Total pages in book: 49
Estimated words: 46223 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 231(@200wpm)___ 185(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46223 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 231(@200wpm)___ 185(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
When the server leaves, I lean in, my voice dropping to that just-for-us register. “Are we going to talk about the fact that I told a stranger you’re my boyfriend? Or the fact that you kissed me in an airport because it was the only way to get me out alive?”
His jaw ticks. “Which part do you want to talk about?”
“All of it,” I say. “Some of it. The part where you didn’t exactly hate it.”
That gets me half a smile, quick and dangerous. “We’re using the cover,” he says. “Dean’s call.”
“That’s not a denial.”
“Wasn’t meant to be.”
My drink arrives. I take a sip for courage and nearly moan because it’s perfect—lemon bright, bourbon warm, the froth sweet on my tongue. Riggs watches my mouth like he’s memorizing. Heat crawls up my neck.
“Tell me something true,” I say, because deflection is my favorite game and because I want to know him outside commands and corridors. “Not about security. About you.”
He takes his time answering. “I like early mornings,” he says. “Before the city has opinions.”
“That’s poetic.”
“Don’t tell anyone.” He takes his coffee like a challenge and sets it down. “Truth for truth. Your turn.”
“I wear ridiculous socks on travel days,” I confess, lifting my cuff to show teal with tiny croissants. “For luck.”
His mouth twitches. “You think luck wears cotton.”
“I think luck likes being invited.”
He shakes his head as if I’m an unsolvable equation he likes doing anyway. The band eases into something sultry. A couple slides onto the floor, bodies tucked close enough that the air between them disappears.
“Next question,” he says. “Who’s Kellan?”
I roll my eyes, not wanting to think about my ex-boyfriend. Not really even an ex, more like a man who wanted fame so he thought I was his golden ticket there. “Ex-boyfriend.”
“How long did you two date?”
If Riggs followed me on social media he’d have all his answers, but a part of me is glad he doesn’t know every single thing about me. “A year, maybe less. It was stupid. He wanted fame, and I wanted… something else.”
“Where is he now?” His brown eyes lock on mine.
I shake my head. “I’m not really sure. Last I heard he was trying to make it big with a YouTube channel.”
Riggs stares back at the dancefloor, watching the couples dance, all calculation and caution, then glances at me. “Cover,” he says.
“Cover,” I echo, and my pulse rockets.
He stands and holds out a hand like we’ve done this a thousand times. Callused palm, heat like a secret. I let him pull me to the floor, awareness crackling through me like static. We find a corner where the lighting leaves us darker, soft, the kind of shadow that turns everything private.
He sets one hand at my waist, the other threads our fingers. My free hand goes to his shoulder out of necessity and then in no time at all out of need. He’s solid under the thin barrier of cloth. The bass thrums. My insides coil with need.
“Relax,” he murmurs, mouth close to my temple. “Let me lead.”
The words flutter through me, low and hot. “Bossy,” I whisper again, but I do it. I let go a fraction, let him set the arc of our steps. He moves like the music plugged into his bones, unhurried, sure. Every small shift of his hand at my waist maps how to move me with him. Professional. Possessive. Something I shouldn’t name.
Across the room, a woman I don’t know lifts her phone and aims it at us. Riggs feels me stiffen before I do and turns us with a pivot that puts his back to the lens and my face into the shelter of his chest. “I’ve got you,” he says, not even pretending it’s just for the fan.
I breathe him in. He smells like pine and something completely unique to him. Like all man and grit. “We’re going to be a thing by morning,” I murmur into his collar, and my lips brush the barest bit of skin where his shirt is open. His exhale is not entirely professional.
“Already are,” he says. “Use it.”
I tip my head back to look at him. “Then kiss me like you mean it.”
The smallest pause, the longest inch between us. He searches my face like he could find a trap there and springs the only one that matters when I don’t flinch. His mouth finds mine with a precision that is nothing like cautious and everything like claimed. It isn’t rough; it isn’t sweet. It’s heat carefully applied, the way he’d lay a charge—exactly where it needs to be to change the room.
My hand fists in his shirt. He makes a sound, quiet and raw, somewhere in his chest, and angles us so the world sees what we want it to see and I get the real thing, the one that pulls my toes off the floor. The music wraps around us, bass and sax and the whisper of rain against a window nobody bothered to shut. We break for air, our bodies still swaying because neither of us remembered to tell our hips to stop.