About Last Night

“I’m superb,” he said. “You’re going to like me.” Big, warm hands covered her bare thighs, and she shivered. “Though I should probably reiterate, I’m not at all nice.”

“I am,” she whispered. “I’m a very good person. Not the kind of girl who gets drunk and has to be rescued from train stations.”

“I know.” He moved his hands up a few inches to the crease where her thighs met her hips.

“Or who makes out with strange men on tables. I’m a thoroughly respectable woman.”

“You don’t kiss like one.” He smiled that shark smile again.

New Cath had a death grip on the tattered vestiges of her willpower, but she’d lost control over her body. Her palms smoothed over the muscles of his forearms, and her butt scooted her closer to the edge of the table by an inch or two. Or four.

At least her mouth still worked. “I’ve reformed. The kissing is sort of a holdover.”

“Don’t reform. I like you bad.”

“I don’t want to be bad.” But her arms had reached up and twined around his neck, and she had to murmur the last part against his lips.

“I do,” he said, and took over.

This kiss was harder, hotter. He hauled her tight against his chest and pushed his tongue into her mouth. Maybe it was some sort of twisted morning-after Stockholm syndrome, or maybe it was waking up in the guy’s bed. Maybe it was those two sexless years. Whatever it was, Cath welcomed the invasion in a big way. He tasted deliciously of bacon. Her skin burned where his hands cradled her hips, and her nipples tightened painfully against his chest. The ache between her thighs insisted she wrap one leg around him, so she did that, putting her in direct contact with the hardening ridge in his jeans. Exactly where she wanted to be. Oh, God, just exactly there.

Groaning, he pushed her back and slid his hands under the T-shirt, exploring the contours of her nearly naked body with long, slow strokes. Some minuscule part of her brain nagged that this was irresponsible, this was wrong, this was so not blip behavior, but then City’s fingers closed over her nipple through her bra and she gave it up. He made her crazy hot. Crazy. Hot.

Arms around his torso, she laid back, dragging him down with her.

“Wait,” he said, bracing himself with one hand and using the other to shove something aside.

“Can’t,” she breathed, her legs locked around him, her pelvis pressing against his heat. She needed to be claimed, to feel nothing on earth but his hands on her breasts, his mouth on her neck. Two years since she’d had a man, and now she wanted this one. Right now. Right here on the damn table.

Greedy for oblivion, she couldn’t have stopped if she’d tried.

The sound of breaking glass and the sharp smell of turpentine brought things to a halt. City straightened, and Cath reluctantly sat up and peered over the edge of the table to assess the damage. A jar full of soaking brushes had rolled off and shattered, depositing a murky puddle of spirits on his nice pine floor.

“Bugger,” he said.

She couldn’t agree more.

Chapter Four

Nev glanced up from the mess on the floor to the woman on his table and immediately regretted it. Her legs were still spread, his shirt bunched high on her thighs, her bare feet dangling. Parted lips, dreamy eyes, peaked nipples. Temptation itself.

He didn’t even know her name.

/> He held on to the thought, since it was the only thing keeping him from stepping over broken glass to finish what they’d started. “Bugger,” he muttered again.

Grabbing some rags from the table, he knelt and began sopping up the turpentine, plucking out the brushes and pushing the shards into an untidy pile as he went.

You don’t even know her name.

He knew who she was, of course. She was the girl from the park. A little dynamo who always wore black, she passed him a few mornings a week on her way up the hill, ball cap on her head, music blaring in her ears, determined expression on her face. A bit intimidating, really, all that ferocity in such a small package. He’d fancied her all the same, particularly once he’d started noticing her on the train, the way she curled herself around the black book she wrote in and shut out the rest of the world. Usually, she scribbled straight through the half-hour journey from Greenwich to Bank. Sometimes she sketched with a charcoal pencil. He’d found himself angling for a peek at her notebook more than once, but he’d never managed to get one.

He probably ought to say something. He would, only his reason had so thoroughly deserted him, he couldn’t think what to say.

Until last night, he hadn’t known she was beautiful. In the half-light of the station platform, she’d smiled at him through her tears—the sort of wide, openhearted grin normally reserved for close friends or lovers—and he’d lost the thread for a moment or two. Looking down into her huge brown eyes, he’d thought she might be the loveliest woman he’d ever seen.

She’d also been completely pissed and badly in need of an escort. On the train, she’d slung one arm across his chest and snuggled sleepily against him as she prattled on about Patsy Cline and train schedules and possibly something about a straitjacket, and he’d wondered what sort of woman treated a total stranger this way. He found it both disarming and oddly comfortable at the same time.

He tossed the larger shards of glass into the bin along with the wet rag. The sight of her bare feet in his peripheral vision sent him to the spare room for the broom and dustpan. “Don’t move,” he said over his shoulder, risking a look at her on his way out of the room.