Can't Stand the Heat - Louisa Edwards [62]
With a shiver, Jess let his mind flow to the image he’d been wanting to picture all morning.
Frankie Boyd, all low-slung black denim and insolence, leaning one slender hip against the rough brick wall and squinting through his own cigarette smoke up into the hazy night sky.
How Jess wished he’d had a camera in his hands. His fingers itched to capture that moment for all eternity, to get it out of his head and onto photographic paper so maybe he could find some peace with it. Instead, the only place that picture existed was inside of Jess, haunting him.
A lean forearm reached past him, fingers outstretched to trace delicately around the rim of the glass he was polishing, breaking Jess’s reverie. The arm was pale, dusted with black hair, and corded with tendons that flexed slightly with every rub of the glass. A thin leather strap wound around the bony wrist enough times to form a cuff, the brown hide scored with marks and burns. Jess had discovered days ago, from careful observation, that the strap had belonged to a WWII soldier, a medic who’d fought in the Battle of Britain.
The arm belonged to Frankie.
When that arm pressed in to rest lightly against Jess’s elbow, he shivered so hard he nearly dropped the glass, but Frankie tightened his fingers and steadied it.
“Cold, are we then, Bit?” Frankie husked. There was a laugh in his voice, but when Jess canted his head far enough to look at him, his face revealed nothing but grave inquiry.
Some imp prompted Jess to reply, “Nope. Feeling kinda warm, actually.”
Frankie narrowed his eyes, fiendish delight suffusing his expression. “Why, Bit,” he drawled. “I do believe you just flirted with me.”
Jess felt the despised flush heating his cheeks and turning the tips of his ears red, but he looked Frankie dead in the eye, heart pounding like a bass drum, and said, “Maybe a little. There’s no law against it.”
“Not officially, no, but you had me wondering if there might not be a rule about it written somewhere inside that pretty head of yours. S’why I haven’t pushed.” Frankie caught the point of his tongue with his teeth and grinned. “Much.”
Setting the glass down before he crushed it in his too-tight grasp, Jess swiveled the barstool until he and Frankie were eye to eye. Or close to it, anyway—even with the added height of the stool, Frankie’s long legs ensured Jess still had to tilt his head back a bit to get the full effect.
It was worth it. Frankie’s hair was the usual mass of spikes and tufts, his pale, night-loving skin glowing in the gold light reflecting off the bar’s mirrored back. His eyebrows were slashes of shocking black in that ivory complexion, demonically arched and insinuating. His grin was openly seductive, teasing Jess with that hint of tongue, but there was something unexpected around his eyes—something soft that made Jess soften in return.
He thought about Brandewine, and about Miranda and her expectations of him. Her wishes for him and the way she thought his life should be, and the fact that Frankie was a self-confessed slut who hit on any Market employee who caught his fancy. Then Jess thought about what an entirely sucky job he’d done of ignoring Frankie and the part of himself that Frankie tempted.
“I do have rules,” he admitted, keeping his voice deliberately quiet. “Good reasons for them, too.” He took a deep, fortifying breath and got a whiff of essence of Frankie: smoke and tobacco and whiskey. It gave him the courage to continue.
“Sometimes, though, you have to break your own rules.”
Frankie nodded. “How you know you’re alive, innit? I’ve broken damn near every rule