeping my anger front and center. “That’s false advertising.”
His grin made my knees threaten to give out. In a suit and tie and looking all civilized, he’d been potent. Now, with every muscle highlighted by tight clothes and his charm focused a hundred percent on me? He was devastating, damn it.
Not that he needed to know that. He didn’t need any more ammunition against me—this bizarre, blindsiding attraction was already making me weak. And weakness was unacceptable.
“Nothing about this”—Eli gestured down his delectable body, and I had to fight not to look again—“is false advertising, Beautiful.”
I could feel the flush creeping up my cheeks, the mottled red that took over as my temper threatened to get the better of me. “My name,” I gritted out, “is Nix.”
He leaned close enough that I could taste mint and something sweet on my tongue. I’d never had a sweet tooth, not like Maris, but now Eli’s essence was right there, filling my nose, my mouth, tempting me to take him all the way in…
“Mikaela.”
My gaze dropped to his lips, watched them form the syllables of my given name. The boiling mass that was my anger narrowed, compacted, pushed down my body to settle like fire in my lower belly. That heat, thatneedmade me reckless.
I leaned closer, defying him, defying myself. “You’re cocky, aren’t you?”
The amber of his eyes warmed to brown as he smiled down at me. I flinched when his fingertips slid across my cheek to tuck the hair that had escaped from my ponytail back behind my ear, leaving a trail of tingles along my skin. “It’s not cocky if it’s the truth,Mikaela.”
I suddenly had the feeling he was very much right. For one brief instant I could feel myself leaning forward, moving in, craving the taste of that mouth. Wanting to know his truth intimately, no matter how dangerous it might be.
And the next I was reeling back, eyes wide, heart in my throat. Without a backward glance, I scrambled into the truck.
Retreating. Like a coward.
Round one to the playboy.
He got another point for hopping into the Humvee without crowing over my stupid actions—giving in or withdrawing, either one. The dog joined us, taking the middle of the bench seat but sticking close to Eli still. He eyed me, his dark brown gaze seeming curious despite the space he kept between us.
I don’t mind you either, dog. Just keep your master away from me and we’ll be fine.
My tongue tied itself in a knot as Eli steered the Humvee toward the gates. Tension rode the air, growing and growing until I felt like one word would snap me in two. I’d expected Eli to be a chatterbox given the fact that he never seemed to stop digging into me, but instead the man sat quietly, completely at ease, his body relaxed as he drove onto the main road. I found myself staring at his hands on the wheel, remembering the calluses I’d felt as his fingers brushed gently over my cheek. What would those fingers feel like on other, more sensitive areas of my body? On my breasts? My inner thighs? My…
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I hissed under my breath.
“Problem?” Eli asked, his amused glance irritating me even more.
“Why would there be a problem?”
