Page 40 of Restless Hawke

He shakes his head, brushing his thumb across his bottom lip as he examines me with a heated look. “It wasn’t meant as a compliment.”

I knew that, too.

But this is our game.

Isn’t it?

I expected him to come in raging at me. I anticipated fury and hatred. But that isn’t what I’m getting. The only thing he’s throwing at me is a confusing jumble of mixed signals.

“What do you want, Coen?”

He shifts even closer, until his entire left side presses into mine, his arm wrapping around my shoulders tightly, practically dragging me onto his lap. “Oh, I think you knowexactlywhat I want, Allegra…”

I turn my head to fully face him, and though the icy chips still remain in his gaze, something else lies there, that same fire and need that rolled through me when he kissed me in his room. “I thought I made my position on that clear.”

He chuckles low, the sound making his body vibrate against mine. His gaze travels over the other diners. “About as clear as mud. You said it would be a bad idea.”

I take a sip of my drink, wishing it were stronger to help me manage the truly unhealthy way I’m reacting to his closeness. For hours, I toyed with this man, and I managed to remainmostlyunaffected by it. But it’s taken less than a minute for him to have me trembling and needy with just a look and a few words.

It’s a very bad sign for my resolve.

“It would be.”

“Why?” He places his right hand on his thigh, and I am keenly aware that’s where mine sat for hours, toying with him. “Because this is the game that you play, finding the player likely to win, and then rattling him so you can swoop in and take the prize.”

I allow the corner of my mouth to curl slightly. “That’s part of it.”

“And what’s the other?”

The fact that I haven’t felt this kind of attraction for anyone in a very long time…

I don’t say the words.

I can’t.

But the heat crawling up my neck and over my cheeks betrays me.

A slow, satisfied grin crosses Coen’s face, and he slides his hand across my knee. Those rough calluses dragging over my smooth skin send a shiver through me, making me inadvertently press into him tighter. “You want to hear what I think?”

Yes.

No.

Fuck.

The fog filling my head seems to grow thicker as he brushes his thumb up and down my skin softly.

“Do I have a choice?”

God…

I hate how breathy and needy that question came out, but I can’t even seem to find a way to control my own breathing with that simple, intimate touch of his frying my brain cells.

His warm breath fans my cheek. “I think this has all been one big game to you, only you never intended it to backfire.”

“I don’t think it backfired at all. I won.”

The evidence is sitting in my bank account as we speak.