The Way We Burn

Nine: Sully

Gigi's gaze immediately fell to the snow covered wooden slats beneath her feet. Thanks to the deep 'v' of her neckline, I saw her throat bob as she swallowed and her chest heaving with shallow, heavy breaths. Even like this, even with the only lighting around us the dim twinkle of white Christmas lights, she looked like an angel on earth. An angel that I was currently having a very hard time pretending I was upset with.

Something about the way she'd stomped her perky little ass toward me, all filled with rage and jealousy, had turned me the fuck on. I'd always had a bit of a possessive streak myself. Not in a controlling way, but in the 'Touch what's mine and I'll kill you' sort of way. But tonight was the first time I'd had that sort of energy aimed in my direction and needless to say, I fucking liked it.

A lot.

If we were being honest, I'd barely even noticed the girls that had flanked me the instant I'd entered the Castellanos' home. I knew they were friends of Amaya, but any information I'd been given past that had fallen on deaf ears. The instant I'd stepped through that front door and spotted Galena back in the corner, her luscious curves wrapped in skin tight, dark green velvet, those blood red lips curving upward to reveal that glimmering white smile, everyone else had ceased to exist. Whatever hesitation I'd had about us, about what we could or should be, evaporated into thin air. This woman... she was everything, and after an afternoon spent with my incessantly prodding ex-wife, I was finally fucking ready to do something about it. And then I was cutoff at the pass by a bubbly Amaya and her friends.

"What the hell was that?" I asked as I folded my arms over my chest, both in feigning annoyance and to shield myself from the bite in the air. Was I enjoying watching her squirm a bit too much? Perhaps. But it was cute as hell.

Gigi licked her lips and blinked, and as she glanced toward the sky, I noticed a sheen to her eyes that could only mean she was holding back tears. I'd intended poking at her a bit more, but she looked so damn embarrassed that I immediately lost all desire to tease. The tone of my next words was much softer. "Gigi..."

"Look, I'm sorry, okay?" she finally spoke, her voice an emotion-filled rasp. "I get it. I have no right to interfere with whatever... or whomever you choose to do anything with but really? Them? Could you be any more cliché?"

My brows lowered in confusion, narrowing my gaze upon her. She couldn't honestly think... "What do you mean?"

"I mean... I guess I didn't think they were your type, but I get it. I just... I thought you were different. I thought I..."

I couldn't help it. A loud burst of laugher ripped itself from deep in my gut, not because her response as funny, but because she was so fucking wrong it was astonishing. "You gotta be kidding me," I snickered, more to myself than the very unimpressed woman standing before me. "Is that was this is about? Amaya's friends?"

Gigi's gaze was attempting to burn a hole clean through me. Suddenly the sheepish, embarrassed girl was gone and the badass, sass-master was back. And she was pissed. "Mind clueing me in to what's so fucking funny cuz I don't get it. This a joke to you?"

"Baby, no..." I shook my head as my laughter began to subside and a torrent of butterflies took its place. "You really don't see it?"

"No, Sully, I don't fucking see it," Gigi snapped, using her fingers to add impassioned air quotes. "Why don't you explain it to me?"

"Gi, I couldn't tell you one goddamn thing about those girls," I stated, grinning at her like some sort of village idiot. "I don't know their names; I can barely tell you what they look like. The second I walked through that door, the only thing I saw was you."

Gigi's head jerked back before she looked at me with her jaw slack and her baby blue eyes wide as saucers. "W-what?"

I chuckled affectionately, enjoying the baffled doe-in-headlights look on her face a bit too much. Every ounce of apprehension I'd been riddled with since the day we re-met was gone and left in it's wake was an innate need to reach out, to touch her, to cast out any doubt my previous waffling had left her with. "You tryin' to tell me you didn't notice, Snow?"