Page 11 of Power
Grabbing the napkin, I spun off my barstool and made a mad dash to the trash can, keeping my eyes on Jessica during my frantic (while trying tonotappear frantic) speed walk. Which, as it turned out, wasn’t the safest idea. With my gaze fixed to the side, I slammed into what had to be an escaped Greek statue and discovered that Newton’s laws of motion were alive and well as I bounced backward onto my ass with a yelp.
Two shoes appeared before me. More specifically, gray athletic shoes of the handsome variety, which led to a pair of black athletic pants that looked soft enough to make cashmere jealous, wrapped around legs that had to be sculpted by Michelangelo himself. And because my brain was clearly still scrambled from the fall, I had the completely inappropriate urge to reach out and press a finger to those shins. Just to make sure they were real. For researchpurposes.
But those legs? They were just the opening act. His black athletic shirt might as well have been painted on, displaying a set of abs that looked like they moonlighted as a washboard. My gaze wandered higher (hello, research mode) to find his chest and shoulders waging an epic battle for Most Likely to Make a Girl Forget Her Own Name. Spoiler alert: they were both losing to his face.
Eyes brighter than any sparkling emerald I’d ever seen stared back at me. Even from all the way down here—and the guy was tall, let me tell you—I could see various shades of forest green blending into sea foam, with flecks of gold that seemed to dance in the bar’s light. His hypnotic eyes were set in a chiseled face that would make artists weep as they sculpted his refined jaw, broad cheekbones, and supple lips that could command an entire army of women to obey his every command.
He was, to put it mildly, striking.
I’d never had an instant flutter in my chest by merely locking eyes with another human being, and the involuntary response both thrilled and unnerved me. Evidently, I wasn’t prepared for the impact of encountering such a magnificently beautiful guy because I just sat there. On the ground. Making no effort to be a human and get myself up.
The man’s eyes remained fixed on me as he extended his hand. “Are you okay?”
Holy smokes. His voice was like ear sex, penetrating my brain with a low rumble of pleasure.
“I fell down.”Interesting. Evidently, the ear sex killed my IQ. And for the record, I didn’t fall down, exactly. I’d bounced off his granite body.
Those godlike lips of his curled up slightly on one side, a faint line appearing between his perfectly shaped dark eyebrows that matched his hair.
He finds me amusing. And he’s looking at me like the rest of the bar vanished from existence.
My cheeks incinerated, and my brain ordered me to climb outof the hormone-induced coma and rejoin the land of the mentally functioning.
Why, exactly, was I still lying on this nasty-ass ground, with his hand still stretched out, waiting to help me up like I was frozen? While I’d never had a guy have this effect on me, I was a grown woman with an MBA, for Criminy’s sake, not some middle-school girl meeting her boy-band crush for the first time.
Get a grip. Get up.
When I accepted his hand, a flash of heat shot up my arm, down my chest, and right to my stomach. I froze again—because I hadn’t done that a sufficiently awkward amount of times yet—and held his stare, wondering …Did he feel that too?I didn’t know if I was seeing what I wanted to see, but his lipsdidfall open slightly, and his eyes snapped to our enclosed palms.
How could one small moment feel like everything, shattering my existence into white noise, until the only thing that existed was his hand in mine, his eyes sweeping back to my face? An impressively seductive silence stretched between us until he cleared his throat, and with one graceful pull, he tugged me to my feet.
Stop staring at him. Say something. Walk away. What is wrong with you?
“I’m sorry,” I managed. “I wasn’t looking where I was going.”
Now that I was standing, I could appreciate how much more gorgeous he was up close and how heat radiated off his body.
As a new couple entered the bar, a gust of warm air swept through the door and past us, accomplishing two things: First, it made his hair move so delicately, I wanted to run my fingers through it. Second, and more importantly, it drew our attention to the napkin, which had previously been lying unsuspiciously on the ground.
Floating through the air for a second, it, horrifyingly, drew the attention of Ear Sex’s eyes. I swear, the particles of time slowed around me as he reached his unfairly gorgeous hand down and picked it up before I could stop him.
Based on the way his arm was originally swooping in my direction,only to freeze, he hadn’t intended on reading it, but I guess when the words REVENGE LIST caught someone’s eye, their natural curiosity took over. Even Greek gods, apparently.
He froze for a moment, drew the napkin a little closer, and while my body and brain decided to become useless bystanders, his eyes roamed over our list of ideas. Those perfect lips of his twitched once, twice, and then …
Oh God.
His emerald eyes lifted to meet mine, dancing with something that looked dangerously like amusement.
Plot twist: My Friday night was about to go from bad to catastrophically entertaining. And this was just the beginning …
5
JACE
A vision of perfection lay before me, her lean body a masterpiece, wrapped in a gray pencil skirt and crisp white blouse. As she propped herself up on her elbows, the fabric strained tantalizingly across her breasts, and a single button clung for dear life, threatening to break.
A cascade of shiny blonde waves with a hint of strawberry framed her face, catching the light like champagne bubbles. But it was her green eyes that truly ensnared me, those deep pools of stunning mystery that locked on to mine with an intensity that stole my breath. She was a siren’s call made flesh, and I was helplessly, hopelessly drawn to her.
