Butterface

…

Gina couldn’t believe the words that had just come out of her mouth. It must have been the sugar talking. It was totally the sugar talking, plus the two glasses of wine she’d drunk at the party and the confirmation of what she’d already known in her gut about her grandfather.

But she wasn’t the kind of woman who could get away with a double entendre like that. He was just so damn close that her pheromones kind of took over her brain, which was probably not scientifically possible, but it’s all she had for an explanation right now.

She looked up at him through her lashes, anticipation making the air electric around them. “We never got to finish what we started in the hotel that night.”

What was coming out of her mouth? This wasn’t her. This was some other woman who thought she had a shot with a guy like Ford.

“We shouldn’t do this.” But he plucked the half-eaten cannoli out of her hand and dropped it into the box where he’d just put his.

“Am I still in possible danger?” she asked, her hands going to the buttons of his shirt, slipping the top one free.

He shook his head as he looked at her fingers working on button number two. “No.”

“Are you still on the clock?” Her hands were shaking with nerves, but the button slipped free.

She slid her fingers down to the third button, wondering if she was sex-drunk and possessed by a woman with ten times the confidence she had.

All she knew was that she didn’t want this man to leave her house for the last time without letting the tension that had been simmering between them boil over. Some could argue that made her desperate. Others might say it made her assertive. She didn’t give a flying fuck. This was her last chance with Ford, and she wasn’t going to waste it.

Her fingertips brushed over the third button of his shirt, but his hand covered hers, stopping her. Her breath caught.

“No, I’m not on the clock.” His words came out with the rough edge of a growl, hard and wanting, that thrilled something inside her.

He brought her hands down to her sides, his strong fingers encircling her wrists, but he didn’t let go and he didn’t walk away. Instead, he stood there looking down at her, desire and need making his green eyes turn even darker.

Heart hammering against her ribs, she gave into the pheromones and the sugar and the wine and the lust that kept her up at night. “So why shouldn’t we finish what we started? Afterward, we go back to our normal lives. No commitment. No tomorrow. Just one night to do what we didn’t in the hotel, then you leave at dawn and that’s that.”

“Because this can’t ever be more than that,” he said.

Didn’t she know that all too well. “Exactly.”

He looked for a second like he was going to argue with her, but in the next breath his hands were on her hips, pulling her close, and his mouth was on hers in a kiss that should have set every flammable can of paint lined up against the kitchen wall ablaze. It was hot and demanding and so achingly desperate. It was as if they couldn’t get enough of each other and they both knew tonight was it.

He tasted of bourbon and cannoli, need and satisfaction—and she couldn’t get enough as she reached back for his shirt and yanked it out of his pants, desperate to feel him and not the cotton covering his skin. He broke the kiss with a groan when she slid her hands under his shirt.

“I need to see you,” he said, reaching behind her for the light switch.

“No.” That couldn’t happen. She didn’t want to break the moment with brightly lit reality. She grabbed his arm before he could reach the switch and lowered it so his palm was on her leg right at the spot where her dress stopped. Excitement sizzled across her skin, and desire swirled through her, hot and demanding. She wanted this—wanted him—so bad. Watching his face in the soft light spilling into the kitchen from the foyer, she slowly slid his hand higher, under her dress and to the inside of her thigh. “You need to feel me.”

“You have no clue just how bad,” he said, gliding his fingers up her inner thigh. “Open your legs for me.”

“Like this?” She widened her stance so her feet were shoulder-width apart.