Crave (The Gibson Boys 3)

I just need a few minutes alone. Just a few minutes to regain control.

Let it be, I remind myself. I pop the door open and step inside. With an exhale, I swing it shut, but it just swings back with full force.

“Ah!” I startle. Only now considering someone followed me from Crave, I spin around.

Machlan stands in the halo of light from the security lamp outside. His chest rises and falls, the easygoing look in his eye from earlier gone. There’s no grin, no winking, no question to explain why he’s here. Nothing but a fire in his eye that reduces me to a puddle.

“I bumped Navie …” I force a swallow. “Peck is changing. Not here,” I add quickly before he takes that the wrong way. “In his truck.”

He closes the door.

Taking a deep breath, I feel my chest vibrate. The clover on my necklace is cool against my skin as I blow the air from my lungs in hopes it settles me.

“You can be mad,” I say, “but I legit walked out the back door and up the stairs. And be mad at me because Peck wasn’t given a choice, nor should he have been saddled with watching me like a child.”

“That’s not what he was doing.”

“Oh, it wasn’t?”

Machlan walks across the room like a man on a mission. He doesn’t blink, doesn’t flinch, doesn’t break stride until he’s standing mere inches from me. “He was watching you like you’re a woman who’s special to someone.” He takes a deep breath. “To me.”

My head explodes. Every synapse misfires. Every beat of my blood echoes his words.

My plan to prove Machlan is bad news is backfiring. Like a snowball in the desert, my scheme is melting faster with each passing second.

I take a step back. He takes one toward me. I take another, but my back hits a wall. He closes the gap with no apology.

“You can’t say that to me,” I say.

“I can’t say what?”

“That I’m special to you.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to hear it.” My back is against the warm wood paneling, and it creaks as I lean my head on it too. I need all the support I can get as the man in front of me looks at me like I’m the crazy one. “It’s unfair, Machlan.”

He reaches up and drags a clump of rum-infused hair off my face and tucks it behind my ear. “You wanna know what’s not fair?”

“What?”

“That I have to watch every guy in my goddamn bar look at you and not smash them in the face.”

“I am a single woman,” I say.

The vein in his temple pulses.

“Machlan, look, I—”

The words are shushed with his thumb pressing over the bud of my lips. He leans closer, the room between us barely enough for his hand. “Every time you start a conversation like that, it ends badly.”

“Don’t most of our conversations end up like that?” I ask from beneath the pad of his thumb.

He drops his arm but doesn’t move away. It takes everything I have not to grab his waist and pull him against me, to wrap my arms around his neck and kiss him like he’s everything to me.

“The last one we had didn’t,” he says.

Each breath I take sounds like a little gasp. Each time that happens, Machlan’s eyes narrow. Every time he does that, my knees wobble a little more.

Emily’s advice rolls through my brain as if she knows the position I’m in and wants to torture me. As if she’s encouraging me to let things happen. To do what I want and not what I think I should.

I know what I want to happen. Right now, in this time and place, I want to be with him. It feels entirely organic to touch him, to kiss him, to get around this stupid wall we’ve put between us. And as I look into his eyes, I think he feels the same way.

My stomach clenches, pulling my body tight, as I get the courage to move. My palms dampen as I reach up with one hand and touch the side of his face. There’s two, maybe three, days’ stubble dotting his cheeks, and the hair is rough against my palm.

Machlan doesn’t move. Not a twitch. The only thing that reacts is the light in his eyes.

“I’m warning you,” he says. “you keep this up, and my restraint will be gone.”

“You don’t have restraint anyway.”

“I’ve managed to breathe the same air as you for two minutes now and not touch you. Trust me when I tell you it takes more restraint than I ever knew I had.”

“That’s too bad …” I drop my hand and smile. “I was really hoping you’d—gah!”

My back hits the wall with a ceremonious thud. Machlan’s body is pressed against mine, pinning me between him and the wall. His mouth covers mine roughly. It’s not a sweet or sensual motion. It’s purely primal. Animalistic. Exactly what I need.