Page 39 of Off the Beaten Path

He backs away, and I have to grip the edge of the table to continue standing upright, my fingers digging into the green velvet until my knuckles turn white with the pressure. I don’t turn around to see if Charlotte is watching. I don’t want to know, and I don’t want Holden to either. I’m terrified that if she’s not, he’ll bring this all to an end. It feels dangerously real, and I want to push my advantage for all its worth.

Holden pulls striped and solid balls from the pockets, rolling them in my direction, and I catch them with trembling hands before dropping them into the rack. I swear I feel his eyes on me in the moments my focus is elsewhere, hot and heavy and lingering, but every time I look up, he’s looking into the next pocket.

When the last of the pockets has been emptied, he goes to the wall where the cue sticks are hanging, and I push onto my tiptoes, leaning over the edge of the table to push the rack into place.

I feel Holden before I hear the cue stick settling against the table, the solid line of his body bending over mine, nudging the rack the last inch my short arms couldn’t manage before lifting it away from the balls, leaving them in a perfect triangle on the table. “Got it,” he says into my ear, rustling the fine hairs at the base of my neck.

He pulls me up with him, a hand pressed to the space between my hip and waist, finger flexing in the thick material of my sweater.

Surprise hums through me when I look back at him and find a smirk playing at the edges of his lips, a playful look I would have bet the cabin I’d never see on his face. It does something to me, that knowing smile.

He holds out the cue stick in front of us, his body still pressed against the back of mine. “Thisis a cue stick,” he says, voice teasing.

“Is it really?” I ask. “My gosh, there’s so much to learn. I’m so grateful to have a big, strong man like you to teach me.”

He grips my waist a little harder, leaning in until his lips are pressed to my ear once more. “You might be going a little overboard.”

“What can I say? I’m a zealous lover.”

Holden grunts in my ear, putting space between us as he moves around the corner of the table. He points the cue stick at me. “I don’t know about that, Red, but you’re trouble. That’s for sure.”

ThegrinthatWrengives me proves my point. I feel it pierce straight through the steel barrier I’ve been building up around my heart since Mia left, snagging on the tender flesh beneath. Wren Daniels has the potential to be my downfall, but damn it all to hell, I want to see where she’ll take me anyway.

My palms still itch, imprinted with the memory of her curves beneath my hands, the soft wool of her sweater bunched beneath my fingers. It took everything inside me not to tug on the pesky fabric and see if her skin feels as soft and warm as I’ve been imagining it would.

If you would have told me six weeks ago that I’d be fantasizing about Wren Daniels, I would have laughed, but I can’t deny the pinprick of electricity zinging up my spine as she follows my path around the table and comes to stand beside me.

“You’re going to have to show me how to do this,” she says, her voice low and smooth, made for darkness and tangled bedsheets. We both know she’s lying but don’t pretend to want to do anything else.

I nod, moving behind her, my hand finding that same spot on her hip once more. It settles in the perfect little curve between her waist and hip, like it was meant to be there. I think I hear her breath catch, and I wonder if she can feel my heart beating, if she knows how long it’s been since I’ve had a woman this close, since I’vewanteda woman this close. If I think about it for too long, I’ll freak myself out and retreat. But I don’t want to retreat right now, not when she makes me feel safe to explore this again. Not with Wren. With Wren, I want to keep moving forward and see what happens.

My hand folds around one of hers, positioning it around the cue stick. She follows my unspoken directions with ease, probably because she doesn’t actually need my help, but despite that, it doesn’t feel like pretend. It doesn’t feel like we’re trying to put on a show for Charlotte, who may have even left by now, because from the moment I walked in here with Wren, I haven’t noticed much else. No, it doesn’t feel like pretend. It feels like anexcuseto do what we’ve been dancing around since that first night here, just feet away, perched on stools at the bar.

“You want to hit the white ball,” I say into her ear. “The cue.”

Wren nods, her hair catching in my beard.

“Then, whichever ball ends up in a pocket, that’s yours.”

“I’m going to be stripes,” Wren says, and a smile twitches my lips.

“You can’t pick before they go in, Red. Or you can, but if you knock in a solid, I have one less to deal with.”

Her eyes meet mine with a simple twist of her head. We’re so close I could press my mouth to hers, taste the lips that have been haunting my dreams and leaving me waking up frustrated and wanting every day for weeks.

“I won’t knock in a solid,” she says, confidence in every note of her voice.

It makes me want to do it, kiss her and see if she tastes like the strawberry wine she was drinking at the table. I’ve never been a fan of wine, especially not fruity wines, but I think I’d like it on her. I think I’d like anything if I tasted it on her lips. Brownies, butterscotch syrup, caramel cheesecake, powdered sugar.

With her gaze still fixed on me, Wren slides the cue stick back and pushes it forward, sending the cue ball crashing into the ones lined up at the end of the table. They scatter, and I pull my eyes away from her long enough to watch them slide across the green velvet.

She was right. Two striped balls end up in pockets, but not a single solid follows. They all roll to a stop on the table, and she stands, flashing me a wide smile.

That’s all it takes for my control to snap. That smile that I feel right in the center of my chest.

Grabbing Wren’s hand, I tug her toward the hall where we hid from Charlotte last time. She’s still got her free hand wrapped around the cue stick.

“Holden,” Wren yells loud enough for me to hear her over the music. “Where are we—”

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