He stares at me and stares at me with an inscrutable expression until I start to feel like a freak show for going off like that.
But he deserved it, didn’t he?
He…
“They’re not my girlfriends,” he murmurs after a bit.
Something about his casual answer irritates me even further and I snap, “Yeah, do they know that?”
“They do, yes.” He shrugs then but there’s this wild, wild intensity on his face, in his body too, looking all tight and strung up. “With me, they always know. I don’t do girlfriends.”
“And why? Why are you so special that you don’t do girlfriends?”
“Because I don’t. It’s not my style. I don’t believe in love and shit.”
Of course.
A typical guy. I have four brothers and two of whom are complete players like him; I know.
They’re the same.
Wild and untamable.
And I don’t know why he’s watching me like he’s performing some kind of experiment. “Well then, as I said, you should ask your other girls to dance for you and leave me alone.”
His scrutiny isn’t over yet.
Not for another five or six seconds, and then, “You sound like you’re jealous, Fae.”
I gasp. Almost.
How dare he?
How freaking dare he?
I shift on my stupid heels again.
“You’d know, wouldn’t you?” I raise my eyebrows. “Because you sounded like you were jealous when you thought that the world was looking at my juicy, tight ass, Roman.”
It’s his turn to blink.
Not that it makes him look intimidated by me or something like that.
In fact, I’m the one who loses all the air in her lungs because I’ve been dying, dying, to call him that. And to say it like that, blurting it out, makes me stumble on my heels.
He’s just taken aback, I think.
Not by what I said, but what he says next, almost to himself, as if he’s surprised by it. “I was.”
“You were?”
He looks into my wide, shocked eyes. “Yeah. And I don’t like that.”
“Being jealous?”
“Yes.”
His frown is so… adorable. It’s such a tame word for a guy like him who’s made of all sharp and dangerous edges.
But that’s what I feel right now.
That he’s so vulnerable and adorable in this moment with his honesty and so I have to be honest too. “M-me neither.”
He opens and closes his fists as if he can’t decide what he wants to do with his fingers. He can’t decide what he wants to do in a situation like this and I can’t wait to see what he does do.
Then with a sharp breath that pushes out his massive chest, he becomes himself.
He becomes dark in his intentions and dangerous in his beauty.
He looks me up and down in his villainous way before taking a couple of steps closer to me and I go a couple of steps back.
“So how about I make you another promise?” he offers like the devil he is.
“What promise?” I ask, looking up at him.
But not for long because right in front of my eyes, he does something incredible.
He does something that I never even imagined he would do.
Right in front of my eyes, Reed Roman Jackson slowly comes down on his knees.
The sight of it is so shocking that my hand sticks out on its own and grabs hold of his shoulder. His hoodie.
“I don’t know… what you’re doing,” I whisper, looking into his eyes, which are on level with mine.
Because he’s so, so tall.
His answer is to smile lopsidedly and grab my ankle.
Before I can even utter a word, he’s taken off my shoe and given me my breaths back. When he goes for the other one and brings me back down to earth, taking off the added four inches of my height, I want to hug him.
I don’t even care that now he reaches the top of my head easily.
I don’t even care that the stark difference in our sizes makes me look all helpless in front of him.
“Tell me about your promise,” I whisper, putting my other hand on his shoulder as well and clutching his soft hoodie.
His gaze turns liquid. “You take off that dress and braid your hair.”
“And?”
His fingers still circle my ankle, squeezing. “And you dance only for me.”
“What would I get in return?”
“And in return, I won’t ask any other girls to dance for me.” Another squeeze of my ankle and I bite my lip. “Only you.”
Only me.
He just said that.
And maybe it’s not exactly what a girl hopes to hear from a guy. It’s not a declaration or anything. Just a little promise. And for now, it seems like enough. It seems enough to make me smile and wiggle my free toes on the ground in happiness.
It seems enough that I step closer to him and my bare feet graze his bent knees. “On one condition.”
“What?”
I dare to touch the ends of his dark hair; they’re as soft and silky as his hoodie. “I hear you love your Mustang.”