Butterface

“Get a room, Hartigan,” someone hollered.

The words cut through the haze of need surrounding him, and he broke the kiss.

“That is what I think about how you look,” he said, his breath ragged exhales of frustration. “I can’t be around you and not want to do exactly that. All the time. Even when we were on that damn Kiss Cam at the wedding.”

Gina blinked away the wetness in her eyes. “You don’t have to lie. I know what I look like.”

That was it. He couldn’t take it. If he didn’t get this out now, he was going to explode. He grabbed her hand and pulled her around to the side of Marino’s and into the walkway that led to the closed beer garden.

“Where are we going?” she asked, keeping pace with him on those long, amazing legs of hers.

He didn’t answer her question. He couldn’t. He didn’t trust himself with words right now, not where they could be seen.

Inside the alley, he brought them both to a standstill just inside the wrought iron fence surrounding the beer garden. He gave the area a quick look-see. The ivy lining the walls was coming in, and flowers had started to bloom, but no one else was there. Thank fucking God, because he wasn’t sure he’d be able to hold onto his control long enough to make them leave.

Still holding Gina’s hand and with no intention of letting her go, he marched through to the back corner, where they could finally get the privacy he needed for this. Once there, he dropped her hand and stood to one side so he wasn’t blocking her in. The last thing he wanted was for her to feel like she was trapped. She could go. He wouldn’t stop her. However, he prayed with everything he had in that moment that she’d stay and listen to what he had to say, because she needed to hear it. She needed to understand.

“You want to know what I see when I look at you?” he said, unable to keep the rough edge out of his voice. “I see a woman who makes me absolutely insane.”

“Thank you,” she said, sarcasm thick in her tone. “What a compliment.”

This woman was going to kill him. She had no idea what she did to him. Getting all emotive wasn’t his thing. He was Irish, for the love of Mike. His people didn’t do those crazy public declarations her clients seemed to love. So here he was, staring at the woman who’d turned his life upside down, with no fucking clue what to say. And yet, the words came anyway.

“I can’t get through five minutes without thinking of that sweet mouth of yours, or the way when you laugh when you throw back your head and just let it go. The best part of my day is making you laugh and watching how your eyes seem to just glow with happiness. I think about how, when you look at me, you’re really looking at me and not at a cop or one of the wild Hartigan clan. You see me.” He took a step back, then another, and another, until his back was against the ivy-covered brick wall farthest away from her. “And when I look at you, I don’t see a beautiful woman. I see you, and that’s better than any fucking beauty queen. So, if you need to go home. I won’t stop you.”

Her head was angled away from him so he couldn’t see her expression, as she walked away from him. One step. Two steps. Three steps. Each one leaving his blood colder than the last. Then, at the arbor leading into this isolated section of the beer garden, she stopped.

“You’re gonna break me, Ford Hartigan,” she said, her voice ragged and her back still to him.

“I won’t. Trust me.” And he meant it. He meant it completely.

She turned and the next thing he knew she was in his arms, her mouth on his, her hands yanking at his T-shirt, pulling it out of his jeans. There was so much desperate need running through him that the desire flooding through his blood tipped him over the edge of sanity—or maybe it was the way Gina’s lips felt on his, the way her tongue dared him to take them higher, or it could have been the way she seemed unable to all but attack him, too. He didn’t care that they were in the empty beer garden at Marino’s or that if they got arrested for indecent exposure it would be the least of his worries. He needed her now.

His hands went to her skirt, a flirty piece of red material that had swirled around her thighs when she’d stormed out of the bar. Reaching beneath it, he slid his palms up the outside of her thighs and over the generous curve of her hips. So distracted by the taste of her mouth, it took a moment for the reality of what he was feeling to make sense.