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“So,” I said, because if I didn’t talk, I might do something incredibly reckless like lean up on my toes and kiss him. “That was terrifying.”
“Yeah?” he asked.
“Ten out of ten would panic again.”
A small smile tugged at his mouth. “You did good.”
“You say that like I won a medal instead of aggressively sweating for ten minutes.”
“I liked watching you try to be brave,” he said. “It was…very cute.”
“Cute?” I echoed, scandalized.
His gaze slipped over my face, lingering on my mouth again. “Yeah,” he murmured. “Cute. The kind that makes a man want to see what you look like when you’re holding onto him for a different reason.”
Before I could respond, someone yelled, “Sterling!”
We both turned.
A man was lounging against a nearby truck, his boots crossed at the ankle while he grinned like he’d watched the entire Ferris wheel ride and taken notes.
And…okay. He was gorgeous—objectively, statistically, unfairly gorgeous.
He had dark brown hair, nearly black, that caught the lights in warm streaks of mahogany, and hazel eyes that refused to settle on a single color, shifting from whiskey gold one moment to stormy green the next. He was six-foot-something of ropey, tan, ranch-forged muscle with a scar that cut through one eyebrow and curved down his cheek as if someone had once tried to carve the devil out of him and he’d politely declined.
He looked like sin had felt guilty, gone to confession, and walked straight out to misbehave again.
But even with all that?
He wasn’t Sterling.
Where this man looked like a beautifully packaged disaster, Sterling stood beside me with that burning intensity that made the whole world narrow to a single point.
The man’s grin sharpened when his gaze slid from Sterling to me, as though he’d just spotted something hilarious. “Hayes!” he called. “You coming, or are you planning to elope?”
Another rush of heat shot up my neck, and Sterling’s jaw flexed. “Give me a minute.”
The man pushed off the truck with a predatory confidence, strolling toward us like he owned everything around him. Sterling shifted beside me, something protective flickering through him, subtle but unmistakable.
He exhaled once, sounding resigned. “Sienna, this is Jett.”
Jett’s grin widened, bright with trouble. “Pleasure,” he said, looking at me in a way that made Sterling go even more still.
I stuck out my hand automatically. “Hi.”
Jett didn’t shake it. Instead, he lifted my hand, brushed his thumb lightly across my knuckles as if testing the texture of something rare, and said, “Well, hell. Hayes forgot to mention how pretty you were.”
“Jett,” Sterling said, his voice dropping into something that could maim a person.
Jett still didn’t look at him. “He also didn’t mention that mouth.”
My brows furrowed. “Um…what does that even—”
“It means shut the hell up,” Sterling growled, every syllable directed straight at Jett.
Jett finally looked up, absolutely delighted. “Congratulations. I get it now.”
Sterling stepped a fraction closer to me.
