Page 5 of Desperate Games

Nothing like this. Nothing like her.

Andy turns her head, laughs at something one of her cousins says, and those dark eyes catch the light just right—deep brown with rivers of gold and green, sparkling, bright, and so sharp they cut right through me.

It’s a lightning strike to the chest.

Instant. Blinding.

I’m across the make-shift floor before I even think it through.

I flirt. Nothing overt.

Just enough to see if the heat I’m feeling is mirrored back.

And, holy hell is it.

She thinks I’m just some guy.

Junior’s friend.

A harmless plus-one with a nice face and a decent jawline.

She doesn’t know what I’ve done. Who I’ve trained with. What I’ve survived.

She doesn’t know I’ve watched men die, killed with my bare hands, bled in jungles and deserts for causes I barely believed in.

And somehow—somehow—this woman?

This curvy, sharp-tongued, unapologetic goddess with the softest fucking lips I’ve ever seen?

She scares me more than any of that ever did.

Because I feel everything when I look at her. Lust, yeah. But something else too.

Need.

Want.

Possibility.

And what the hell am I supposed to do with that?

I’ve never done the whole relationship thing. Not really. Not the kind that means anything.

I’ve had women, sure. I’ve ruined women. But never one I’d bring home to meet my mother. Never one I’d want more from than a night or two.

But this Ramirez girl?

She’s got me thinking about what it might be like to wake up with the same woman every morning.

Not because I’m stuck.

But because I choose her.

Maybe it’s the wedding. The wine. The fairy lights. The aura of these two over-the-top families—Volkov and Fury—who live like legends and love like warriors.

Or maybe it’s just her.

Doesn’t matter either way because I am in this moment. Right here. Right now. With her.