What was he doing here? Waiting for her, obviously, but for what reason? To tell her the meal had been fine? To confirm her departure time tomorrow?
He was so big. So beautifully masculine. And the way he was looking at her, making her the clear focus of all that incredible intensity…
He took a step toward her.
“Just stay where you are, Gentry, because you and I have nothing to say to each other.”
“You’re right. We don’t.”
She nodded. “I’m glad we agree on something.”
Then her shoes fell from her hand and she went straight into his arms.
CHAPTER SEVEN
There were no preliminaries.
Lissa came to him as if this moment had been theirs from the beginning of time.
She went up on her toes as she raised herself to him and wound her arms around his neck. Her body pressed against his, and Nick groaned, bent his head and captured her mouth with his.
He hadn’t expected this, but then, he hadn’t really expected anything.
He’d gotten out of the dining room before dessert, knowing that staying would have been a mistake, that seeing her again would have compounded it even more than the mistake he’d already made by kissing her.
They weren’t children.
When men and women kissed the way they had, it was usually the start of something that would end in more than kisses.
But then he hadn’t intended to kiss her in the first place.
She was argumentative. Difficult. A flesh-and-blood embodiment of that old nursery rhyme about sugar and spice and he wasn’t a man much taken with sugar and spice, but her in-your-face-honesty was irresistible. So was the way she looked, not just naked—he couldn’t get that image out of his head—but right there in that old kitchen against a backdrop of pots and pans and tired old gadgets, her face free of makeup, her hair drawn back in a way that was as sexy as it was down-to-earth.
It had all come together and he’d laughed.
Then he’d looked into her eyes and it had felt as if the air had been sucked out of the room.
Without thinking, he’d reached for her. It had been the first thing he’d done on impulse in months. Everything since the accident had been planned and orchestrated.
Not that kiss.
The feel of her mouth under his, the warmth of her in his arms…
He’d have taken her right there, if not for his men sitting in the next room.
She’d have let him.
He’d seen desire blazing in her eyes, tasted it on her tongue.
Somehow, he’d let go of her.
Some
how, he’d gotten out of the kitchen.
Ace had said something to him and he’d mumbled some kind of response, but he had no idea what in hell it had been because the only part of him working had been his dick.
He’d made an attempt at eating dinner. He couldn’t do any less, not with his men seated around him.