“Worked what out?” Ryder asked.

“Whatever it was the two of you were stewing about the other night.”

“Were we stewing?”

“She was,” Laz said, stepping away from the bar and going to grab what they had ordered.

“I might have maybe propositioned him slightly,” she said.

Ryder nearly growled. “You did?”

“We hadn’t done anything yet. And you were being possessive. And irritating me. And I was trying to prove that I didn’t need you to complete my objective. It didn’t work.”

“You’re a little witch, you know that?”

“Not the first time I’ve heard that.”

“What exactly are we doing here?” Ryder asked.

“Aren’t we just playing it by ear?”

Laz brought the beers back and Sammy took one, lifting it to her lips.

“I’ve got them,” Ryder said, handing the cash over to Laz and watching as Sammy brought the bottle of beer up to her lips again. The whole thing felt deliberately sexual.

“You don’t have to buy me a drink.”

“I think I do.”

“I’ll just go over there,” Laz said, excusing himself from the middle of them.

That didn’t really bother Ryder, either. If the other man read the sexual tension between them that was all the better for his purposes.

He found that he wasn’t all that invested in hiding what had happened between them at all. Because Sammy seemed to thrive as a sunbeam shining through the trees. A little bit winking around the shadows here and there, but not shining full out.

It left her the opportunity to be coy. To be a little bit ambiguous and naughty. And she enjoyed that. It was obvious enough to him.

He wasn’t going to allow it. Not caring who was watching her, what they might think, he reached out and stopped her beer bottle as it began to make the journey up to her mouth again. “Don’t look at me like that while you take a drink, Sammy, unless you plan to make good on that little promise later. If you want to use your lips and tongue on me, go right ahead and keep teasing. Otherwise...rethink.”

That earned him a shocked expression. And it was a hell of a thing to have managed to shock Sammy. But then, that was becoming more and more normal as he stepped outside the box that he had built for himself. As the two of them began to forge new territory. Where he was someone he didn’t recognize and sometimes she was someone he didn’t know, either. He didn’t know that he liked that part of it. Redrawing those boundaries and setting foot onto uneven ground. But it was part of it. And there was nothing that could be done about it. Not now.

Her lips twitched. “Yes, sir.”

And that bratty little comment sent a lightning bolt of heat straight down to the part of him that craved her the most. His gut went tight, his blood running hot. “You think I’m safe,” he said. “Because you’ve only known me as your friend. Because I had myself on a leash every time I was ever around you. Because I decided a long time ago not to be this when I was with you. But you don’t know all of me, Samantha, so if I were you I would tread a little bit more carefully.”