Come To Me (Dare With Me #3) - J.H. Croix Page 0,40

storage area room where the feed and hay were kept, my mind spun back to last night.

When I had her in my arms, against the wall, while I was buried inside of her silky, clenching channel. Fuck me. Merely thinking about Gemma coming all over my cock nearly made me spin her back against that wall all over again.

A few minutes later, I stood beside my truck and her lashes lifted when she looked up at me. “Last night was…” Her words trailed off, and her cheeks flushed pink.

“Incredible,” I offered helpfully.

Her flush deepened, and she bit her lip as she nodded. “It was incredible.”

“Was it incredible enough that we’ll finally have that dinner?”

I watched doubts pass like clouds in her eyes before she took a quick breath and nodded. “Definitely. When would you like to go?”

“Any night I’m back early enough from flying, I’m all yours,” I said, meaning it completely.

Gemma slipped her phone out of her pocket and tapped open the calendar, scrolling through it quickly. “How about this Friday? I’ll see you at the class at the resort next week after that too.”

“This Friday works. We don’t do late flights on Friday, so I should be on the ground before five. I’ll text you my schedule and meet you here.”

Gemma nodded, and we stood there for a moment. I wasn’t accustomed to the feeling I was experiencing. I wanted to kiss her. Hell, I wanted to kiss her and take her back inside and stay in bed all day. This was definitely not usually how I felt about a girl. But I already knew the truth—Gemma wasn’t just any girl to me.

Stepping closer, I leaned down for a lingering kiss. When I lifted my head, my cock was rock hard and my heartbeat thumped out a driving fast pace in my chest.

“Until Friday,” I said as I forced myself to step back, climb in my truck, and drive away.

Halfway back toward the resort, my mind got stuck on the conversation I overheard when I walked into the kitchen. What court case was she talking about?

None of this should’ve even mattered. It’s just that Gemma was starting to matter, and secrets didn’t sit well with me. I told myself that she didn’t owe me any explanations and that it was probably nothing. But I didn’t quite believe it because there’d been a thread of tension in her shoulders when I saw her talking to her brother.

I remembered Harley telling me that just because Deana pulled a fast one on our parents didn’t mean everybody would do something like that. I tried to remind myself that was true. I didn’t need to create a problem in my mind where there wasn’t one.

Chapter Twenty

Diego

Gabriel attempted to slam the door of the passenger side of the small plane. It was a weak effort because the doors were lightweight and didn’t give a satisfying slam. I put my headset on and ran through all the pre-flight checks quickly.

Only after we were in the air did I ask, “Why so cranky?”

Gabriel slid his eyes sideways to meet my gaze, irritation evident in the tense lines at the corners and the set of his mouth. He put his headset on. We had a private channel where we could chat when we were flying. “Nora and I had a fight.”

That was the closest Gabriel had come to admitting out loud he and Nora had a thing going. They kept it pretty well hidden from Flynn, but not so much with the rest of us.

“About what?”

He was quiet for a minute and then finally offered, “I told her I never planned to get serious. I thought that was already obvious. She got really fucking pissed off with me about it.”

“Ah, I see. You were planning for this to be a long-term friends with benefits situation?”

His sigh filtered through the headphones. “I guess I wasn’t really planning. That’s part of the problem.”

“That, and you two are sneaking around like kids trying to hide from their parents,” I offered with a chuckle.

He groaned. “I know. This whole thing came up because she told me she was tired of sneaking around and wanted to be open about our relationship. She also said she had feelings she hadn’t planned on. I said we didn’t have a relationship. That set her off.”

“Nora’s pretty awesome. Why wouldn’t you want to consider something more with her?”

“Dude, you know my deal. After what happened with Greg, I’m all set with commitment and relationships.”

I angled