Della tipped, the light caress of the warm metal against her skin causing more unfurling. A low fizz percolated through her veins. “How’s that?”

He followed the movement of her fingers as she tugged gently on the earring. “Perfect,” he murmured, his voice a low kind of burr, rubbing against her skin like fine-grade sandpaper.

“Well, that’s easy.” Della gave a husky laugh as she dropped the earring and straightened her head because it was getting harder to breathe. And she liked to breathe.

“What else?”

He dragged his gaze back to her face, his reluctance not lost on her. The fact his eyes were all smoky like the Tennessee whiskey her daddy used to drink wasn’t, either. That vibe she’d felt in the cab of his truck that night was back, and it’d just shot in the stratosphere.

If there was such a thing as a vibe-o-meter, it’d be in the red zone right now.

“Sometimes that’s all you need.”

Della shook her head. “Oh, come on. I’ve seen women at Jack’s flirting with you.” She’d envied and admired them in equal measure. “They lean in and pout and smile. And they do that thing where they put their elbows on the bar and they use their inner arms to squish their boobs together and emphasize their cleavage. What about that stuff?”

“Too obvious,” he dismissed.

“I was under the impression that men appreciate obvious.”

He gave a kind of meh expression. “Obvious has its place.”

She cocked an eyebrow at him. “You don’t like when women push their boobs in your face? Oh, sorry…” Della rolled her eyes. “I forgot—boobs are off the table.”

He laughed. “I like it just fine. But you’re easing your way into this, right? Less is more, yeah? Less can be…sexy.”

God…that word again. Sexy.

“Okay, so what says sexy to you?” she asked.

His jaw jutted determinedly, and Della was worried he was about to banish sexy to the naughty corner with boobs and kissing. “C’mon, wingman,” she jumped in. “This is the kind of stuff I need you for.”

He sighed, clearly resigned, his gaze drifting again. “Fiddling with your hair. Pushing it behind your ear, for example.”

He eyed the strands of hair that had come loose from her ponytail. Her bangs weren’t quite long enough, and they had a tendency to fall around her face, although only one side had misbehaved so far tonight. “It draws a guy’s gaze to your face, to your eyes, to your…” Tucker’s gaze dropped briefly to her lips before returning to her eyes. “Mouth. It’s a look at me move.”

Never in a million years would Della have guessed an action she did probably dozens of times a day could be considered sexy. But she was willing to give it a try.

He was assessing her, after all.