Asking for Trouble (Line of Duty 4)

He devoured her with a single glance, taking in black high heels, opaque stockings, and the short, tight gray dress she wore. He couldn’t help it. Or look away. Couldn’t stop his body’s instant reaction. Last night, he’d been too busy slaking the unattended hunger she’d stirred up to think about the repercussions of their actions. Now he couldn’t think of anything but getting her out of her clothes. Seeing her in those stockings. Was she wearing that garter belt again? Jesus, she’d made him hard from twenty yards away. If she knew how bad he wanted her, she would dangle herself in front of him like forbidden fruit every chance she got, just to torture him.

With one last warning glance at the other men, Brent closed the distance between them. He took her by the arm and pulled her toward the office located at the front of the garage. When they were inside, he slammed the door shut behind them and faced her.

“Well, good afternoon to you, too.”

“I asked you to stay in your car.”

“Since when do I follow orders from you?” She hung the gold-crested nylon garment bag she held on the back of the door. “Besides, I called you twice and it went to voice mail.”

With a frown, he checked his pockets. Shit, he’d left his phone behind when he went to the bathroom. Still, he’d only been in there two minutes. “God forbid you be patient and wait. I know waiting for anything must be a foreign concept to a rich girl like you.”

“Kind of like a shower is a foreign concept to you?”

“I work for a living, duchess,” he said, taking a step closer, annoyed by the fact that she smelled so good, so expensive. “You should try it sometime.”

Brent had the satisfaction of seeing her features cloud before she once again schooled them into a cool expression. She eyed the embroidered name patch on his jumpsuit. “I thought you were just helping out a friend. They just happened to have yeti-sized coveralls lying around with your name on them?”

“I help out a lot.”

“Oh.”

He could tell by her unconvinced tone that she didn’t believe him. He’d been caught. Worse, she looked…concerned. Not exactly pitying him, just sympathizing over his need to work a second job. He didn’t want it. Not from her. With a final step forward, Brent backed her into the desk. “You seem mighty interested in my work clothes. Thinking of the fastest way to get them off?”

When he grasped her hips and boosted her onto the desk, her breathing went shallow. “I didn’t come down here to get pawed by your greasy mechanic hands.”

“Why did you come down here?”

“To drop off your suit.”

He leaned in and kissed the skin beneath her ear. “Is that what you told yourself, baby?”

“Don’t call me that,” she turned her head away, gave a halfhearted push against his chest. “What exactly are we doing here? We can barely tolerate each other. This is only going to make things more difficult.”

“Is that enough to stop you?” He rested his hands on her legs and drew lazy circles with his thumbs on the inside of her thighs. When they inched just a little wider, he knew that she liked it. Feeling surprise when she didn’t protest the touch of his dirty hands, he slipped his thumbs higher, just beneath the hem of her dress. “Would you like me to tell you what I did last night when I got home?”

“No.” She shivered. “Yes.”

Brent chuckled quietly, but it came out sounding pained. “I took off my clothes and lay down on my stomach in bed. Then I wrapped your silk panties around my hand and fucked them.”

When Hayden moaned and parted her legs further, he had to bite back the urge to yank her off the desk, turn her around, and push the skirt up over her ass. Jesus. Where the hell am I taking this? Am I going to fuck her on a desk in a filthy garage? On a desk that isn’t even mine? It would definitely give the other mechanics something to catcall about, because if he let this encounter go on any further, she’d be moaning loud enough to shake the ceiling.

With a massive case of reluctance, he pushed her knees back together. When she started to voice a protest, he silenced her with his mouth, surprising them both. He gave in to the urge and parted her lips with his tongue, and took a brief but thorough taste. Slanted his mouth once, twice until he felt her melt. Then with a frustrated sigh, he pulled back.

When he saw her eyes were still closed, something lodged in his throat. Something he didn’t like one bit. “Hey, rich girl. Wake up.”

Her big brown eyes popped open and for one brief, intense second, he didn’t have any choice but to kiss her again. Could think of nothing else but finding out if there was something more behind that dazed expression. Gently, he drew on her bottom lip, before giving the fuller top one the same treatment. When her eyelids fluttered, he melded their mouths together, surprised to hear the slow, contented noise issuing from both of their throats.

Brent was on the verge of deepening their contact when Hayden visibly shook herself and skirted past him toward the door, looking embarrassed at having let her guard down. For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, he watched her smooth her skirt back in place over her sexy little backside. His hands clenched at his sides to stop himself from reaching for her.

She ran a shaking hand over her slightly mussed hair. “So. W-we never discussed payment. What is this going to cost me?”

Had he just heard her correctly? “Excuse me?”

Even Hayden looked surprised at herself, but she quickly recovered. “I know your time isn’t free. We’re not friends. I don’t expect any favors from you.”

Brent wanted to be upset. A small part of him definitely resented the offer. Still, her flushed cheeks and downcast eyes told him that, while she never hesitated to insult him, this time she hadn’t truly meant it as a put-down. He leaned back against the desk and crossed his arms. A wisecrack about taking sex as a form of payment hovered on the tip of his tongue, but he held back. If they ended up in bed together at some point—and right at this moment it seemed like a distinct possibility—he didn’t want any confusion over why they’d ended up there. Either way, he had no intention of accepting money from her. “I don’t know. What’s the going rate for an escort nowadays? I hear they’re all the rage with high-society girls.” Hayden narrowed her eyes, but he held up his hand when she started to respond. “Why don’t we just see how satisfied you are with my performance tonight? We’ll decide then.”

Hayden turned on a heel. “Dinner is at eight o’clock. I’ll text you the address. Please don’t be late.” She pursed her lips. “On second thought, please be obnoxiously late and don’t apologize. That ought to set the right tone.”

“Oh, I’m going to set a tone. Don’t worry.”

“Fine,” she responded with a healthy dose of suspicion. She turned to leave.

“Duchess?”

/> “Hmm?”

“You’ve got a little grease smudge on your nose.”

The door slammed on his laughter.

Chapter Five

Hayden stood outside the luxury high-rise on Park Avenue, letting the September breeze cool her fevered skin. Sometime in the last hour, this little stunt she’d hatched with Brent had started to feel like a really bad idea. She checked her watch for the third time in under a minute, hoping he’d just blow her off and watch a baseball game or something instead. What had she been thinking? Brent, sipping wine and rubbing elbows with members of Manhattan high society? She could hardly manage it some nights. Brent would be like a bull in a china shop.

He probably thought he could waltz in, make a few jokes at their expense, and laugh his way back to Queens. What he didn’t realize—what she herself had forgotten to take into account—was the fact that these people were vultures. They didn’t let just anybody infiltrate their world. She’d been brought into it as an infant and she’d still never felt fully accepted. Now, Hayden was beginning to worry that she might be setting up Brent to be the butt of their jokes, instead of the reverse.

It shouldn’t bother her. She shouldn’t care one bit if he got a dose of his own medicine. But when she thought about Brent facing the firing squad also known as her parents’ friends, she felt ill. She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket, intending to call him and cancel. Make a lame joke about rich people being so flighty. Tell him he’d been let off the hook, but she’d pay him anyway.

Pay him. She still couldn’t believe she’d offered to do that. After he’d sufficiently scrambled her brain on that desk, kissing her in a way that made her ache, she’d sat there like an overinflated blow-up doll, mouth in round O. O as in Oh, yes please. I’ll take an O for the road. For that moment, she’d forgotten who he was. Hell, she’d forgotten her own name. But nothing had prepared her for what came after, for the way he’d looked at her, let his mouth roam softly over hers as if he’d been…looking for something in her. She’d felt the pressing need to banish whatever she’d felt as he kissed her so reverently. So she’d blurted the first thing she could think of to redraw the battle line in the sand.