Page 19 of Cinder
I glance over at him. He’s sitting at a table across the room with Gambit and Scotty, the prospect, but he’s scowling at us. Which tells me he didn’t get thejust as friendsmemo.
“So not a date?” I reiterate.
“I think you already figured that out since you’ve been watching me all night.”
Not a lot of people surprise me.
But this woman keeps surprising the hell out of me.
“How would you know I was watching you if you weren’t watching me back?” I ask her.
“Touché.” She laughs and folds her arms. “Does this usually work?”
“What?”
“You ride in like a knight in shining armor, lay the lines on thick, and what? I’m supposed to fall to my knees and blow you?”
Sweet Jesus. That smart mouth.
Those plump lips.
Where the hell has she come from?
“I mean, if that tickles your fancy.” I give her a wink.
“It will take more than a flex of muscle and a panty-dropping smile to get me on my knees.”
“You think my smile is panty-dropping, huh?”
“Of course that’s what you take away from my comment.”
Because I like the way she’s scowling at me, I give her one of those panty-dropping smiles and say, “You’re flirting.”
But she doesn’t flinch. Just lifts an eyebrow. “Is that what this is?”
“This can be whatever you want it to be, honey.”
It takes a beat, then she bursts out laughing. “Oh, you’re too much,” she says. “Just for that cheese, you owe me a drink.”
I grin because I haven’t met this much of a challenge in a long while. “Lead the way, sweetheart.”
At the bar I order two shots of tequila, and Luna lines them up in front of us.
“Salt, lime?” she asks.
The woman with the mesmerizing eyes nods.
I haven’t done tequila shots with salt and lime since Gambit’s stag night. Normally I drink it straight. But if this beauty wants to lick salt and wrap those luscious lips around a lime wedge in front of me, then who am I to complain?
Luna slides the salt along the bar and places two lime wedges on a napkin, then leaves us to serve Belle further down the bar.
My drinking companion picks up the saltshaker and simultaneously reaches for my hand.
Mouth open, I watch as she sprinkles salt on the patch of skin where my thumb meets my forefinger, then bends her head and looks up at me as she slides her tongue over the salt.
And boom.
There is a mass exodus internally as all my thoughts, common sense, and awareness leave me.
