The One That I Want (Scorned Women Society Book 3) by Piper Sheldon (e book reader android txt) 📕

“Don’t laugh at me,” she said with a scowl.

“I’m not!” I sobered immediately. “You’re just cute is all.”

She tucked her hair back. “You can’t say that sort of thing.”

“I tell Skip he’s cute all the time,” I defended without thinking.

“I don’t get it.” She pulled the sleeves of her shirt over her fingers, hiding her hands in them.

“It’s surprisingly difficult to do,” I said seriously.

“Not surprising at all,” she said. “Eye contact for that long is usually limited to babies and sociopaths.”

Seriously, adorable.

“Stop laughing at me,” she said.

I tried for serious. She frowned deeper. If smiling was my natural state, then frowning was hers. It was so damn sexy. That pout brought more focus to her already distracting mouth.

“Well, I’d say that’s generalizing. But yes, to your point, that’s why it makes it a good exercise. You’re trusting me to see you uninterrupted. And I’m trusting you to do the same.”

She put a hand to her chest. “Why is my heart racing? I almost wish we were doing trust falls,” she admitted.

My heart was pounding too. In fact, I was beginning to regret this plan. Eye contact was a trust builder for sure. But it was also terribly intimate.

“It’s just me,” I said. “If you start to feel uncomfortable, remember when I biffed it and you had to save me.”

“I don’t like to think about that.” Her brows knitted. “Let’s just get started.” I started to speak and she cut me off. “Calm down, calm down. I’m not rushing the moment. I just want to see if I can do it.”

“Okay, good.” I set the timer on my watch.

“Oh wow, you’re really timing it.”

“I don’t mess around.”

She took a deep inhale of breath and let it out slowly. “I suddenly can’t remember what to do with my arms.” She flopped them out.

“Ready?” I asked.

Turns out that when Roxy was uncomfortable, she was even more charming. This was a version of Roxy I doubted many people got to see. In that way it already felt like we were making progress. And damn if it didn’t make me feel special.

She shook her hair back off her face. “Ready.”

“Three …”

She looked up to the sky.

“Two …”

And then down to the rocks beneath us.

“One,” I whispered.

Her gaze locked on to mine. It was as though the breath was sucked out of my chest. A physical reaction to her undivided attention punched me harder in the solar plexus than I thought possible. But I was the professional in this situation, so I had to make it look easy.

It couldn’t have been three seconds and already the twitching began. Her fingers tapped on her knees. She breathed in and out. This was killing her.

“I keep feeling like I can’t blink,” she tried to joke.

“No talking,” I whispered.

Interestingly, the more she fidgeted, the easier it was for me to pull strength and pretend that sustained eye contact wasn’t almost as arousing as our handholding.

A few seconds later, she noticed how well I was doing and her competitive side kicked in. With her gaze still locked on mine, she blew her fringe off her face dramatically. She raised one eyebrow. She lowered it. Then she lifted the other.

I remained stoic.

Her gaze narrowed. She began to undulate her eyebrows. Lifting and dropping one eyebrow and then the other, like fans joining the wave at a football match.

I had been doing so well until she raised her lip in a curl that Elvis would’ve been proud of.

“You know, a lot of people use humor as a defense mechanism when they feel uncomfortable,” I said coolly.

Her face leveled instantly.

I pushed, “If you can’t do this, we can try something else …”

Her features sharpened. “No talking.”

I should have challenged her from the get-go. If ever I needed Skip to do something, I simply appealed to his ego. Classic.

The air changed then. Her focus narrowed and her body stopped moving. We were having an entire conversation through our eye contact.

I told you, I could do this, she seemed to say.

I never doubted you for a second, I replied in my head. I think you’re wonderful.

You shouldn’t say that sort of thing.

There’s nothing you can do about what I think.

Then the imagined conversation stopped and we simply existed in this moment. Her eyes had much more depth in this full light. Her pupils were so small that her full iris was visible. The darker brown was ringed with a lighter brown. The varying shades were textured like the glass marbles I played with as a kid.

A gentle breeze moved her hair. It carried the scent of pine and her to me. It was such a peaceful sense. This was two people seeing each other without masks or filters. This was pure. This was what screens, filters, and social media took away. This was human connection at a base level. I’d never done this with anybody before. I had made other people do it, of course, and saw its success, but living it with Roxy was like nothing I’d ever felt.

The stillness left no room to hide. I couldn’t run or escape. Intrusive thoughts came poking at the edges of my mind. I tried to remain focused on Roxy, let her keep me from succumbing to them, but all of my feelings were on the brink of overflowing. The storm clouds of my mind blocked the sun and a chill ran over me. And for once I didn’t feel happy at all. I felt a deep sadness overtake me. Any minute the clouds would break open and drown me. It would pull me under so fast there would be no hope of catching my breath. This was exactly why I always kept moving. The second I stopped …

“Sanders,” Roxy said.

I blinked into the present. Brought my mind to the here and now. Roxy saved me a moment before it would have been too late.

“I think it’s been thirty seconds,” she said.

I glanced down at my watch. Three minutes had passed. “I forgot to