Risky Play (Red Card #1)(7)

I checked her ass out the entire time she walked ahead of me, and when she caught me staring I just shrugged and said, “Next time wear more clothes if you don’t want me to look.”

“You should talk,” she fired back.

“Misunderstanding.” I grinned. “I wanted you to look.”

She slapped a hand against my bare chest.

I laughed, and then grabbed her hand and kissed her fingertips. “You ready to jump off a cliff with a stranger you’ve kissed three times?”

“Once,” she corrected with a whisper. “I kissed you, you kissed me, we’re even.”

The doors to the elevator opened as I whispered under my breath while her ass swayed back and forth. “Not for fucking long.”



“Are you sure this is safe?” Ashley squeezed my hand and peeked over the edge.

My gaze followed hers. Below, sparkling blue-green water beckoned. The target area reflected darkly, but nearby, dark-gray rocks dotted the surface, their presence giving a bit of an ominous feel.

“Hell no, you’re the one who suggested it!” I hated heights. Fucking hated them, but she’d suggested the jump, and I wanted to spend time with her. There was something magnetic about her, something that made me want more even though I knew anything short term was crazy, especially for a guy like me. I loved her strange mannerisms that didn’t match her words at times. Like she was an old soul trapped inside a younger, hotter body. I peered over the edge again. “Hell, that’s forty feet.”

“Are you sweating?” She laughed.

“It’s forty feet!” I repeated. “I’d be concerned if I wasn’t sweating over this. That’s high. Shit, I think I’m seeing double.”

Her laugh carried through the breeze.

I closed my eyes and inhaled the way it wrapped around me, the way that her presence took away every ache and pain, every worry I’d had these past few weeks, and just silenced them all.

“Hey.” She grabbed my hand. “We jump together.”

“Deal.” I squeezed her palm. “And if we die, at least it wasn’t in a crash.”

“And when we live . . .” She leaned in, her lips tasted like bubblegum as they covered my mouth in a slow, sensual kiss that drew out every primal instinct in me to lay her across the cliff and claim her.

“If we live, what?”

She winked. “Jump and find out.”

“Tease.”

“Hah, I don’t think anyone’s ever called me that.”

Impossible. The woman was a walking hard-on—I would know.

“Jump on three?” I offered.

She nodded. “One.”

“Uno,” I added.

She just laughed harder as I counted in Spanish.

On three, we jumped.

The wind caught us as we gained velocity, and I wasn’t sure which one of us was screaming louder.

But once I hit the warm water—felt it close over my head—and survived, I surfaced and caught the look of joy on her face. In that moment, I realized I would do anything to make this stranger smile at me like that again.

One. Day. In.





Chapter Five MACKENZIE

I found a part of myself in that jump. I experienced so many things simultaneously.

The freedom of being alive.

The terror of still not knowing who I was without Alton.

Feeling okay to do something spontaneous because of the man holding my hand.

I knew it was stupid . . . to fall for someone I barely knew, especially so soon after Alton, but part of me wanted to just jump in with both feet and see what happened, and being around Hugo had me laughing and smiling nonstop.

Add that to his devastating good looks, and I was ready to grab his phone number, email, Instagram account, and beg him to move closer to me.

See? I wasn’t ready to date if I was turning into a stalker so soon.

“So, was it everything you thought it would be?” he asked, swimming over to me. He ducked his head under and shook off as he came up, then ran his hands through his choppy long hair, which had darkened, reminding me of rich Colombian coffee.

If this was what Spanish pirates used to look like, no wonder they had all the gold.

“Everything and more.” I splashed him. “I’m curious, though . . .”

“What?” He spit out some salt water.

“Was that high-pitched scream that sounded like a goat getting sacrificed coming from you or did we actually hit a goat on the way down?”

He threw his head back and laughed. “Very funny, I guess I deserved that. I hate heights.”

I frowned. “Then why did you say yes?”

“Because,” he said, pressing his hands on either side of my face, “any man would be insane to say no to you.”

I fell a little harder as he pulled me into his arms, his lips teased mine in a way that made me breathless, made my chest ache, like he was afraid I was a mermaid that was going to disappear into the deep-blue depths of the ocean. He tugged my lower lip with his teeth, then deepened the kiss as we treaded water. I gripped his biceps, letting myself drown in his embrace. If this was what attraction was supposed to feel like . . .

Then I was completely out of my element for once in my life.

Out of control.