Page 268 of Off Limits: The Firsts

Great, now I sound like some goddamn Hallmark movie.

I scrub my hands over my face, and when I look up, there she is in full living color, walking across the tarmac as if she owns the place. In a flight suit with the sleeves tied around her waist and a purple tank top beneath it. If jumping out of airplanes is what she likes to do to relax after a long day, I can’t imagine what else excites her.

As if sensing my attention on her, Emerson turns her head to face my direction, and I swear she knows it’s me. It’s the way she angles her head. It’s the immediate straightening of her shoulders. It’s the sudden stalking of her feet my way with a definite purpose.

I grin, can’t help that I do. I love seeing her all worked up. After the day I’ve had, I’m more than ready for a good fight.

But fuck if she’s not trying to distract me in other ways. Like that damn flight suit of hers. It should be the most unattractive thing on the face of the earth—dark blue, baggy, manly—but . . . goddamn. I’m a red-blooded male and would have to be dead not to notice how her tits bounce beneath that thin tank she has on.

I scrub a hand over my face to try to stop my thoughts from going where they shouldn’t, but hell if they don’t have a mind of their own.

They go there.

Oh, how they go there.

When she’s about twenty feet away from me, she stops and plants her hands on her hips before calling out, “Airstrip’s closed for maintenance. No one called for the police. You can turn around and leave now.”

I stare at her behind my sunglasses with my elbow propped on the open driver’s side window. “I’m off duty. And it’s good to see you, too, Em.” I grin just to irritate her.

“It isn’t good to see you.”

“Aww, now you’re just trying to win me over with kindness.”

She rolls her shoulders. “Sorry, we’re all out of tampons today. You can take your emergency elsewhere.” Sarcasm drips from her voice and only serves to antagonize me to draw this out.

“No emergency,” I say as I climb out from my truck and lean against the door. “Just out for a drive and somehow ended up here.”

“Convenient.” She snorts. “You came. You saw. You can leave now because you won’t conquer.” She flashes me a dazzling smile that just might serve to warm that cold heart that Nate swears I have.

“And you used to be so sweet.”

“And you used to not be so annoying.”

“All this fire from you and I can’t remember doing anything wrong.”

There’s a quick flash of something across her expression but between the distance and how fast it disappears, I can’t read what it means.

But it’s enough to know my comment got to her.

We stare at each other, both of us stubborn enough that we’d hold the line until someone looked away. While it might be fun to push her buttons, I know it isn’t going to get me anywhere. That I know for certain.

“Is this where you jump from?” I jut my chin to the tarmac behind her.

“What’s that?” she asks as she takes a step closer and furrows her brow.

“The other night at Desi’s house, a bunch of you were talking about skydiving.”

“And your point is?”

It takes everything I have not to tell her to stop when she begins to put her arms through the sleeves of her flight suit and zip it up. There’s no need to cover up the perfection I was just admiring. And when I meet her eyes again, her knowing expression says I’ve been caught checking her out.

Can she blame me?

“Well?” she prompts drawing me back to our conversation.

“I assumed you guys are on a dive team or something.”

She cocks her head to the side and chews on the inside of her cheek. “What do you want, Grant? You weren’t just on a drive, and you just didn’t happen to end up here . . . so what is it specifically that you want?”