Touched By The Devil (Devil's Riders 7)

She bit her lip.

“Maybe you should stay,” she said, sounding like a hopeful little girl.

I brushed the hair away from her face. “I thought you wanted to go slow.”

“I do. I just… didn’t expect…”

“Yeah. Me either.” I knew what she was saying. She hadn’t expected the chemistry between us. How good it would feel when we gave in to this insane attraction between us. It was off the charts. “But I told you we would go slow.” I kissed her forehead. “So I’d better leave. Right now,” I said regretfully against her hair.

I slid through the door before I could change my mind.

Chapter 12

Suzanna

I stared at the ceiling, trying to stop my mind from spinning. The sensation… the way Mac had touched me… it was almost reverent. Passionate, even filthy, but something more. His hands were firm but gentle, as if he were holding something precious. No one had ever touched me that way. It made me feel… special.

The truth was, everything was jumbled up inside me.

Mac had said no. When I’d offered to, um, let my guard down, he’d actually turned me down.

He’s a player. He knows he’s got you on the hook.

But that little nagging voice inside me sounded less sure. I was starting to doubt my earlier assessment. He might look like a player, but I was beginning to think he was nothing of the kind. It was possible that he was just a really hot, really good guy.

Wasn’t it?

I turned on one side, then the other, knowing full well that sleep was hours away. Finally, I flopped onto my back like a big, ungainly fish.

Two amber eyes peered at me from beside the bed. Calliope’s paws were on the edge of the mattress, patiently waiting for me to hold still so she could park her furry butt on me.

“I’m not your personal space heater, you know.”

She blinked and I sighed.

“Fine, but I’m not speaking to you.”

She leapt up onto the bedspread. I was always amazed by her grace. She spent ninety percent of her life looking like a very round, furry beached whale. And yet she moved like a panther. I narrowed my eyes and dared her to bite me again as she climbed onto my stomach.

She twitched her tail at me with extra attitude and turned in a circle before settling on my chest. I looked at her. She looked at me, then slowly closed her eyes with a satisfied smirk on her furry face.

It was a look that said, ‘I own you.’

“You like Mac, don’t you?” She gave me a slow, knowing blink. I sighed and scratched her behind the ears. “Yeah. I like him too.”

Her tail thwapped me in the face a few seconds later. I spat out a mouthful of fur and sat up, gently setting her on the other side of the bed.

“Damn cat,” I said fondly as I pushed my feet into my fluffy bunny slippers and went to brush my teeth again. ‘You can never be too mindful of your teeth,’ my gran always said. Besides, I was too restless to lie there a minute more.

I stared at my reflection.

“You are a wanton woman. A woman of easy virtue.”

I shrugged, realizing that it didn’t really matter. I wasn’t hurting anyone, so who cared if I decided to be a little bit easy, for once? I deserved a fling with a hot construction guy. I was still in my twenties. I was single. He was single. It wasn’t even all that fast, at this point.

But I still felt guilty about it.

I padded into the living room and over to the bookcase. I pulled out a thick photo album I’d bought at a drug store after the wedding. We hadn’t had a fancy wedding or a real photographer, but I’d put an album together all the same. And I’d added to it, the first few years.

It was heavy white plastic, the sort of thing you picked up anywhere. Nothing special. But my hands were gentle as I reverently opened it.

I carried it to the table, not surprised when Calliope leapt up and settled nearby. She had a sixth sense a lot of the time. It was like she wanted to see him too.

I didn’t have any pictures out. For the first year, I had pictures everywhere. I’d tortured myself, reminding myself over and over again of everything I had lost. Only after a few years had passed had I been able to admit to myself that even though my late husband was a good man, my marriage had been less than perfect.

I believed that David had loved me in his own way. It just wasn’t a very exciting way. He wasn’t demonstrative or affectionate. On our first ‘date’, we had been walking home from a study group, and he’d simply put his arm around me while we were walking. Just like that, we were together. Things had not progressed all that much past that for quite some time.