Page 13 of Beg for It
She cocks her head in that direction. “Want me to come?”
I give her a reassuring smile, appreciative of the offer but desperate for some space to just breathe.
“I’ll be two seconds. Don’t worry.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. Want me to bring you anything back?”
“Want to get a round of Long Islands?”
That sounds like an awful idea, but I’d rather avoid seeming any more off kilter than I already do.
“Easy.”
I snag my purse from the table and hook it around my shoulder. The bar has gotten increasingly packed over the last hour or so, more and more people filtering in from God knows where.
I am just about to break through the crowd when my purse catches on something. I give it a decent tug, and when it finally releases, I pitch forward without warning. My feet struggle tokeep me upright, and my shoulder knocks into an unsuspecting body.
I watch with horror as a full can of beer hits the ground with a hiss, liquid spraying everything.
“Shit.”
I bend down immediately, hand grabbing the can and fingers locating the split where the beer is shooting out from. I stopper it with my thumb as a temporary fix. With a sad, apologetic smile, I stand back up to offer to buy whoever it is a new one.
“So sorry, I didn’t—”
The words catch in my throat at the ice blue eyes before me. That soulless stare freezes me, chilling me right to the bone.
Speak, Blair.
“I’ll buy,” I choke out.
That isn’t even a proper sentence.
Great. I probably pissed him off even more.
“It’s fine.”
My body melts. Something about those two words thaws the ice filling my lungs. I relax, the paranoia and fear trickling away drop by drop.
Eli Cross looks a lot different than he did when we graduated. His dark brown hair has grown out, strands falling over his forehead in a messy but hot way. The slit in his right brow is still there—not an aesthetic choice but rather a remnant of a brawl between his crew and Brett’s. His jaw is stronger, and he’s somehow grown another few inches. He is wearing a black hoodie, but I can tell he’s filled out, too.
Just how much muscle is he hiding under there?
Shit. What am I thinking?
This is Eli freaking Cross. Evil Eli. I’m not supposed to be thinking that sort of thing.
“You good, princess?”
There it is again. Every word he speaks swirls something deep inside me. It is as though my body is having some automatic reaction to him. I am heating up. The shadows under my skin swirling in response. This isn’t normal. Something is wrong.
Eli is dangerous. Not the sexy bad boy kind but the his-friend-will-visit-you-in-the-middle-of-the-night-and-smash-your-windshield-with-a-baseball-bat-as-a-warning kind of dangerous. I’ve seen it before. And I’m not naive enough to believe he’s changed.
Being around him is bad news.
He reaches forward to take the can from my hands. His skin brushes mine, just a mere graze of fingertips. My body recoils like I’ve been splashed by hot oil, a burn running the entire length of my arm.
