Chapter Six #2
His eyes follow mine, narrowing as he lets out a sound somewhere between a growl and groan before snapping his attention back to me. I don’t understand the intensity of his stare or the way his gaze drops to my mouth until he says in a low voice, “In about two seconds I’m going to kiss you.”
I swallow hard, the sound of those damn heels louder than ever. He can’t be serious. Except he’s already leaning closer, and there’s a tiny voice in the back of my mind insisting this is a perfect chance to satisfy my curiosity.
Fuck it.
I’m prepared for a light peck when I nod my permission.
What I get is Wes plunging his hand into my hair, his lips as soft as they are demanding.
It’s the kind of kiss that arches my spine and nearly makes me drop my snacks, his mouth hot and insistent.
He hasn’t shaved in a few days, his persistent stubble now the start of a dark beard that lightly scratches my skin.
He tastes like those candies he loves so much.
“Kiss me back,” Wes breathes out, too low for our approaching audience to overhear. That rough voice does things to me it has no business doing coming out of his mouth. I melt into him, and he meets me with a soft moan that has to be fake but heats my blood as if it’s as real as it sounds.
Then the madness starts all over again, my free hand clinging to his shirt. Because the thing is, as stunned as I am by this turn of events, Wes is really good at kissing. Confusingly good. This kiss should be awkward, but it’s so natural it might as well be a puzzle piece falling into place.
Then again, he’s probably had plenty of practice.
Wes keeps kissing me until the blonde walks off in a huff, and then he kisses me for a few seconds longer. When he finally lets go, he slides his hand down my spine to rest low on my back, his pinkie just grazing the swell of my ass, and offers a grin that’s not remotely apologetic.
I want to hate it. I want to be outraged that he just used me rather than tell the blonde off—but I don’t say a word. Not when my pulse is so loud it’s drowning out just about everything else.
“Breathe, Sloane,” Wes says softly. There’s a slight furrow between his brows as if he’s concerned, which is about as far as he can get from the smug satisfaction I expect. Surely he’s going to start gloating any second.
I swallow hard. “You kissed me.”
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have grabbed you like that.” He shifts his weight from foot to foot, pink climbing his cheeks. “But, uh, thanks for the assist.”
“It’s fine. You’re welcome.” I sidestep out of his hold and remind myself that I don’t even like Wes.
The pinch of rejection at his apology has everything to do with stress and a lack of sleep—and okay, the distinct lack of romantic affection that is my adult life—rather than any genuine attraction. “Let’s go catch a storm.”
And so begins an awkward drive east.
Wes checks in regularly with Matt and Tracy along with a bunch of other chasers I don’t know well, narrating the stream of texts.
He knows damn near everyone who’s out here regularly.
I’m more of a wave-across-the-parking-lot-at-familiar-faces-and-stick-to-my-small-circle person.
At least the constant dings of his phone fill the stilted silence.
We’ve known each other for a decade, but my interactions with Wes have always been limited to semi-friendly ball busting while shooting the same location or killing time waiting on the weather.
Occasionally drinks late at night in a bar with Tracy and Matt as a buffer.
Spending six, eight, ten hours alone together—after that damn kiss, no less—is entirely new territory.
Wes keeps one eye on the radar and models while I drive, but we’re not relying solely on the data. He’s also cross-referencing with friends on the ground. By the time we get into position an hour and a half later, there’s a massive, picture-perfect mothership of a supercell looming above us.
I pull off to the side of the road, leaving plenty of space between us and the other chasers—friends of Wes’s—who are already standing along the fence line with their cameras pointed up at the sky. Tracy and Matt are here somewhere, but it’s crowded enough I don’t immediately spot them.
“Up for a friendly wager?” Wes waves his camera toward the storm and cocks a brow at me in challenge, an effortless return to his usual brand of teasing arrogance.
Clearly he isn’t going to give that kiss a second thought, so why should I? Taking a deep breath, I grab my camera. “Just how friendly are we talking?”
“How friendly do you want to be?” He offers a devilish grin, and I swear there’s innuendo there. But that’s Wes. He flirts with everyone. It doesn’t mean anything. Whether he kissed them only hours ago or not.
“Don’t be gross.”
“Dinner, Sloane,” Wes says with a snort of laughter. “We compare shots at the end of the day and decide who got the best frame. Loser buys dinner.”
I give him my best skeptical look. “Let me guess. You’re going to be the one who decides which of us that is?”
Even if this is his way of sticking me with the tab, he’s covering gas, so unless he plans on ordering half the menu wherever we go, it’s probably a fair deal. Not that I want to sign up for him tearing apart my work at the end of the day.
“Nah. We’ll decide together. Unless you’re telling me you can’t be objective about your own work?
” Wes shrugs, utterly unbothered. “If we don’t agree, you pay for you and I pay for me.
Doesn’t need to be complicated.” It’s only when I don’t immediately respond that his expression tightens.
“I can be objective. I’m not screwing with you. ”
Reading Wes is more difficult than it should be. Screwing with people is his specialty, as those guys at the gas station learned the hard way not even a week ago. Then again, they definitely deserved it.
“Fine. I’m in.” I move toward the fence, glad I have my ultrawide lens already on.
The monster of a storm looms above us like an apocalypse, dwarfing houses dotted across the fields.
It’s spooky, sure, but it also creates a fantastic sense of scale.
The storm spinning almost lazily above the farmhouses renders them little more than tiny dark squares popping out from the green of the grass.
At the far end of the group, I finally find Tracy and Matt. She catches my eye and jerks her head toward Wes with raised eyebrows. I’m already shaking my head when she adds a goofy thumbs-up.
To my surprise, instead of heading for Matt on Tracy’s other side, Wes waves and shouts a hello, then aims straight for me.
Just like the other night, we move around each other easily as we squint at our cameras to make adjustments.
Except this time, when he squeezes by me to adjust his angle and his fingertips graze my back, I’m hyperaware of his touch.
Inconvenient when I’m trying to forget how good it felt to be wrapped up in his arms—when I’m trying to remind myself that just because I get so little affection in my day-to-day life, it doesn’t mean habitual-flirt Wes meant a damn thing.
The first splats of rain are refreshingly cool on my bare shoulders as the warm inflow winds continue to rush past us to power the storm.
We’ll have to move before the hail catches up, but for now I get low to the ground and tilt my lens up.
The angle leaves only a thin strip of the field in my shot, allowing the storm to overtake the frame.
As soon as I release the shutter, a lightning bolt smashes out of the storm, close enough that a boom of thunder follows seconds later.
A whoop goes up from the line of photographers along the fence, quickly followed by a chorus of Please tell me someone got that and various curses.
Holding my breath, I quickly scroll back to check my shot.
I’m almost certain my shutter was open, but daytime lightning without a tripod can be borderline impossible.
With so much ambient light for the camera sensor to pick up on, getting a clean shot that isn’t washed out is a tricky balance of exposure and luck.
I feel the heat of Wes at my back just before he murmurs too close to my ear, “Looks like I’m buying you dinner.” And then, louder so the others will hear, “Sloane got it! Perfect CG!”
His excitement is contagious, and for a few seconds, everyone crowds around me to see the shot of crisp cloud-to-ground lightning. There’s a flurry of introductions to the new faces, though Tracy manages to slip in a murmured “Looks like you’re getting along?” that I pointedly ignore.
I’m so used to flying under the radar that suddenly finding myself the center of attention is a little overwhelming, in the best way possible. It’s also not something I’d ever expect of Wes, the way he thrusts me into the spotlight and steps back to let me enjoy it without saying another word.
There isn’t much time to linger. With the storm powered by an outflow boundary—the atmospheric line in the sand between storm-cooled air and the typical heat of the region—we travel steadily east until twilight sets in.
The storm is still producing so much lightning we don’t need to be that close to it in the dark, so we decide to grab some night shots while it lasts.
The storm has faded to little more than flickering flashes of lightning on the horizon by the time we pull off I-40 somewhere east of Amarillo.
Wes points at the diner attached to the truck stop we pass on the way to our hotel.
“Might not be gourmet, but I’m a man of my word. That place has killer waffles.”
It doesn’t look like much, the parking lot flooded with bright lights and the neon Diner sign half burnt-out. Tired and hungry, I shrug and turn around. Even waffles won’t be enough to lure me out of my hotel room once I’m within falling-down distance of a bed and strong air-conditioning.