Page 36 of Art of the Hunt
Yep, he was officially crushing. He groaned.
“What?” she asked, pausing on her way to the door.
“Nothing.”
“That didn’t sound like nothing. That sounded like you’re frustrated.”
“You’re good at reading me.”
She shrugged.
“I am frustrated.” Oh shit, was he going to put it out there? What the hell was he thinking? This was only going to make things awkward again, and they’d done such a good job moving past their earlier discomfort. He should shut up and usher her out the door and get down to the station so they could refocus on this case, because it was quite possibly the only thing keeping them from doing the horizontal tango.
Assuming she was still interested after his brush-off earlier this morning.
“About what?” she asked. “The case?”
They’d taken to referring to the situation as “the case”—it helped him focus and she seemed to get a kick out of feeling as though she were doing important police investigation work.
“No,” he said. “Us.”
“There’s an us?”
“Not literally, I guess. I mean, you aren’t my girlfriend or whatever, and I don’t want, um…” He swiped his hand over his face. Why hadn’t he sent her back to her hotel last night? None of this would be happening right now.
“I think what you’re not saying is you can’t stop thinking about me in that lingerie I had on earlier.”
She was right, sort of. His mind had wandered back to admire her lithe body encased in satin and lace approximately a thousand times since she’d changed clothes. But lust wasn’t his problem. Well, not his entire problem. Which actually accentuated the problem.
Holy shit, he was a lost cause, wasn’t he?
“It’s okay,” she assured him. “I can’t stop thinking about you in your boxer shorts. Rather, out of them.”
He blinked like a damn owl, except he was positive he did not look intelligent as he did it.
“Furthermore,” she said, stalking toward him, her brows low over intense eyes, “I think we should do something about this mutual attraction.”
“You do?” His voice sounded strangled to his own ears.
She nodded, now close enough to smooth her hand down the front of his shirt. His dick began swelling, desperately hoping she’d keep moving south, stroke it too.
“We should relieve some of this stress. It will help us better focus on the case.”
That was probably a poor reason to make this sort of decision, but at the moment, Hunter couldn’t muster enough appropriately functioning brain cells to care.
“We should,” he croaked.
She flung her arms around his neck, her smile so big, so bright, he was completely bedazzled. He could only stand here, staring, as she came toward him, her lips puckered, until they pressed against his own.
Oh hell yes, they were definitely doing this.
Chapter Twelve
Hunter grabbed her hair, twisted his hand around it, tightly, the pull on her scalp slightly stinging and entirely turning her on.
Ooooh, did he like it rough?
Orion had been a gentle, vanilla sex kind of guy. While it was possible that reincarnated individuals would have likes and dislikes entirely different from their original embodiment, to Artemis’s mind, this was yet another in a long list of hints that Hunter was his own person. He wasn’t her long-lost love come back to her.
