“Are you drunk?” she asked, angry now.
“No, I’m not drunk. What difference does it make to you?”
“You’re not working drunk. You could hurt yourself.”
He laughed. “You’re not the boss of me, baby. Go make your cookies. Leave the heavy lifting to me.”
He dropped to his knees, which ached despite the heavy-duty kneepads, and bent to place the maple. Avery’s boots stepped right in his way. He gritted his teeth and lifted his gaze slowly, trying to hold his temper, trying to ignore her bare thighs, the sway of her skirt, the outline of her full breasts, the fall of her rich, dark hair.
“Woman, you have pushed enough of my buttons today. Get off my fucking floor.”
She crossed her arms. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“I’ve been working fourteen hours straight on about two hours of sleep after fucking you all night, and now you’re standing on my floor, which is keeping me from finally getting some good shut-eye. That’s what the hell’s wrong with me.”
“Bullshit. And I’m going to stay standing on this floor until you tell me why you’re acting like this.”
He sat back, rubbing sweat off his face with his forearm. “I saw Tiffany Mulligan at the market. She told me what you wouldn’t—why you were so bent last night.”
Avery frowned, shook her head, and lifted her hands out to the sides. “What does that have to do with anything?”
He got to his feet and put less than a foot between them, knowing he had to smell worse than the Niners’ locker room and not giving a shit. “It has to do with you and me last night.”
“No,” she said, adamant. “It doesn’t.”
“If you wanted a revenge fuck or a rebound fuck or whatever the hell you want to call it, you should have just told me that’s what last night was about. You should have been straight up with me.”
Fury broke out across her face, and she shoved him back with both hands, then followed. “How dare you insult me like that. I don’t know what your problem is, but don’t take it out on me.”
“My problem is you”—he shook a gloved finger in her face—“using me to make yourself feel better about your ex getting remarried.”
Her mouth fell open, and anger transitioned into hurt. “That’s what you think of me? You think I’m so weak I need to fuck another guy to bury hurt? If that were the case, I’d have fucked my way through my entire marriage. But I didn’t. I coped. I dealt. I believed. I hoped. And what did I get? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
She paced a couple of steps away, then back. “When I heard he was getting remarried, I realized that unless I changed the way I live my life, I would always be lonely. Unless I went after what I wanted, I’d live without any kind of intimacy the way I have for the last six fucking years.”
Trace’s head was spinning; his heart was beating hard and fast. His emotions were tangled in a knot so high in his chest he thought they’d strangle him.
“I wanted you,” she yelled. “I’ve wanted you from the moment I met you. That’s why I haven’t gone on a second date with anyone else. Because I want you. I knew sleeping with you was a bad idea. I knew I wasn’t experienced enough for you. I was sure I would disappoint you, and I couldn’t face another failure, so I forced myself to ignore what I wanted. What I needed. Just like I’ve always ignored my own wants and needs. All finding out about David did was push me to make a decision I didn’t have the guts to make before.”
She pushed her hands into her hair and turned in a circle. When she turned back, tears glimmered in her eyes, and all Trace’s emotions tugged tight until he couldn’t breathe—love, hate, desire, anger, frustration, confusion . . .
“What difference does it make to you anyway?” She threw her arms out to the sides. “You got the fuck you were looking for.”
He dropped his hammer and grabbed her arms. “I got way more than the fuck I was looking for, goddammit.” He hauled her in and kissed her hard. She made a frustrated sound and fisted her hands against his chest. He jerked her back, yelling, “I got the fuck I can’t stop thinking about. I got the fuck I want again and again and again.”
When he kissed her this time, her mouth softened, and Trace pushed her lips open with his tongue, then tasted her with the hunger that had been building all damn day. Avery swayed into him, tilted her head, and licked his tongue with a whimper in her throat.
Fire exploded through Trace, and he growled into her mouth. He released her arms, ripped off his gloves, and stroked his hands down her body, then back up beneath the skirt of her dress. He moaned as his hands slid up her warm thighs, gripped her tight ass, and pulled her hips into his erection, grinding against her.
Avery broke the kiss on a whimpered, “Yes,” wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him as if he were water in the desert. The alcohol in his blood was singing, and he was absolutely sure he’d never wanted any woman more than he wanted Avery right this minute.
He pushed her panties over her hips and groaned at the feel of her hot skin in his hands. “Fuck, need you.”
“Yes,” she breathed, fisting his hair, locking her arms around his neck.
Trace lifted her off her feet. She kicked off her panties and wrapped her legs around his hips. He didn’t remember moving until her back hit the wall, and he sank his hips into hers, moaning at the feel of her soft, soft sex giving to his hard cock.
Her hands fell from his hair to rip at his jeans. She was panting, lips wet, eyes hazed with the same crazy need bubbling through Trace’s veins. He struggled for a condom in his wallet, ripped it open with his teeth, and pushed it on while Avery swept her skirt aside.