‘I want you to stay away from my brother.’
I blush. Then I laugh mockingly. ‘You’re a gangster. Don’t act high and mighty with me.’
He smiles slowly, his eyes crinkling with amusement. ‘Say that word again.’
I blink. ‘What word?’
‘Gangster.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you make it sound so sexy I want to go out and become one.’
‘Am I supposed to believe that you’re not one?’
He shrugged disinterestedly, but his eyes take on a new glitter. ‘I can be if you want me to be.’
Suddenly I feel so flustered I can’t even look at him. I drop my eyes.
‘Is that what you really want…Lily? A gangster?’
‘It’s the last thing…’
He moves, and fast. ‘So what the fuck are you doing playing nice with his brother,’ he snarls and gripping my forearms pushes me roughly against the wall by the window.
I do what I did when I was nine years old and I opened the front door of my nan’s house and there were two unsmiling skinheads outside. One of them was holding a hammer. I didn’t pause or consider. I simply reacted.
‘Let loose the two Alsatians, Nan,’ I screamed.
For a second the heavily tattooed heads looked at each other, and then they bolted away so fast there was not enough time to say skin. My nan didn’t have a dog.
Again I let my instinct guide me.
I grab Jake’s surprised face and, pulling it down, kiss him hard on the mouth, except, unlike the skinheads situation, the problem does not run away.
His mouth opens to mine. The kiss sears my lips, shocking. I stagger and grab a handful of dark hair. Supporting hands come around my waist like bands of warm steel forcing me into his unyielding body, and I melt into it, fuse with it. My insides turn to fucking mush and my toes curl in my shoes. Thick juices leak into the gusset of my panties. For those few seconds I even stop breathing!
Then, without warning, he tears his mouth away from mine, and coiling strong hands around my forearms pushes me back against the cold wall. He stares at me with these wild, animal eyes, the pupils so huge it is as if he has been running or has come out of a dark room. Mesmerized, I gaze up at him. I have never seen anything like it. Anything so feral and beautiful. He takes a deep breath.
‘What the fuck?’ he bites out harshly.
‘Sorry,’ I say as coolly as I can manage. ‘When a man shoves a woman up against a wall he usually wants to ravish her.’
He is breathing hard. Through short gasps of air he grates, ‘Stay the fuck away from my brother.’
His voice is cold and menacing and a great white shark is swimming in his eyes, but I know that if I reach out and touch the front of his five thousand pound suit trousers I will find him tight and hard inside them.
‘So I’m good enough for you but not good enough for your brother.’
He laughs bitterly. ‘No, you’re good enough for any man’s bed. The problem is Shane would want to marry you, and we both know you’re not the marrying kind.’
‘What makes you think I wouldn’t marry Shane?’
He reacts swifter than a Tasmanian devil. His hand shoots out and pulls me so hard and fast I gasp with shock as I slam into his body. His cock juts into my belly. ‘Don’t play with me, Jewel.’
I look up at him defiantly. Heat glitters in his pale eyes and fierce sexual heat has tightened his jaw. ‘If Shane wants me he’ll have me.’
His eyes flash with anger, but he drawls, ‘Oh, baby. You have no clue, have you?’