Flipping Love You (Boys of the Bayou Gone Wild #3) - Erin Nicholas Page 0,16
that said he’d given all the right answers, but even more, it was filled with heat as well.
“There it is.” He reached up and cupped her face.
Her breathing got more ragged as she looked up at him. And she had to look up a ways. She was small. She probably stood about five-three to his six-four.
“What?” she asked softly.
“The reaction I’ve been going for.”
“Reaction?”
“Yes, until now. You’ve seemed very…dispassionate towards me.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly as if she was thinking about that. “Have I?”
“You have.” He leaned in, bracing a hand on the door just above her ear. “Quite insulting.”
This smile was a little more sly and definitely had a touch of mischief. “Maybe you should see how passionate you can make me.”
“Oh, challenge accepted,” Zeke told her.
His posture with his one hand braced on the door and him leaning over her could have felt intimidating, like he was caging her in.
But Jill only felt excitement.
Her mother would have heart palpitations if she knew. She was in a hotel room in a strange town with a man she had literally just met.
And had just agreed to have sex with.
No, she hadn’t agreed. She’d been the one to initiate that entire conversation.
Well, hey, she didn’t have a masseuse or a therapist here. And yes, the convenience store did have wine but she’d have to walk way over there while this big, hot Louisiana man with long hair and a beard and tattoos and a motorcycle was right here.
And clearly willing.
And she wasn’t worried at all. She didn’t know if it was because of the paramedic reassuring her that this man was a good guy, or the fact that this was actually a town much like the town where she’d grown up, or what.
Autre was tiny and everyone knew one another. Her friend Griffin was here. Granted, he’d accidentally settled here, but he seemed grudgingly happy. In fact, he seemed more than grudgingly happy. His girlfriend, Charlie, had family here and had, evidently, spent a lot of time here growing up. If she and Griffin both liked this town, Jillian felt safe here.
Yes, that all seemed probably a little convoluted as far as rationale went, but it was working. Her conscience was very cool with this.
She studied him up close.
His dark brown hair was gathered back in a ponytail, but she would guess it would hang past his shoulders when loose. In the dark brown were lighter streaks that gave him the look of someone who worked outside, or a model. His beard was short, but dark and full, and even his eyes were a deep brown.
He also had piercings in both ears, a gold stud and a hoop on the left and one gold stud on the right.
Dammit, everything about him was her type.
She knew that good guys with steady jobs and day planners were who she should be attracted to and they were who she’d dated almost exclusively. Jillian knew that in the big picture, she was looking for an opposites attract romance. But not like this.
She didn’t have any tattoos and she’d only ridden on a motorcycle once. She’d had her ears pierced when she was twelve, but she’d let the holes close up and didn’t own any earrings anymore.
But no, the opposite type of guy she was looking for was the 9-to-5-Monday-through-Friday-had-a-401k-put-appointments-in-his-phone-and-never-forget-a-birthday type. Not the clearly-wasn’t-afraid-of-needles type.
She wasn’t even concerned about her own birthday so much as she was hoping for someone who would help her remember other people’s birthdays.
Because she sucked at that kind of stuff.
She needed someone in her life to keep everything else straight so she could focus on work.
She needed someone who had a normal, sane life because they could then add some sane and normal to her life.
That’s how it had been with Stephen anyway. No, they hadn’t worked out, but he’d showed her what was possible. She was definitely looking for another Stephen.
She was not looking for a smooth-talking, tattooed, motorcycle guy who didn’t even care when he almost killed a baby goat.
But her body and her brain did not agree on what she was looking for in a man. And every once in a while, her body won the battle.
She’d had a very nice friends-with-benefits thing going with Dan back in Omaha. It had been very low-key. About once a month one of them would call the other, they’d compare their calendars, pick a night, and scratch their itches.
Then they’d go on their merry ways for another month or so.