But tonight, the jerk had the audacity to set up a tray of fancy snacks, pour me a fat glass of red wine, and not only roll up his sleeves in front of me, but prepare our meal from scratch.
“Enjoying the show?” His eyes are on his hands as he finely chops an onion, but the smartass grin on his face is unmistakable.
I lob a cashew at his head. He pauses only long enough to pop it in his mouth and resume chopping while he chews. Jeebus Christmas, watching him chew and swallow is even disgustingly sexy.
“I’m enthralled,” I answer drily. Ryder’s smirk says he doesn’t buy the sarcasm, but I take the high road because he is cooking for me. If I kicked his ass before dinner was finished, then what would I do? “Where’d this food come from anyway?”
“I ordered it, Sunshine. There’s this modern marvel called online ordering and delivery of groceries.”
“Bergman, you better watch that mouth. I’m a vengeful woman with a gift for nighttime pranks, and it won’t be hard to find where you sleep tonight.”
“Won’t be hard at all. Seeing as we’re staying in the same bed.”
I choke on my wine. “We’re what?”
“Well, we might start in separate rooms, but you’re a SoCal sissy who shivers when it dips below sixty degrees. Here, it’s still low-thirties at night.”
A pathetic noise escapes my throat. “That’s fucking arctic.”
Ryder snorts as he scrapes the chopped vegetables into the pan and dials up the heat. “To you, Willa, yes. Fifty bucks says you don’t make it past midnight before you come crawling to me for body heat.”
Right now, it only feels cool. I listened to Ryder for once and packed hoodies and long-sleeve shirts. I’m layered in clothing, topped off with oversized sweats and fuzzy socks. Very seductive. But at least I’m not freezing. Yet.
I let out a shaky breath. “Don’t you have heat?”
“Woodburning.” Ryder nods toward the hearth. “Fans send the fire’s heat throughout the house.”
I stare at it. The fireplace is cold and empty. “Are you going to light it, then?”
Ryder frowns, glancing up slowly from the chicken he started butterflying. “I wasn’t planning on it, no.”
“W-what?” I stammer as my eyes widen. “But I’ll be cold.”
He shrugs. “It’s environmentally irresponsible to heat this entire place for two people. I won’t do it, but if you can start that fire yourself, be my guest. Or you could consider doing your part to protect the dwindling polar ice caps, harbingers of impending climate-change catastrophe, and bedshare with a warm-blooded human. Your choice.”
I groan and scrub my face. “Tree-hugging survivalist.”
“What’s that, dear?” He cups his ear.
I throw an escaped sliver of chopped onion at his head. “You heard me.” I don’t know the first thing about Girl Scout shit like that, and Ryder knows it.
Once again I’m tempted to do him violence, but the food smells really good and I’d like him to see it through to completion. Maybe then I’ll get his balls in a twist and make him light the fire.
My stomach growls, so I shove a handful of English cheddar and dates in my mouth and chew, struggling to hate someone who can make a charcuterie board this damn tasty. “You’re playing dirty, Bergman.”
His smirk is almost imperceptible before he schools his face. “I warned you I wouldn’t always play clean.”
He’s fucking with me, and that’s what we’ve always done. He ribs me, I rib him. We take turns playing the roles of cat and mouse, provoking each other, nudging the other person until they’re cornered where we want them before we take mercy and let them go.
But he’s leaning in, applying more pressure. He’s not just cornering me. Ryder’s forcing my hand. Because while he knows I’d sleep with him at the drop of a hat—what woman in her right mind wouldn’t?—Ryder doesn’t want that. He wants me to want more than six foot three of muscles, handsome face, and just enough asshole to make him my kind of surly. He wants me to want him. He wants me to make the move that shows him that.
I sip my wine and stare at him, thinking about our hike earlier today. I felt brave back up on that mountaintop. I let myself think about terrifying possibilities with falls as precipitous as from that altitude. But our climb down was returning to reality—to what’s scary, to how delicate my heart feels.
Fear tunnels through my body, and yet I want to push back on it. I’m scared shitless, but I also can’t lie anymore. I can’t say I don’t want to try somehow to make sense of what this is between Ryder and me. How can I even begin to do that if I never take the first step on the path of possibility?
I need a solid first move. It can’t be small. It can’t be half-assed. This is me we’re dealing with. The only thing I can think to do is what we’ve always done, to see Ryder’s bet and raise him.
Standing, I set my wine on the counter and drag my hoodie off, over my head. Next my long-sleeve shirt. I’m wearing a white tank top and no bra. Ryder’s hand holding the knife slows, then comes to a stop.
“What are you doing?” he croaks.
I bend to remove my sweatpants, then toe off my fuzzy socks. Now I’m down to panties and a tank. “Well, if I’m going to freeze all night long, I might as well warm up in that hot tub first. Looks mighty toasty.”
Ryder makes a strangled noise.
Stepping away from the counter, I saunter toward the glass door and push it open. The hot tub’s a mere five feet away, the sky a black dome dappled with bright stars, so far from city lights. With my back to Ryder, I stare over my shoulder. I hold his eyes as I peel off my tank top and let it fall to the floor.
Ryder’s head drops. His hands brace themselves on the counter.
“I’ll take my dinner outside, Brawny. Thanks.”
27
Ryder
Playlist: “God is a Woman,” Jamie McDell
My hands shake as I set the chicken in the pan. The skin snaps and pops when it hits the heat. It sounds how I feel, watching Willa lean her head back in the Jacuzzi. Hot, agitated.
Dangerously close to bursting into flames.
She’s completely naked in there. I can see her panties and shirt puddled like spilled milk on the dark patio deck. Moonlight bathes her skin blue, and the curve of her breasts peeks above the tub’s bubbling water.
I’m so hard, my dick’s about to bust my zipper. I have to keep reminding myself to breathe so I don’t pass out into a pan of seared chicken and add third-degree burns to my head’s stunning repertoire.
I can’t stop imagining what she looks like, and I’m dying to touch her. She stripped, all right, but I didn’t see it happen, not fully. I averted my eyes when those thumbs hooked inside her panties. I couldn’t. I couldn’t let the first time I saw Willa naked be such an incomplete moment. When I see her, it’s going to be on even ground and she’s going to be just as goddamn hungry for me as I am for her. This is one game I won’t play under.
I’m nice enough to bring Willa her wine. She smiles up at me and shifts beneath the bubbles as she accepts the glass. She makes zero effort not to stare at the state of affairs in my jeans.