doing this, Brogan?” Her hands gripped his arm; her head fell back against his chest. “Why this and why now?”
“Because I’m damned tired of chasing after you, Eve Mackay,” he growled before delivering a heated little nip against her shoulder. “I’m tired of watching you avoid me, of always being one step behind you and never close enough to touch. Maybe you should have stood still for a second at some point so I could have prepared you.”
Prepared her for that electrical current that zigzagged through her body and struck at areas so sensitive that the heightened sensations were bordering on pain.
“Maybe I’ve been avoiding you for a reason,” she suggested breathlessly.
“Avoiding me while you stare at me with all that heat and need for my touch in your eyes?” he asked, his lips moving against the side of her neck as she tilted her head to allow him access to the oversensitive nerve endings she possessed there.
And there seemed to be a lot of them.
His arm tightened around her waist, pulling her closer against him. She felt his hips at her lower back, the heavy wedge of his erection unmistakable.
What the hell was she doing?
Lifting her arm and curving it around the back of his neck to hold his lips at that supersensitive spot his beard was brushing against, Eve’s lashes fluttered in pleasure.
“Like oil and fire,” he said in a groan. “That’s what it’s going to be like, Eve. Once it starts, we’re going to burn down the night.”
“I don’t have fire insurance on my heart, Brogan,” she whispered, forcing herself to protest what she knew would happen. “This is a really bad idea. Burning down the night can’t be good.”
“Oh, sweetheart, burning down the night is the best.” His hand flattened against her waist as he pushed beneath the camisole, his calloused palm rasping over the rapidly rising area of her upper stomach as she fought to breathe.
She quivered at the feel of his broad palm, long, strong fingers. They stroked up, lifted, then cupped the underside of one swollen breast.
“For over two years I’ve watched those little nipples harden every time I’ve come around you,” he revealed. “I’ve tortured myself wondering if the honey was dripping along your pussy. Every time I see you leave that spa in town I wondered if you had your pussy waxed. If it was all bare, or if you left just a few curls for me to play with. I’ve wondered, Eve, how the hell I was going to keep my head when I finally got close enough to touch you.”
She was shaking.
Eve could feel herself trembling like a schoolgirl finally getting that first kiss from the guy she’d daydreamed about all year. But it wasn’t the captain of the basketball team or the football team, or the most popular guy.
It was that guy from the wrong side of the tracks, and she had fantasized that she was the pampered princess who had no idea how to handle him, how to tame him, but was desperate to try.
The problem was, she was, in reality, also the one from the wrong side of the tracks, as well as the wrong side of the blanket. She wasn’t pampered or spoiled, and he was far too dangerous.
His thumb raked over her nipple, suddenly shocking her with the burning pleasure that lanced from the sensitive peak to the swollen, saturated bud of her clitoris.
Her vagina clenched.
Her juices were spilling along the sensitive channel, slicking the bare lips, because yes, she did wax. The dampness gathered and built, preparing her for his touch, for his possession.
And she couldn’t stop it.
She couldn’t stop him.
He began turning her in his arms, eroticism filling the night, the scent of dark cherry and spice from the cigar he had been smoking wrapping around her senses. One hand slid into her hair, clenched in the damp strands, while the other wrapped around her back and dragged her to him.
She stared up at him, watching the usually icy gray-blue gaze darken and flame and swirl with heat as her lips