Who was doubled over with laughter, his section of trampoline shaking beneath him.
Just like that, Nina found herself grinning. She was giggling along, actually, even as she gasped with mock outrage, “Are you laughing at my pain, sir?”
This only made James’s laughter worse. In fact, for a moment, she was slightly worried he might be having some sort of fit. “Jesus Christ, Nina,” he finally said. “You looked so fucking surprised, anyone would think you’d just borrowed that chest for the weekend.”
“I didn’t think!” she protested.
“Clearly!”
“Stop laughing. For all you know, I’m suffering with frightful boob bruising as we speak.”
Predictably, James’s laughter dissolved into a concerned frown. He looked her up and down as if his eyeballs were capable of MRI scans. “Well, are you?”
“No,” she admitted, “but I think I’ll have to, er, hold on to these if I’m going to have any fun today.” She gave her boobs an awkward shake, as if he might have forgotten their topic of discussion some time in the last five seconds.
“Fine,” James said, and for one delicious moment she could have sworn that, beneath the calmness of the word, he was blushing. But then he shrugged and looked away. “Hold on to your tits, then.”
“Said the vicar to the— argh!” Nina broke off as James burst into movement, jumping next to her with enough force to send her flying halfway across the space.
She landed on her arse a few metres away, bouncing, bouncing, bouncing until she came to a gradual stop.
At which point, her pulse racing, all the stress of the past weeks melting away, she grinned wide. And said just one word.
“Again.”
James smiled back at her. “And here I worried you hadn’t thought the whole ‘giant James’ thing through.”
“You should know by now,” she said as she rose to her feet, “that nothing about you is too big for me.”
“Really,” he drawled, folding his arms, refusing to take the bait.
Didn’t matter; this wasn’t just a tease, it was the truth. “You, James Foster,” she murmured, “are just right.”
Chapter Six
On their way out of Bounce Nation, they bumped into a harried-looking father and a gaggle of sugar-high kids at the door. Nina’s arm brushed James’s as they stepped aside, and something electric crackled over the surface of his skin.
For fuck’s sake. This was getting ridiculous.
“Admit it,” she singsonged as they stepped out onto the street. Evening had fallen, and this back road was quieter than it had been hours ago.
Jesus—had they really arrived hours ago?
“Admit what, Cupcake?”
“I was right. It was fun. And you loved it.” She ticked off each item on her fingers with obvious glee. Nina always had loved to be right. And James had come to find satisfaction very attractive in a woman.
“Yeah,” he sighed. “You were right. That was a surprisingly good stress-reliever.” But the grin he couldn’t wipe off his face had nothing to do with Bounce Nation, and everything to do with how Nina looked in this moment: young, carefree, smiling wide with her pretty eyes crinkled at the corners. God, he wanted to kiss her.
Wanted it too much, apparently, because he found his steps slowing as he stared down at that lush mouth. A sudden silence blossomed between them, Nina’s smile fading as she bit her lip. Around them, the city sank steadily into darkness, and the orange tinge of the street lights bounced off her thick, dark curls. He imagined bending just enough to drag his mouth over her smooth skin. Imagined kissing her cheek, her jaw, her throat. Grabbing a fistful of her hair to keep her still, feeling the curves beneath her huge, black T-shirt when she pressed against him.
Last night, James had convinced himself he could have another taste of her, from a distance this time, and continue with business as usual. He could only blame such a major miscalculation on the fact that his brain had been starved of oxygen at the time, on account of all his blood going to his dick. Because the reality was this: every time he grew closer to Nina, every time he touched her or saw her or experienced her in some new way, she became more and more impossible to forget.
Remember why you can’t have her.
He started checking off each item on the list: they wanted different things. He couldn’t risk their friendship. She had more important stuff to think about right now. He’d known her when she was young, and he still couldn’t decide if his attraction to her was kind of creepy for that reason.
But then she whispered, “James,” so sweetly, as if his was the only name she’d ever bother to speak again, and common sense fell right out of his head. His heart shuddered. His blood pulsed. His hands flexed at his sides with the need to hold her.
He had to do something about this.
“Remind me,” he gritted out through clenched teeth.
“What?” Nina seemed to be floating toward him—or maybe he was moving toward her. Maybe the air between them was just fucking shrinking. James didn’t know. He was sure of only two things right now:
That touching this woman would soothe something in him no-one else could.
And that he absolutely could not let that happen.
James had the unnerving feeling that somewhere in him lurked a beast only Nina could release, one that would never let her go.
“Remind me,” he said again. “What was it you used to tell Markus and I? About men?”
He watched as confusion furrowed her brow, then turned into realisation—and something else, something he couldn’t quite identify.
Slowly, her lips tipped into a one-sided smile, and she repeated her own teenage mantra. “Men. Mine for a good time, not for a long time.”
James breathed the familiar words in and exhaled a new, hardened resolve. This was what it meant to be with Nina: to be temporary. He knew it, and he loved her just as she was—but he still had to protect his devoted, possessive heart at all costs. Maybe she’d have him again, and again, and again—but eventually, she’d be done. She’d walk away with no attachments, while he might be in danger of tattooing her name on his arse, or something equally disturbing. And James really didn’t want to be that guy.
His jaw hard, he nodded and turned in the direction of home—but a soft hand on his forearm brought him up short. He looked at Nina again and found her expression serious.
“James, why did you want to know that?”
He forced a smile. “It just came to me. The memory, I mean. Couldn’t quite remember the wording. It was funny.”
“It was years ago,” she shot back, “and it would be irrelevant if—if I—” she pressed her lips tightly together, looking vaguely tortured, and James realised she was about to say something involving emotions and feelings and all the other shit she usually found so abhorrent.
“James,” she started again, “you don’t think that—”
A voice carved through the closeness of their conversation, rising above the rumble of passing cars. “Oi! That’s her, I swear that’s her. Are you that Brexit girl?”
James stiffened. In an instant, everything inside him—the need, the resignation, the careful, barely restrained yearning, sharpened to a fine pinpoint. It was the knife’s edge of a blade named violence.