Page 55 of Entangled

Silence falls as we lock eyes and that playful energy threads the air between us, causing my stomach to flip. Fuck, but he’s cute. Standing there all effortlessly sensual, hair pulled back into a messy bun and staring at me with wicked mischief in his eyes. Scaring the shit out of me with that feeling of something more between us since the boat. And I must be a special kind of stupid because I want to invite him in despite the vulnerability within me bucking against it.

That might be what I hate Coop for most of all.

For forcing the realization on me that I wasn’t untouchable. Not in the end anyway.

But Jace… Damnit. Something about him just makes it so hard to say no and turn him away. He was turning me into a marshmallow with his playful eyes and the constant care he showed where I was concerned.

And my god but the things that piercing could do.

I nod my head toward the door. “Want to come in?”

He steps up onto the bottom step fully, bringing us eye to eye. “You going to disappear on me again?”

“Maybe.” I shrug, giving him a small smirk. “I told you. I’m kinda a mess.”

“Yeah, well.” He reaches up and tugs at my hair in that playful way of his, dimples flashing as he drops his lips a breath away from mine. “I licked you, so I guess you’re my mess now regardless.”

Chapter 14

One Year Ago

Coop and I were a little fucked up.

We’ve been in Cahuita for almost two weeks and during that time we’ve fallen into a rhythm with each other. He pushes, I push back, and so the game goes, both of us locked in our weird battle of wills. Fighting for control and against it.

We get in bed at night and I lie on my side, he waits approximately ten minutes then pulls me over to cuddle. We have ridiculously earth-shattering sex. I go back to my side, he pulls me back over to cuddle and so the endless cycle goes. And somehow, I always wake up in the morning wrapped up in the stubborn bastard’s arms.

He asks me a question about my past, I remind him that’s against the rules. He asks the same question in a more roundabout way, I throw him a bratty comment. Etc., etc., etc.

The part that has me really questioning how deep my damage goes was that I was enjoying it though. I mean, I had always liked to play the game. But this was a higher-stakes version of it than I ever had before and with a more worthy opponent. And I was loving every moment of it, waking up wrapped in his arms, dodging his questions, all of it.

I was loving every moment with him… which was exactly the reason I had pushed him so hard last night.

For the most part, we had lain on the beach, spent our days exploring the small town of Cahuita, or hiking in the national park nearby. I let Coop do the cooking for the most part when we didn’t go to town to eat. Granted, his skill seemed to be limited to chopping fruit and sautéing chicken, but still, it was edible, which was far better than I could do. And of course, my favorite part was that we spent a good portion of each day devoted to learning each other’s bodies until we both were close to knowing each other like the back of our own hand. I knew that he just about died a small death when I dragged my teeth along his hip bone and my god the man had learned fast how to fuck me just right from behind.

But every couple days, we went out to a little hole-in-the-wall bar in town for dinner and drinks. The owner was a former military expat named Jeff, who Coop knew and clearly liked and I had grown quite fond of the gruff bartender myself. His no-bullshit attitude made him the kind of person that I vibed with right off the bat.

And last night we had gone out to the bar… and that was where the trouble began.

I felt the charge of trouble in the air the minute we walked in and saw the group of college-aged guys standing at the bar. How Coop watched how they looked at me with narrowed eyes. It was the kind of attention I usually reveled in, but that feeling of satisfaction was dulled a bit with him by my side and that, well, that filled me with nothing but terror. So when my second tequila of the night had been empty, I had gone up to the bar to get a new drink, and I had flirted. Right there in front of him. Practically throwing it in his face when I stayed and sipped the drink I had ordered while the group of guys vied for my attention.

If I was being honest with myself, I had expected him to come up and intervene. But he hadn’t. I had felt his dark gaze on me, could practically taste his displeasure with every sip of my drink, but he had stayed in his seat. So I had finished my drink. When I had come back to the table, his night-forest eyes had been filled with anger, but he had simply asked if I was ready to leave.

He hadn’t spoken a word to me since.

The whole way home I had tried to rationalize away the guilty pit in my stomach. It was a feeling I didn’t have much familiarity with and quickly realized I didn’t like much, as in, at all. The fact that it had only grown when we had gone to bed and he hadn’t tried to cuddle me once was something I was having trouble coming to terms with. I had still woken up in his arms this morning, but his silence had remained.

I knew why I had done it. Because I was comfortable here, because I liked him more than I should, and because I could feel my edges beginning to fray. So I had reminded both him and me of the rules. That this wasn’t a permanent thing. That we were just two ships passing in the night. That we had to keep each other at a distance. The light of day brought what some would refer to as self-sabotage but what I would call self-preservation into harsh clarity.

It was nearly noon now and the only company I’d had so far was the scratch of his pen against the journal he was always scribbling in and the quiet anger sucking all the air from the room.

To put it simply, I was about to die of guilt and boredom, which was definitely not on my list of preferred ways to go.

He hadn’t even fed me this morning.

Screw this. If he wouldn’t speak up… I would force it out of him.

Although why I wasn’t just packing my bags and hitting the road like a smart girl, I didn’t know. I just knew I couldn’t deal with this suffocating silence between us for a minute more.

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