colorful. “This is more caffeinated than Starbucks.”
“Rebel, baby,” he said low, “I do not drink tea.”
She took him in with a look on her face he liked, tipped her head to the side, causing her hair to glide over her bare shoulder and down her arm, something else he liked and felt in his dick, and she asked, “Coffee?”
“Sure.”
Her lips turned up and she turned back to the cupboard and came down with an aqua-colored ceramic French press.
He watched her move to a fridge that looked old fashioned, was the color of a tangerine, but he knew it wasn’t vintage to the house because it was shiny-new, very orange and had letters that spelled SMEG on it.
She came out of it with a flowered tin of what he hoped was coffee.
“You do know, even not strong arming, this convo is going to go the same as the other one,” she told him, not catching his eye now, the words coming out like she didn’t want to say them, but she had to.
“Still gonna try,” he said softly.
“Right,” she whispered.
He gave her a minute before he went on.
“And you know why I’m here taking another shot at that, Rebel.”
She looked at him then.
She started to open her mouth, but he beat her to it.
“And don’t deny it.”
She shut her mouth.
“You felt it,” he declared.
She turned back to the tin and wrested off the top.
While she was scooping coffee into the French press, he repeated, “Rebel, admit it, you felt it.”
“Felt what?” she asked the coffee.
“The need to jump my bones.”
Her head jerked his way.
“You think a lot of yourself, stud,” she snapped.
But there was pink in her cheeks.
Totally wanted to jump his bones.
“You shot outta your car and got right in my face, pissed as shit I’d put myself in danger, hijacking you on Speer. Not pissed we hijacked you and not putting you in danger, me,” he pointed out.
“Fuck,” she muttered, going back to the coffee.
Yeah, she’d given it all away with the first words she’d spoken to him.
“And what woman gets hijacked and lectures the man who hijacked her about precisely how to hijack, seein’ as she was not goin’ Thelma and Louise on his ass because it might hurt him and his brothers?”
She carefully put the top of the tin back on and said nothing.
“You knew you weren’t in danger from the start,” he continued. “You were worried about me. No woman worries about a man she just met, he hijacked her or not, if she doesn’t want to fuck him.”
“It was a stupid, strong man, biker stunt, Rush, when as you can see,” she said as she moved back to the fridge, “Essence would have led you right to my door and offered condoms.”
“I couldn’t know that.”
She opened the fridge door but looked around it to him. “So you forced me to go to Jason’s Lodge? I mean, it was at least thirty miles away. How could you be sure I had enough gas?”
He controlled his smile at her “Jason’s Lodge” mention just like he had to do when he’d heard it before and shared, “We watched you fill your tank on the way home.”
She made an annoyed noise in her throat and disappeared behind the fridge door.
She reappeared and moved back to her spot at the counter, saying, “And so you were totally okay with the possibility of scaring the shit out of me?”
“Honey, I know you come from a family of bikers and you went undercover as the executive producer, exclusive director and cinematographer of a new line of porn that might be classy porn, but it’s still porn. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I figured you were made of tougher stuff.”
She made a “huh” noise that was really fucking cute.
To stay on target, he had to ignore the really fucking cute.
“We connected in that cabin, babe,” he reminded her.
She scooped tea in a narrow, cylindrical silver thing that had holes in it.
What she didn’t do was speak.
“Rebel, you know we connected at the cabin,” he said low.
“Okay, so maybe I felt a spark.”
A spark.
Twice he thought she’d rush him.
Or maybe it was three times.
That made him smile.
He doused it before he declared, “We’re exploring that spark.”
She turned her head his way again. “Not if you think you can tell me what to do.”
“Right, sweetheart, exploring that spark means talking, getting to know each other, and fucking. You think I’m gonna take a woman to bed and then let her get out of it