Briggs (Carolina Reapers 7)

“Bristol,” he said, and I held up my hand to stop whatever he was about to say.

“Please…please don’t say my name like that.”

“Like what?” He took a step closer to me, and every cell in my body reacted to his nearness. God, he smelled so good, and felt so good…or had seconds ago when he’d held me. Stopped me from falling all over myself.

“Like you want me,” I said.

New rule. Never drink around him again. It made me a fool. It switched off my filter.

His eyes churned with need, but he shook his head. “I don’t even like you,” he said, but each word sounded like a damn lie.

“You don’t have to like me to want me,” I fired back. “Plus, when you say things like that, I’m not too fond of you either.”

That low, should-be-illegal growl rumbled from his chest. He reached out, smoothing his hand over my cheek. I leaned into the touch, sighing at the contact. “You’re right,” he said, stepping closer. “I don’t have to like you to want you. Wanting you has never been the problem, Bristol.” I met him in the middle, our bodies now flush, every inch of my skin tingling with anticipation.

“Then what is?” I breathed the question.

His mouth was inches from mine, and my heart beat fast and hard in my chest. I tipped my chin, moving my lips closer. Just a breath separated us—

“You and me,” he said, and his lips almost grazed mine. “We’re nothing but a disaster waiting to happen.”

He left so quickly I stumbled forward an inch.

Cormac disappeared onto the sidewalk, folded into the crowds of people, and he didn’t look back once.

7

Cormac

“Cut!” The director yelled my favorite word of the day. We’d shot this particular sequence at least a dozen times.

I shoved my hands through my rain-soaked hair as the makeup techs ran from the sides of the small soundstage to touch up the models who had been at my side all day. One of the girls shivered, rubbing her hands up and down her arms.

“Hey, Bristol,” I called out toward the monitor, where she and the director were watching the last take.

“Hey, Cormac?” Her head popped up over the hardware, her eyes hitting me like a punch to the gut.

Fuck, she was beautiful. It wasn’t like I didn’t know that already, but it hit me every single time I saw her, anyway.

“Any chance we can kill the rain machine and fans before one of these women come down with pneumonia?” I asked.

Bristol glanced at the models, then cringed and nodded. “Absolutely. Shut it all down! I think we’ve got it! Thank you, guys!”

The water ceased its onslaught, and the wind died.

“Mr. Briggs?” Angela, Bristol’s assistant, raced over to me with a towel, slipping in her Vans the last couple of feet.

“Careful now,” I teased, catching her by the upper arms.

Her face flushed scarlet. “Here you go. And that reporter is here from ESPN. The one who’s doing the article about endorsements.” She nodded back over her shoulder, where there was a guy who looked to be in his mid-thirties, already hitting on one of the models.

“Right. I almost forgot about that,” I muttered, rubbing the towel over my hair as we stepped off the stage and onto the dry carpet.

Bristol beamed at me from the monitors as we approached. “Thank you for putting up with all that. It looks amazing. The shots are bold, and powerful, and sexy as hell.”

So was her smile, but I wasn’t going there. I hadn’t lied two weeks ago when I’d told her that the two of us were a disaster waiting to happen. Hell, the more I thought about it, the truer those words were.

That magnetic attraction that had drawn me to her four years ago wasn’t just still there. It had been magnified. And since I’d kissed her three weeks ago? That shit had been nearly impossible to ignore. I dreamt about her mouth, woke up hard with her taste on my tongue, and fell asleep after staring at the ceiling, wishing there was some way to get her out of my head, only to fall asleep and start the cycle all over again.

“I’m glad you got what you needed,” I finally said, damn-well knowing neither of us had gotten what we’d needed, otherwise I wouldn’t be hard every time she walked into a room, and she wouldn’t look at me like I was a glass of water in the middle of the desert.

I recognized thirst when I saw it.

“So, Mr. Edwards is here for the interview with Mr. Briggs,” Angela said to Bristol. “Where do you want me to put them?”

Bristol’s eyes swept down my soaked frame. “Let’s get you dried off,” she said to me before turning toward Angela. “Why don’t you bring Mr. Edwards up to my office in about ten minutes?”