Chapter 20 #3
I sucked in a breath at both his words and the contact of his fingers, my muscles tensing involuntarily.
There it was again—that strange buzz under my skin, like recognition, like my body was responding to something my mind couldn’t comprehend.
Colt’s eyes flicked up to my face, a dark satisfaction in them at my reaction that made my stomach do another one of those flips that had to be bad for my digestive system.
Slowly, deliberately, he pulled up the zipper, the sound unnaturally loud in the small space, like a countdown to something I couldn’t name.
“See?” His voice was barely a whisper now, his breath warm against my stomach through the thin fabric of the button-down. “Perfect fit.”
His hands didn’t move from my hips, his thumbs tracing small circles just inside the waistband of the jeans, against bare skin that suddenly felt hypersensitive, like every nerve ending had been dialed up to eleven.
I swallowed hard, unable to look away from his face, from the intensity in his eyes as they traveled up my body to meet mine.
The changing room suddenly felt even smaller, the air between us charged with something I couldn’t name but could definitely feel pressing against my skin like a physical weight.
Colt’s eyes dropped to my lips, lingering there with an intensity that made my heart race like I’d just run a marathon while being chased by bears.
Was he—? No, that was ridiculous. This was Colt.
My stepbrother. The same Colt who lectured me about leaving dishes in the sink and organized the spice rack alphabetically and once made a PowerPoint presentation about proper laundry sorting techniques.
Yet I couldn’t ignore the way his thumb was now tracing small circles on my hip bone, or how his other hand had somehow found its way to the back of my neck, fingers tangling in the hair at my nape, pulling me slightly closer like he was testing if I’d resist.
“Colt?” My voice came out embarrassingly breathless, barely a whisper in the charged space between us, like my lungs had forgotten how to properly function.
He tugged me forward, between his spread legs, and I had to catch myself on his shoulders to keep from falling into him completely. Our faces were now inches apart, his breath mingling with mine, and my brain was officially on vacation, having left no forwarding address.
That strange connection between us seemed to intensify, like a live wire suddenly getting more current. I couldn’t explain it, but it felt like we were being drawn together by some force beyond my understanding, like magnets finding their natural alignment.
“You have no idea, do you?” he murmured, his voice rougher than I’d ever heard it, like something wild was trying to claw its way out. “How much you—”
A sharp knock on the changing room door made us both freeze like teenagers caught making out in their parents’ bedroom.
“Lan? You in there?” Xander’s voice, tinged with irritation, filtered through the door.
Before I could respond, the door swung open—apparently I’d forgotten to lock it in my flustered state, because of course I had.
Xander stood there, his expression shifting from annoyance to shock as he took in the scene: me standing between Colt’s legs, his hands on my waist and neck, our faces inches apart, looking about as innocent as a fox in a henhouse.
“What the hell is going on here?” Xander demanded, his usually laid-back demeanor nowhere to be found. His eyes darted between us, narrowing with each pass like he was trying to solve a particularly complex puzzle.
Colt didn’t move his hands, didn’t even look at Xander.
His eyes remained fixed on my face, dark and possessive in a way that made my heart stutter.
“Helping Lan try on clothes,” he said, his tone deceptively casual despite the tension radiating from him like heat from a furnace. “What does it look like?”
“It looks like—” Xander cut himself off, his gaze moving between us with an intensity that made me want to sink through the floor and possibly continue sinking until I reached the Earth’s core, where I could live out my days in peace among the magma.
The look in his eyes wasn’t just anger—there was something else there, something that looked almost like…
jealousy? “Never mind what it looks like. Jaxson’s looking for you both. ”
The mention of Jaxson’s name seemed to break whatever spell had fallen over the changing room.
Colt finally released me, his hands dropping from my body, leaving ghost impressions of warmth where they had been.
I immediately stepped back, nearly tripping over because apparently my body had forgotten how legs work.
“Tell him we’ll be right out,” Colt said, his composure returning like a mask sliding into place. All that intensity from moments ago vanished, locked away behind his usual controlled expression.
Xander didn’t move, his eyes still fixed on me with an expression I couldn’t decipher. “I’ll wait,” he said firmly, his tone suggesting he’d stand there until the heat death of the universe if necessary.
As I gathered my discarded clothes, trying to process whatever the hell had just happened between me and Colt, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something fundamental had shifted—not just between us, but within me.
That strange connection, that sense of recognition…
it was like my body was remembering something my mind had forgotten.
And judging by the way Xander was looking at us, I wasn’t the only one who felt it.