I gape for a second, then swiftly recover. “Are you always this arrogant?”
“Are you always this transparent?”
“You don’t know anything about me!”
“I know women.”
“Oh I’msureyou do.” I look pointedly at the lipstick on his collar. “But I guarantee, I’m not like any womanyou’veever met.”
He shrugs. “Every swimming pool thinks it’s an ocean.”
“And I supposeI’mthe swimming pool in this scenario?!” My teeth sink into my bottom lip to contain a scream of outrage.
His eyes flicker down to my mouth and hold there, unshifting. “Look, no offense, but everyone thinks they’re a big mystery that needs to be solved. The truth is, most people aren’t all that complicated.”
“Did you seriously just sayno offensebefore that statement?” I practically growl. “Are you freaking kidding me?”
“I’m not generally known for my humor.”
“Well,there’sa shocker!”
People who look like him — the genetically blessed, so to speak — rarely develop a sense of humor because, unlike the rest of us mere mortals, they don’t have to work for attention or affection. It’s simply handed to them from the minute their perfectly-formed faces pop into existence.
He arches a brow at my sarcastic tone, but I don’t elaborate. I’m not about to feed his — already enormous — ego by telling him he looks like a Greek god. I simply glare at him in stony silence, wishing he’d evaporate from my presence.
“You know…” His mouth curls up at one side. “Girls don’t usually look at me with this much hostility untilafterI’ve told them I have no interest in screwing them again…”
“Ugh!You are disgusting.”
“Disgustingly attractive?”
“No. Just regular old disgusting. For a list of synonyms, see:vile,repellent,repulsive.”
“You forgotabhorrentanddespicable.”
“I was getting to those,” I snap. “Trust me, the list is quite extensive.”
His lips twitch again and his eyes flare with heat, banked embers sparking to life like I’ve just lit a match inside him. I must be going crazy, because he looks almostpleasedwith the fact that I’ve insulted him using more than a few colorful vocabulary words. As though my harsh statement was not a character assassination, but rather…
A challenge.
Setting my shoulders, I shake off the strange thoughts and focus on the situation at hand. I’m not sure how he’s managed it but, in the span of just a few minutes, this stranger has managed to piss me off so thoroughly, I’ve completely forgotten about the fact that I’ve been taken into custody by a set of gun-toting suits. I don’t know what I want to do first — scream in his face or smack that smug look clean off it.
Unfortunately, before I can do anything at all… he reaches across the distance between our seats, directly into my personal space, and grasps one of my purple curls between his thumb and his index finger.
I go totally still.
The words ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’are poised on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t seem to get them out. I can’t seem to do anything, really, except sit there staring at him in the dark. Waiting.
In a deliberate gesture that makes my eyes widen and my heart stutter, he trails his way slowly down the lock, his fingers moving with surprising gentleness as he stretches the curl to its full length. I don’t move. I don’t even breathe. When he finally reaches the end of the strands, his eyes flicker up to mine.
“You know, Orchid…” The smirk returns and, with it, a deep, rasping tone that makes my throat close up. He leans in, as if he’s sharing a secret. “I like a little color in my life.”
Ignoring my racing heart and burning cheeks, I smack his hand away. The curl springs back upward toward my breasts. “Hands to yourself, Johnnie.”
“Johnnie?”
“Yes. As in, Johnnie Walker. As in,bourbon. As in,the smell radiating from your pores,” I explain sweetly, gesturing at him. “Since we’re trading nicknames, and all.”