every damn one of my muscles froze. This wasn’t an inexperienced teenager. This was a woman, and she knew what the fuck she was doing.
My fist tightening, I breathed through irrational anger and yanked her head back. “Who the fuck taught you to kiss like that?”
Her lips wet, her eyes wide, her fingers played a game of seduction across the back of my neck. “What?”
Voice innocent, body submissive, mouth like a porn star, she was a walking contradiction, and my cock stupidly wanted in on it. “You don’t kiss like a nineteen-year-old.” I remembered high school. She wasn’t that.
She frowned, and her fingers stilled. “You don’t like the way I kiss?”
“Don’t fuck with me,” I warned, still holding on to her. “That’s not what I said.”
Her throat moved with a swallow, and the attitude I was expecting never came. “I’ve kissed men before, Shade,” she said quietly.
Using my name, the lack of reproach, her calm explanation—it all threw me. Not only did she kiss better than the last ten women I’d been with combined, she was acting too damn mature for her age.
I didn’t fucking like it.
And I sure as fuck didn’t like the fact that my goddamn thoughts were going down this road. I couldn’t think about how tight her nineteen-year-old cunt would be. My cock would destroy her faster than she could beg me to stop.
Reminding myself that I wasn’t the kind of man she could handle, I let go of her and stepped back. “You know why we’re here?”
Suddenly looking lost as hell, she shivered. “What?”
Fuck me, I wanted my hands back on her. I wanted to erase the uncertainty in her eyes. “Do you know why I pulled over?”
“No… Yes.” She inhaled. “Maybe?”
“Christ.” I couldn’t do this shit. “Get in the car, woman.” She deserved the fucking title. No teenager kissed like her.
Not moving, her calm voice came back. “Why don’t you tell me why we’re here?”
“Don’t fucking play me.” She could figure it out. “And don’t make me put my hands on you again.” I might not let her go until I did something she’d regret more than I would. “Get in the Escalade, Summer.”
Her voice quieted. “You don’t want to touch me?”
Exact opposite. “Get in.”
“I’m not sorry,” she blurted, turning back into the nineteen-year-old. “For kissing you, I mean. I’m not sorry about that.”
“That makes one of us.”
Her face fell. “You didn’t like it?”
Too damn much. Which was exactly the problem. I had no business fucking with her. Experienced or not, she was too vulnerable, too damn young, and way too fucking used to getting what she wanted. It didn’t matter what the hell my cock thought, everything about this was off limits.
“Time’s up.” I grabbed her around the waist and unceremoniously dumped her in the passenger seat. Slamming the door before she could say anything else, I told myself to pull my shit together as I walked to the driver side.
“Fucking Christ,” I muttered before yanking my door open and getting behind the wheel.
She was quiet till we were back on the highway, doing ninety in the left lane.
Then she shit all over ever preconceived notion I had of her.
“I’m sorry. That was all my fault back there. I selfishly wanted something, and I didn’t think.” Her gaze, pure as fuck, cut into me. “I took without asking, and that wasn’t right.”
Who the fuck was this chick?
I didn’t ask.
I fucking drove.
HE DROVE, AND HE IGNORED me.
For an entire hour, my lips tingled and my core throbbed.
I’d never been kissed like that. The second our mouths crashed together, he’d taken control and I’d melted. I’d kissed a lot of guys, slept with my fair share too, but I’d never wanted to get lost in a kiss so desperately before, and oh my God did I want to get lost in his brand of controlling dominance.
That was a dangerous slope for me.
I knew who I was.
I liked to get immersed.
I liked to fall down the rabbit hole.
I liked to be in so deep, I couldn’t see a way out, because that was when I felt alive. That was the taste of danger I craved. And the man sitting next me driving with a fierce scowl was exactly my brand of self-destruction.
More so than other bodyguards I’d met from Luna and Associates, Shade had an edge to him. I didn’t know if it was his time in the Marines, if he was truly dangerous, or if it was his give-zero-fucks attitude, but there was something about