“You don’t have a choice.”
I glared at him. He leaned against the counter, clearly enjoying my discomfort. “Think of it as a walk of fame.”
I laughed, “More like a walk of shame.”
He laughed too. “Soleil and Jonah hook up constantly.”
“That’s different,” I noted.
“Elise has a guy from town who sneaks in half the week,” he continued.
“That doesn’t make me feel better,” I pouted.
He stepped closer and tilted my chin up gently. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I hooked up with my boss,” I stated guiltily.
“We already established this wasn’t a regular hookup. There were extenuating circumstances,” he said.
We both watched each other silently.
“You mean that we couldn’t keep our hands to ourselves,” I said.
He grinned, “It is what it is. There was an ember burning between us since the moment we met.”
His candidness surprised me, although he wasn’t wrong.
“And now we got it out of our system,” I said.
“Exactly,” he agreed.
Our gazes locked again, followed by more beats of silence. We were liars. I wanted to rip his clothes off again. He wasn’t out of my system, and I doubted I was out of his.
I stood. “Okay, I can do this.” I walked toward the door. “Thanks for last night,” I said, turning back to him before walking out of his cabin with my key and yesterday’s clothes in my hand.
I saw him wave awkwardly as I closed the door. I didn’t know what the etiquette was in such a scenario, and Asher was my boss. The air was humid after the storm as I walked down the short path to my cabin. My luck, I nearly collided with Soleil.
She froze.
Her eyes dropped to the oversized sweatshirt. The jogging pants. My bare feet in borrowed slides. Her gaze slowly lifted to my face.
“Well,” she said slowly. “Well, would you look at that. The sheep finally ran wild.”
Heat flooded my cheeks. “It’s not what it looks like,” I assured.
Her eyebrow arched.
“I lost my key in the storm,” I rushed. “There wasn’t a spare.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“It’s true,” I feigned.
She leaned closer. “Claire. I saw the way he looked at you the night of the fight. Like he wanted to feast.”
My stomach flipped. Because he had. Last night he looked at me that way too.
“We just…” I stopped myself.