Player (A Secret Baby Sports Romance)(241)

We stop, panting with our hands on our knees as we suck in breaths of air. I'm swallowing my pounding heartbeat, trying to catch my breath when I hear laughing. I frown and look up to see Javier chuckling with a grin plastered across his face.

“Are you laughing?”

He howls out another laugh, his whole face actually lighting up as he throws his head back and hoots at the night sky. Sweat drips down his face and his chest but he's laughing even as he struggles for a full breath.

“You're insane.”

“I've been told.” He grins at me and shakes his head; “Where the hell did you get bullets for that gun?”

“The third Blackriver guy that was standing guard around the corner.” I try and shrug it off as if sneaking up on mercenaries and knocking them out to steal their ammunition clips is in any way something I’ve ever done before. Javier snorts, his laughs telling me he doesn’t buy my attempt at being a badass at all.

“Well, nice job, Rambo.”

I shake my head and start to turn but he stops me with a hand on my arm; “C’mon, princess, don’t you feel fucking alive right now?”

I take another gasp of air and shake my head as I turn to look out at the dark of the ocean; “I feel like we’re making this situation worse.”

He snorts; “But don’t you feel it? This is life; raw and crazy and happening all around you.” His voice is closer than it was before, and I turn suddenly to find him standing much closer to me, and my breath catches; “Don’t you feel alive?”

More than I can possibly feel comfortable even admitting to myself, especially with him so close to me. I can smell his scent, and I can feel the heat of him, and I'm starting to lose myself in the reflection of the moon in his eyes.

I take a small step back, biting my lip with eyes locked on his. This is dangerous; I'm flirting with real, tangible danger in the form of a criminal.

My criminal.

He holds my gaze a second longer before he turns and brings a bottle to his lips that I never even realized was in his other hand. He bites the cork in his teeth and yanks it out with a pop before spitting it out and raising the bottle high in his hand; “A toast!”

I frown; “Is that alcohol?”

“Absolutely”

I'm laughing then. In spite of myself - in spite of knowing I should be furious or terrified, or scared - I'm laughing.

And it feels fantastic.

“Did you steal that from the bar?” I choke out, wiping tears from my eyes as the giggle-fit shakes me to my core.

Javier grins at me as he takes a swig from the bottle, makes a face, and then passes it my way; “Have a drink, princess; we're celebrating a win tonight.”

My giggling slows as I take the bottle. Drinking with him? Yeah, that's a bad idea.

That's a horrible idea, actually..

Javier turns and starts dragging and pushing bits of driftwood together into a little hut shape. He takes a lighter out of his pocket and begins to hold it to some of the smaller pieces in the middle while I watch him. I’m painfully aware that I’m standing on a secluded moonlit beach with a stupidly attractive Latin man panting with his shirt open like some kind of bull fighter, and he wants me to drink with him. Oh and he's building a fire.

Yeah, no; no freaking way. Trusting him is one thing; trusting myself is another altogether.

The fire begins to catch as he adds smaller bits of wood to fledgeling flame, before the whole pile starts to burn. He stands and turns, and then he rolls his eyes and looks pointedly at the bottle still in my hand.

“Fine,” I say dramatically, before bringing the opening to my lip and tilting the amber liquid into my mouth.

I swallow the swig and cough as Javier chuckles; “There we go.”

He takes the bottle from my hand and moves back to the now crackling fire, where he tosses another chunk of driftwood onto it before settling down against one of the large boulders in the sand. I don’t think anymore, I just move to sit next to him, lying back against the rock and looking out past the fire over the ocean.

There’s a war of ideals raging in my head, but I'm trying to drown it out and just enjoy the moment. Because one side of me is still raging that this is wrong; that Javier is the bad guy, and as the good guy here, it's my job to be his enemy.

Drinking tequila around a campfire on the beach really doesn't fit on that list of good-guy versus bad-guy activities. Except I heard what they said back at the alleyway, and I saw what he did, and part of me knows that that’s not quite how the “bad guy” is supposed to act, either.

So is he really bad?

“What now?” He says with a smirk.

I laugh; “Oh, I'm in charge now?”

“Oh, sure,” He grins; “Only because I’m letting you be in charge though.”