Page 22 of Wicked Me
“Fine,” I said and settled back into the couch. “One episode.”
His mouth slid into an easy smile that powered warmth to my cheeks. His gaze dipped to my lips for a split second.
I looked away and fanned the pages of my book to create some air flow. Had the air conditioner stopped working?
I searched for some kind of hangover in his face but saw no trace of one. It made me wonder how many sides of Sam there were because this was not the sexually aggressive stranger in the library, not the pissed-off version who glared at his older brother, and not the drunk who’d slammed around the kitchen on a quest for bacon. He was just a half-naked zombie show fan with a black eye who needed some company and whose jeans heated my cold feet. I liked this version much better.
He pointed at the book in my hands. “What are you reading there?”
“Heist My Heart.” I handed it to him, waiting to be ridiculed for my genre preference like Riley had, but he flipped it over to read the blurb without even a smirk at the almost nude couple embracing on the cover. His pale blond eyelashes caught the glow of sunlight behind him from the window while his eyes tracked over the book.
“I thought you were readingHave Your Way With Me.”
My face heated at how his mouth moved over those particular words, at the memory of his book retrieval skills in the library. Holy hell.
“Uh, yeah,” I said and cleared my throat. “It’s next in the series. I have about forty more pages to go in this one.”
He glanced at me, a frown creasing his forehead. “So you didn’t bringHave Your Way With Mewith you to D.C.?”
Somehow the words in his question scrambled themselves into justMe With Youbefore they flowed normally again, and that phrase kicked up my heartbeat. “I did, but I accidentally left it at the airport, and therefore had a book emergency.”
“Is it good?” he asked. His long fingers turned to the first page.
“So far.” He wasn’t handing it back. He was reading ‘book porn,’ and my eyes widened as he thumbed to the next page. “See, Amber Dexter was taken hostage during a bank heist, but Detective Bailey thinks there’s something fishy about her and that she might be in on it.”
“Hey.” He flashed out a hand, and his fingertip brushed my lips. “Shh.”
I jerked back, not from his touch alone, but from the electrical pulse it ignited throughout my entire body.
“Spoilers,” he said, his voice soft, his gaze locked on my mouth again. He took back his hand and returned to the book, a small smile playing across his lips.
“Sorry,” I whispered and shifted my attention to the television and away from him and his shock-inducing fingers.
But they had made it even harder to breathe than the naked torso within touching distance. It took until the end of a commercial break for my pulse to slow to somewhere near normal, and then I finally relaxed enough to focus on the show.
Sam glued himself to the pages of my book until the next commercial break when I caught him looking at me. “Why do you do that?” he asked.
I blinked. “Do what?”
“Your hair.” He tipped his chin at my hand.
I glanced down at the swatch of hair curled between my fingers and immediately released it. It was a habit I’d picked up during childhood to rub the ends of a piece of hair over my lips during an intense book, or in this case television show. When I still lived in D.C., my female best friend, Ashely, used to say I secretly wanted a mustache. Maybe I did, but I was so horrified by the idea, that I drew one on her with permanent marker while she slept. She didn’t speak to me for a week, and because I felt guilty about it, I drew one on myself and we performed a Queen concert at recess as Freddie Mercury look-alikes. Good times.
“Habit,” I said with a shrug. I hoped this wouldn’t end with another Freddie impersonation because talk of mustaches would lead to me staring at the stubble surrounding Sam’s full lips. The lips that were now moving, and I hadn’t heard a word they’d said. “Huh?”
Sam leaned toward me and rested a hand on my bent knee. “I said...did you know your lips are one of the most sensitive body parts you have?”
I stared at his hand while a penetrating thrill radiated out from it. “Really?”
“You rub your hair over your lips because you like the feel, don’t you.”
If the point of this conversation was to melt my insides with thoughts of all the other things I could attach my lips to, it was working 100 percent.
“Yes,” I said, breathless, and flicked my tongue over them self-consciously.
His gaze followed the movement, and the muscles in his shoulders rippled with every heave of his chest. He stood quickly and faced the television as he cracked the knuckles of his unbandaged hand against his hip. “Pizza sound good?”
“Umm...” I sat up, shaking my head, unable to switch gears as fast as he had. “Sure. Pizza sounds fine.”
