Then it grew.
Naked of any color, besides a shine of gloss on her full lips, her smile was breathtaking. And damned if Canton could look away. No one, ever, had captivated him the way this woman had with just one look. A mutual exchange of nothing more than a glance and a smile.
He felt an answering grin lift the corners of his own mouth, upward.
Canton hadn’t felt like this in a long, long time.
He felt...light, happy for no damn reason on earth besides looking at her.
His body hardened, every thing about him focused on her. His cock thumped against his zipper, hardening, reacting to her.
As though she knew his thoughts, her eyes dipped for a moment in a charming display of shyness before reconnecting with his, her pretty full smile still in place. The effect on his body was unlike anything.
His cock hardened to pain, but Canton welcomed it as though it were a homecoming of sorts.
Beneath the bright light, Canton could have sworn he saw color blossom on her cheeks. As though she knew what she had done to him.
The little vixen, he thought, as a laugh escaped his mouth.
She was his.
Right then, right there, he decided.
It made no sense, no rhyme or reason.
If he weren’t so focused on her, he’d think of what Ray would say, think, if he knew.
Probably that Canton had lost his mind. Moments before, he’d assured his friend the last thing on his mind was a woman, one-night stand or otherwise.
He hadn’t lied.
In a blink of an eye, fate had something else in mind.
He felt it in his gut. His Wilde instinct.
His family were firm believers and followers of the Wilde instinct. An instinct their pop had trained them, from childhood onward, to believe in and follow.
The Wilde instinct was a part of their DNA as much as the height and blue eyes all the Wilde men shared.
That same Wilde instinct told him in the far recesses of his mind to get out now, if he wasn’t ready. Now, before it was too late.
He placed the empty beer bottle behind him, blindly, never losing eye contact with the woman.
He was ready. He’d never been so ready in all of his life.
* * *
“Girl, come on, loosen up, let’s have fun! But that can’t happen if you keep turning your nose up like that!” Alyssa Thomas groused to her best friend, Naomi McBride, as soon as the skimpily clad, weary-looking waitress placed their drinks in front of them, collected the money and left.
“And for the love of God, please, take that jacket off! I swear if you fiddle with the buttons one more time...just one more time—”
“What? What will you do?” Naomi challenged.
Alyssa narrowed her eyes. “I’m gonna fight you like a man!”
That made Naomi laugh, as it had been Alyssa’s favorite threatening phrase since they were children.
She snorted, shooting Alyssa a glance. “Really? And how long have you been threatening me with that?” she said and both young women erupted into laughter, remembering.
They’d been friends from childhood, ever since Naomi had stood up for Alyssa to the school bully. Not by fighting, but with her words, something Naomi was very good at doing.
At the end of her sophisticated tirade against the bully—well, she’d thought it sophisticated at the ripe old age of seven—the bully looked as though she were about to go “in” on both her and Alyssa, not impressed at all with Naomi’s serious words.
So Naomi, with her young face set, hands on hips, told the bully that she’d “fight her like a man” if she ever looked like she wanted to beat Alyssa up again.
She’d no idea where the crazy threat had come from, she thought with a laugh. She’d been just as scared, if not more, of the class bully, but she’d forced the fear away as she stood up to the much bigger girl, not backing down.
Words were all she had, as she knew the girl could beat her up.
Even at a young age, Naomi had used her words as her sword. Either it was the crazy threat or the way she said it that made the bully back away, mumbling about how they’d better stay on their side of the playground. It had become Naomi and Alyssa’s private laugh for fourteen years.
After sobering, Alyssa pinned her friend with her signature look. Naomi refused to squirm beneath her friend’s piercing gray eyes, feeling like a specimen under a microscope.
“Quit staring at me like that. And giving me that cray-cray look of yours. Gives me the creeps,” Naomi groused.
“What look?” Alyssa asked, feigning innocence, holding her cheeks taut as though holding back a laugh.
“You know what look. Don’t even try it. The same look you probably give to one of the frogs in your lab, rubbing your hands together in glee, right before you start slicing into the poor little guy,” Naomi mumbled, making Alyssa’s tinkling laugh ring out.
Which in turn made Naomi grin. Her friend’s light, infectious laugh could make anyone smile. Unlike Naomi’s laugh, big and full, a laugh she’d always been self-conscious about. It was just so...big. Only a few had heard her full laugh, and even fewer had made her laugh that way.
“Poor guy, huh? You know, if you want to be a doctor, you’re going to be doing a whole lotta dicing yourself. And not on anything so mild as a frog’s anatomy!”
“Yeah, but I’ll be in the biz of healing and helping children...not dissecting and murdering innocent amphibians!” she quipped, and both women chuckled.
“Really, with that vivid imagination of yours with the whole ‘rubbing my hands together in glee,’ as I ‘murder’ poor amphibians, on the real, girl, I’m truly convinced that you just might have missed your calling as a writer!” Alyssa said, and they both laughed.
“Listen, Ne Ne,” Alyssa said, automatically calling her by her childhood nickname of long ago. “We are graduating in a month and it’s your birthday!” She paused and gave Naomi a considering look before continuing. “Come on, girl, it’s not every day a woman turns twenty-one! And you promised me on your birthday you’d—”
Naomi held up a hand to stall the rest of her friend’s sentence. “I know, I know, I promised I’d loosen up and, well, umm...”
Alyssa cocked a brow. “And...” she said, allowing the rest of the sentence to dangle, waving a hand encouraging Naomi to continue.
“And find a man to deflower me,” she said, clenching her teeth in an attempt not to laugh.
Alyssa gave up a combo half giggle, half groan at Naomi’s words. “Girl, stop! No you didn’t say ‘deflower’!” Both women laughed outright. “And no I didn’t mean it like that, I just meant have fun, loosen up and well...” Her voice trailed off.
“I’m waiting,” Naomi broke in, when apparently Alyssa seemed hesitant to finish her sentence. Again she felt laughter ready to bubble forth. Maybe this was just what she needed. It had been a while since she had, as Alyssa said, loosened up.
Naomi was celebrating a momentous birthday, and she, as well as her friend, was finishing her senior year at the university, although Alyssa was older than Naomi by a year. Naomi had completed her undergraduate work in three years, shaving off a year, and Alyssa had completed her basic training in the air force for ROTC before entering the university. The two were as close