“You don’t know,” she replied. “Maybe the honey is looking at me funny.”
He put the paper down then, shifting all that intense blue to her. Was that what she’d wanted? Indy felt a different sort of sensation shiver all the way through her. It took her a moment to recognize it.
Uncertainty.
She rarely felt such a thing. And it hadn’t occurred to her, until just now, what a gift it was to always feel she knew her place. Her sister liked to tell her—sometimes laughing, sometimes not—that she was filled with unearned confidence. Indy had never understood that as a criticism. Why should confidence need any earning? Bristol had always believed that a person gained things like confidence—and self-worth, and bragging rights while she was at it—by accomplishing things.
But that meant there was a measure and others might assess it differently.
Indy had always felt real confidence was innate. It was about being open to anything. To being fully prepared to say yes to whatever came. She had done that in spades, always.
The only other time she’d felt uncertain, this man had held a gun to her head.
“Do you still have a gun?” she asked.
But she regretted it, instantly, because that was exactly the kind of question that she prided herself on not asking. It wasn’t that she didn’t care, she’d explained to her sister once. It was that there was no point digging in deep to things she couldn’t hold on to. Better by far to accept what was given and make do.
And okay, she acknowledged internally. There might also be some power wrapped up in seeming not to care about the things people usually care too much about.
The power thing was especially clear now. As she’d just given hers away.
She watched as Stefan took in that question. His expression changed as he sat with it, growing unreadable as he gazed back at her. Not quite like armor, she thought. More like the suggestion that he could, at any moment, produce an entire armory.
“Not that particular gun,” he replied, and something jolted in her because he didn’t pretend he didn’t know which gun she meant.
Or maybe it was all the implications about his relationship with guns wrapped up in that succinct statement.
“And are you...the sort of person who spends a lot of time pointing guns at people’s heads?” Again, she didn’t know what on earth she was doing. Or what she hoped to gain. This was why she never asked questions like this. She preferred to let people tell her their stories as they liked, the bonus being she never felt so messy while they did. But now that she’d started actually asking him questions she wanted the answers to, how could she stop? “It was a while ago now, but if memory serves, you were holding it pretty confidently.”
“I was in the army for some time. I hold all guns confidently.”
“Are you really not going to answer me? We met up in Prague after what certainly couldn’t be called a meet cute Budapest. Two whole years ago.”
“Thank you.” His dry tone and all that gleaming blue made her...edgy. “I had forgotten all of this.”
Indy plowed on because she’d never skidded over this particular cliff before and she didn’t have the slightest clue how to stop herself. “There has been no communication in all of that time, yet here we are. Surely that means, at the very least, we owe each other a little bit of honesty. Don’t you think?”
“I live for honesty.” And it occurred to her that that little undercurrent in his voice, the one that matched the gleam in his eyes, was amusement. “Why don’t you tell me why you’re so nervous?”
Nervous. Indy wasn’t nervous. She was never nervous.
And yet, as wrong words went, that one seemed to hit her in all the places she felt raw.
“I’m just wondering if I’ve flown across an ocean to shack up with the Big Bad Wolf,” she said tartly. “Maybe this wasn’t my smartest move.”
“I thought we were being honest.” Stefan shook his head, though his hard blue gaze never left hers. “We met in a dark alley with my gun in your face. That didn’t stop you from fucking me blind not ten minutes later. And it didn’t stop you coming here for more, years afterward, knowing nothing about me except that alley. Are you afraid of me, Indiana? Or are you afraid of yourself—and the fact that you don’t care what I am?”
She felt caught by that, in a hard, tight grip. As if the honesty she’d demanded was choking her—but Indy forced out a laugh anyway. And maybe she gripped her coffee cup tighter as she settled back in her chair, wishing she’d come down naked.
Because that would have been a distraction. And a distraction was obviously better than...whatever this was.
Indy opted not to acknowledge the uneasy sort of knots that drew tight inside her at this unwelcome awareness of how she operated. Almost as if she wasn’t the carefree, fun-loving creature she’d always been so sure she was.
“This is getting pretty heavy for a morning after,” she said as her laughter faded. “And besides, aren’t conversations like this better during sex? To spice it all up a little.”
She expected the usual reaction when she said even the most nonsuggestive things, as long as sex was implied. Explicitly stated, she expected his eyes to drop where his T-shirt rode up on her thighs. She expected his hands on her, touching her like he couldn’t bear not to for a single moment more...
But Stefan remained as he had been all along, lounging in his chair and regarding her far more closely than was comfortable. Not as if he wanted to jump her bones. More like he wanted to forensically examine them, then jump them.
Indy didn’t like it.
“Do you have discussions when you’re not having sex?” he asked, with entirely too much mild amusement for her taste.
“I’m having one right now.”
“Are you?” There was a hint of
