A bit of that fire lit on her face.
God.
I liked that, too.
The feisty redhead ready to spar.
“You were going to track me down, huh? Tell me you aren’t really stalking me.” Her voice had dropped an octave, dripping with excitement and nervousness, the words a low, throaty tease.
“Is it working?”
She chewed at her bottom lip, and it took about all I had not to reach out and brush back the lock of hair that swooped across her forehead, obscuring one of her eyes. “I’m here, aren’t I? Against my better judgment.”
“Why’s that?” I played it off as unimportant. Like I wasn’t wanting to dig deeper into her. To discover all those things I couldn’t get off my mind.
The low laughter that rolled from her was completely at her expense. “I already told you my life is complicated . . . hence my being late.”
“Are you going to tell me about that?”
For a flash, her gaze went to the far side of the street, her profile soft beneath the glow of the strands of lights strung up overhead. Face innocent while her body looked like nothing but sin wrapped in this slinky black dress.
She was a walking contradiction.
The perfect kind of fantasy.
Sexy and soft.
Hot and sweet.
She looked back at me with a silent plea riding her expression. “Do you remember what you asked me? You asked me for one night. And this night is for me.”
She swallowed and averted her gaze again, like she was gathering her thoughts, and then she set the power of those green eyes back on me. “So, no, I’m not. I just . . . want to enjoy myself and not think about anything else except for the fact I’m out with a man. A man I can’t help but want to spend more time with. That, for one night, I get to experience it. Can we do that?”
Unable to stop myself, I reached out and ran the pad of my thumb across her chin, right over the cute little dimple I kind of wanted to lick.
She shivered at my touch.
“Yeah, Shortcake, we can definitely do that.” A smirk kicked up at the corner of my mouth. “You want a good time? Then I promise to show you a good time.”
There was almost a warning behind it. The caution that my body was already way ahead of us.
Imagining her against the wall, that short, short skirt hiked around her hips.
Back at my loft, the girl writhing on my bed.
Or maybe it was just a promise.
She must have seen every single salacious thought play out in my eyes. Because she chuckled this sound that shot straight to my dick, a hand flattening on my chest. “Oh, back it up, Cowboy. We aren’t gonna be having that good of a time.”
Grabbing that hand, I kissed across her knuckles. “Are you sure about that? And cowboy?” My brow arched. “Come on now, do I look like a cowboy to you?”
She laughed a little deeper, her expression going light, sparking with the freedom of the moment. “Mm-hmm . . . I am most definitely certain of that.”
Her tongue darted out to lick across those glossy lips, the girl cocking her head with a type of mischief I hadn’t recognized in her before.
Lust knotted my insides.
“Such a bad boy. I knew it back at the bar, the trouble written all over you. And don’t you know all boys from Alabama are cowboys at heart? You can dress yourself up like a city boy, but it doesn’t change a thing.”
A chuckle rippled free. “Actually, I was thinking more like knight in shining armor . . . you know, since I am rescuing you tonight.”
“Thinking awfully highly of yourself, are you?”
I guided her into the restaurant ahead of me, mouth dipping down to brush across the shell of her ear as she walked through the door. “Hell yeah. As long as that means I get to make you my princess.”
She glanced at me from over her shoulder as we stepped into the restaurant. “My hero.”
She delivered it with a tone of flirtatious sarcasm.
Having no clue that statement sliced through me.
A double-edged sword.
Did my best not to reveal the cringe that jolted through me and told myself I wasn’t going there tonight.
Because if this was the only one we had, I was going to make it count.
9
Hope
Chills skated my spine, and I shivered with the slow release of his breath that washed across my jaw when he leaned in.
The heat of him took me whole.
Overpowering.
Too much and somehow not nearly enough.
“How was your dinner?” he asked.
The man was conflict.
Persuasion and dominance and sex.
Kind and perceptive and intuitive.
I didn’t know what side of him was more dangerous. The only thing I knew was I could barely breathe when he set one of those big hands on my knee underneath the table.