I’ll be damned if I’m going to weigh her down with my baggage.
She blinks, wounded by my harsh tone. “It’s a ceramic project. You told me last week that you want to see more of my work.”
Damn. She had me there.
I’d come over to watch the football game and found her in the backyard, nose wrinkled in concentration as she spun a bowl on her pottery wheel. Bathed in sunshine and biting her pretty lip, fiery hair in a loose bun on top of her head, she’d looked especially beautiful—and I’d had a weak moment, telling her I wanted to see some of her work.
Now the reckoning was here.
No way I’m following her up the stairs to her room when she’s all but naked, her skin toasted gold from the sun. I need witnesses around us at all times to keep me from doing something I’ll regret. Already I’m crossing a line, unable to conceal my perusal of her lithe thighs and the virgin territory where they meet.
“Bring whatever it is downstairs.” I snatch my bottle of beer up off the side table and take a long pull, hitching my chin at the television. “I’m watching something.”
“Oh.” Her shoulders sag. “Never mind, I’ll show you another time.”
My chest turns hollow when she backs away and slowly leaves the living room, her disappointment obvious. It turns me inside out, knowing I let her down. Only a few seconds have passed when I curse and slam the bottle back down on the side table, already knowing I’m going to follow her.
2
Ripley
Holding my breath, I wait behind the living room wall until I hear Uncle Mase’s gritted expletive—fuck—his drink bashing down on the table.
I squeal internally and do a little fist pump, then spin toward the staircase, ascending as fast as I can on the balls of my feet, so he doesn’t suspect I played him.
Even though I totally did.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, right?
I’m leaving for my first semester of college next week and that means I’m running out of time to give myself to Mase. Because I know him. He thinks if he can resist me one more week, this magical attraction between us will eventually subside. It won’t.
But if I can just push him into confessing his feelings for me, we would have so much freedom to explore this…this insanity between us. Out from underneath the prying eyes of my parents or the upper-crust friends that would consider our relationship a scandal. I’ll be a two-hour ride away on his bike in my off-campus house. All alone, except for my amazing, non-judgmental best friend, Alana.
If I can just show him what he’ll be missing by staying away…he won’t.
I wouldn’t be able to stand it if he did.
Ever since my mother married Mase’s brother when I was fourteen, I’ve been infatuated with the rough and tumble biker. He thinks I don’t see beneath his scary exterior, but I do. He might be six foot four inches of pure steel, his skin swathed in prison tattoos and knife scars, but I see the affectionate way I catch him watching me sometimes beneath his black brows. Kind of a cross between obsession and irritation.
It excites me.
Everything about him does.
My heart beats triple time whenever we’re in the same room. My palms get sweaty. I breathe funny. Sometimes I forget I’m supposed to be seducing him and just stare at his dangerous profile like a lovesick teenager—
Oh, that’s right. I am one of those.
I love my Uncle Mase. Desperately.
So I really need him to cooperate, follow me up the stairs to my room, so I can unleash my feminine wiles on him, dammit.
When I hear the heavy tread of his motorcycle boots on the stairs, a sound shudders out of me and I press a hand to my bare belly, trying to appease the fluttering. Mase has been in my bedroom a few times. Once to bring me a stuffed fox when I was sick last year, even though he looked like he was silently calling himself an idiot the whole time. He also came in to fix a broken drawer in my dresser. My underwear drawer, specifically. And…I might have broken it on purpose so he’d have to look at my panties. But I’d only succeeded in pissing him off.
Today’s plan has to work.
He clears his throat outside my door, the sound like gravel beneath his motorcycle tire. “Ripley.” A pause. “Hurry up and show me this thing. I don’t have all fucking day.”
Lord, what I would give to have him talk like that in my ear.
His colorful vocabulary has always been a source of disdain from my parents, but it excites me. The way he doesn’t tone himself down for them or anyone.
“Oh! Uncle Mase. You scared me.” Hand to my chest, I do my best to look surprised that he’s standing there. “Come in. I’ll get the project so I can show it to you.”