He narrowed his eyes to the pulse racing at the base of her throat. Because it was real. Some things just couldn’t be faked. Lowering his mouth to her ear, he said, “If you can fire it up so easy, choux, let’s keep right on convincing them.” Using the tip of his tongue, he traced the shell of her ear. She shivered. In a crowded bar, on a packed dance floor, with his body pumping out heat like a furnace against her, she shivered.
“Still playing, choux?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Just checking.” He trailed a line of open-mouthed kisses along her jaw to her mouth but stopped a hairsbreadth from her open invitation. He hovered there, letting her unsteady puffs of breath tease over his lips. Cradling the back of her head, he lowered his face to brush his lips slowly over hers. Plush as pillows and soft as a sigh, they parted for him. He pulled back just a degree and rubbed his thumb over her lower lip.
“These lips. You can’t know the things I’ve dreamed of doing to them.” The words just tumbled out from some pent-up place in his soul. Probably the same place that wove the dreams. “Kissing them so softly you aren’t even sure it happened.” He demonstrated and savored the way her body melted against his. “Using my teeth on them the way I’ve watched you do yourself, because even you know they’re irresistible.” He ran his teeth along her lower lip and bit just sharply enough to make her gasp. Her hands clasped his neck, then pulled him closer. She made a restless sound. Lightheaded, with a hard-on that throbbed like a bruise, he backed them off the dance floor and into a dark corner. Pinning her in with a wall at her back and his chest crushed to hers, he went on. “In some dreams, choux, I don’t hold back. I can’t. I haul you up and fuck your mouth with my tongue. Hard, fast, deep. I go at you so long your lips get roughed up ’cause I’m not as clean-shaven as I should be. They’re a little sore when I’m done, so the barest touch makes them tingle. Makes everything tingle.”
Bracketing her head with his hands, he gave them both a demonstration of what that would be like. Demonstrated until she clutched his wrists and urgent pleas came from her throat. Nearly out of control, he tore his mouth away. “Do you feel it, choux? Do you feel it here?” He gently pinched her very stiff nipple through the shirt and bra.
Her back bowed as she arched into his touch. One long leg curled around his thigh. “Jesus. God. Yes.”
“And here?” He panted the word and bit his own lip as he slipped a hand under her skirt and stroked the lace covering her pussy. “Jesus, God, Eden, do you feel it here?”
Her eyelids went heavy, but her glazed gaze locked with his. Her mouth worked, but no sound came out. Somehow, that enflamed him even more. He rested his forehead against hers and went swimming in the green ponds of her eyes. “When I’ve done all that to your mouth, choux, I’m going to come down here”—he stroked her again and watched her eyelids surrender to the pull of sensations he set loose inside her—“and do it all again. Every bit. Until you come so hard the whole bar hears you wail.”
He eased a finger under the lace and stirred his way through the hot, wet heaven waiting for him. Forehead still pressed to hers, he stroked again. “Tell me, Eden.” Begging now. He was begging. “Tell me true. You still acting? Because I don’t think your body knows it.” His sure as hell didn’t.
It was the wrong thing to say. He knew it as soon as the words left his lips. They came from the part of his brain that stayed 100 percent focused on self-preservation, no matter what the situation. Apparently, it spoke directly to the part of Eden’s brain that stayed focused on maintaining a line between her professional duties and her personal choices, because her body stilled. Long eyelids snapped open. She took a second to assess their situation—the relative privacy of their dark corner—and then shoved him away.
Right. He mustered up a smug smile and crossed his arms over his chest. “Told you that before we left here tonight you’d forget I was running a con.”
She blinked at him, clearly replaying his words, connecting them to the boast he’d tossed out while they’d been sitting in the parking lot. Her gorgeous mouth dropped open, then closed and firmed into a furious line. “And I told you I didn’t expect to be mauled.” With movements as stiff as her voice, she straightened her clothes, then turned away and made a beeline to the exit.
“Shit.” He took a minute to watch her go. Long, fast steps ate up the distance to the front door. The slender arms that had been wrapped around him moments ago were now locked protectively around her middle, but despite that self-containment, the people socializing in the bar parted to make a path for her. She pushed out the door without breaking stride.
“Shit,” he repeated and thumped his head against the wood-paneled wall. What the hell was wrong with him? There was chemistry between them, but because he didn’t measure up to her standards, or her daddy’s standards, or really anyone with standards, Eden chose to deny it. Still, no matter what her reasons might be, they were her reasons. At the end of the day, denying the attraction was the right thing to do, because they didn’t need a physical relationship getting in the way of their assignment. Was his ego really so wounded by her opinion of him that he reduced himself to using their cover to prove she didn’t find him quite as substandard as she wanted to? The “mauling” comment made him feel like a bully. Even for an unrepentant manipulator like him, that reached a new low.
Groaning, he gathered himself and went after her. This time he ought to repent. Try to put a truce in place and stick to it, for both their sakes.
His semi-noble intentions went straight out the window when he reached the parking lot and saw her sliding into the passenger side of a beat-to-shit black Honda Accord.
Has she lost her fucking mind?
He ran to the car and smacked his palm down on the hood. Three sets of startled eyes turned to peer at h
im through the windshield. Eden occupied the passenger seat, Kenny sat behind the wheel, and sidekick Dobie parked his butt in the back, leaning up between the front seats. “Uh-uh. Get out of the car, Eden. You wanna go home—I’ll take you home.”
She answered by slamming the passenger door.
Fuck. He pointed at Whelan and warned, “Don’t even think about it,” as he circled the hood to get to her door.
“Hey man,” Dobie called from the lowered back window. “We saw Eden out here walking on her own, and, like, offered her a ride home. We didn’t mean to get in the middle of anything. But”—round eyes looked up at him speculatively—“maybe you should go back in and, you know, cool down.”
Ignoring him, he focused on his partner. “We need to talk. Don’t do this, Eden. Neither of us wants the fallout,” he said meaningfully, hinting Buchanan and Malone would question their efficacy—and her sanity—if she went rogue their first night. “C’mon, choux.” He reached through Dobie’s window and unlocked Eden’s door, then held it open for her. Her eyes lasered go-to-hell at him. No doubt he would.
He extended his hand to help her.
She knocked it away. “Don’t touch me.” But she got out of the car.
Good. He turned and fell in step beside her as they made their way to the Bronco. This section of the parking lot was a rutted mess. Without thinking, he took her arm—and realized his mistake the instant she pulled free of his grasp and whirled on him.
“I said, don’t touch me.” She used a slick little self-defense move to back him up against the side of the Bronco and hold him at bay with a forearm across his windpipe. Chest heaving, fists clenched, she stared him down.
He held his hands up, palms forward. “You wanna take a shot, Eden? Do it. Free shot. We’ll both feel better—”
She swung away, stormed around to the passenger side, and got in. He walked to the driver’s side and slid behind the wheel. “Thank you for getting in the car.”