“I know.” She shrugged a slim shoulder, a smile riding one corner of her mouth. “I couldn’t think of anything for C.”
Their soft laughter rippled on the night air, and for the first time since arriving this evening, the barbed tension inside him loosened.
“And I just needed air that didn’t contain politics, innuendo or cigar smoke,” she continued. The velvet tone called to mind tangled, sweaty sheets at odds with her perfectly styled hair and immaculately tailored, strapless cocktail dress that spoke of unruffled poise. Even as Ezekiel’s rebellious brain conjured up images of just how much he could ruffle her poise, she slid him a sidelong glance. “One out of three isn’t bad.”
Again, the miraculous happened, and he chuckled. Enjoying her. “I know it would be the gentlemanly thing to put this out...” he lifted the offending item between them “...but it’s one of my few vices—”
“Just a few?” she interrupted, a dimple denting one of her cheeks.
“And I’m going to savor it,” he finished, shooting her a mock frown for her cheekiness. Cute cheekiness. “Besides, no one in there would accuse me of being a gentleman.”
Dammit. He hadn’t meant to let that slip. Not the words and definitely not the bitterness. He was the carefree jokester of the Holloway brothers. He laughed and teased; he didn’t brood. But these last few months had affected them all. Turned them into people they sometimes didn’t recognize.
Talk and accusations of corruption and fraud did that to a person.
So did a headlong tumble from a pedestal, only to discover those you’d known for years were only wearing the masks of friends, hiding their true faces underneath. Vultures. Sharks.
Predators.
He forced a smile, and from the flash of sadness that flickered across her lovely features, the twist of his lips must’ve appeared as fake as it felt. For a moment, anger that wasn’t directed at himself for fucking caring about the opinions of others blazed within him. Now it was presently aimed at her. At her pity that he hated. That he probably deserved.
And he resented that more.
“Gentlemen are highly overrated,” she murmured, before he could open his mouth and let something mean and regrettable pour out. Her quiet humor snuffed out the flame of his fury. Once more the utter calm of her presence washed over him, and part of him wanted to soak in it until the grime of the past few months disappeared from his skin, his mind, his heart. “Besides, I want to hear more about some of these vices.”
“No, you don’t,” he contradicted.
Unable to resist, he snagged a long, loose wave resting on her shoulder. He pinched it, testing the thickness, the silkiness of it between his thumb and forefinger. It didn’t require much imagination to guess how it would feel whispering across his bare chest, his abdomen. His thighs. Soft. Ticklish. And so damn erotic, his cock already hardened in anticipation. As if scalded by both the sensation and the too-hot mental image, he released his grip, tucking the rebellious hand in his pants pocket.
Giving himself time to banish his impure thoughts toward his cousin’s friend, he brought the cigar to his mouth. Savoring the flavor of chocolate and cognac. Letting it obscure the illusory taste of honeysuckle, vanilla and female flesh.
“You’re too young for that discussion,” he added, silently cursing the roughness of his tone.
“Oh really?” She tilted her head to the side. “You do know I’m only four years younger than you, right? Or are you having trouble with remembering things at your advanced old age of thirty?”
He narrowed his eyes on her. “Brat,” he rumbled.
“Not the first time I’ve heard that,” she said, something murkier than the shadows they stood in shifting in her eyes. But then she smiled, and the warmth of it almost convinced him that the emotion had been a trick of the dark. “So don’t hold back. And start with the good stuff. And by good, I mean very, very bad.”
He exhaled, studying her through the plume of fragrant smoke he blew through slightly parted lips. “You think you can handle my bad, Ray?” he taunted, deliberately using the masculine nickname that used to make her roll her eyes in annoyance.
Anything to remind him that he’d once caught her and Harley practicing kissing on his cousin’s pillows. That she used to crush on boy bands with more synthesizers than talent. That he’d wiped her tears and offered to pound on the little shit that had bullied her on the playground over something she couldn’t change—her skin color.
Anything to reinforce that she wasn’t one of the women whose front doors would witness his walks of shame.
With an arch of a brow, she leaned forward so she couldn’t help but inhale the evaporating puff. “Try me,” she whispered.
A low, insistent throb pulsed low in his gut, and his abs clenched, as if grasping for that familiar but somehow different grip of desire.
Desire. For Reagan? Wrong. So damn wrong.
Coward, a sibilant voice hissed at him. And he mentally flipped it off, shifting backward and leaning a shoulder against a stone column.
“Let’s see,” he said, valiantly injecting a lazy note of humor into his voice. “I can put away an entire meat lovers pizza by myself and not use a coaster for my beer. I’m unreasonably grouchy if I’m awake before the god-awful hour of seven o’clock. Especially if there’s no coffee to chase away my pain. And—this one I’m kind of embarrassed to admit—I buy at least five pairs of socks every month. Apparently, my dryer is a portal to a world where mismatched socks are some kind of special currency. And since I can’t abide not matching, I’m constantly a spendthrift on new pairs. There. You now know all of my immoralities.”
A beat of silence, and then, “Really?”
He smirked. “Really,” he replied, then jerked his chin up. “Your turn. Regale me with all of your sins, little Ray.”
As he’d expected, irritation glinted in her chocolate eyes. “I have no idea how I can follow that, but here goes.” He huffed out a low chuckle at the thick sarcasm coating her words. “Every night, I slip downstairs after everyone has gone to bed and have a scotch by myself. No one to judge me, you see? Since my nightly ritual could be early signs of me becoming an alcoholic like my uncle James. What else?”
She hummed, trailing her fingertips over her collarbone, her lashes lowering in a pretense of deep thought. But Ezekiel knew better. She’d already given this a lot of consideration. Had already catalogued her perceived faults long before this conversation.
Acid swirled in his stomach, creeping a path up his chest. He straightened from his lounge against the pillar, prepared to nip this in the bud, but she forestalled him by speaking again. And though a part of him yearned to tell her to stop, to warn her not to say another word, the other part... Yeah, that section wanted to hear how imperfect she was. Craved it. Because it made him feel less alone.