three seconds before his eyes sparkled, and a smile slid onto those lips. “Looks like we ended up all alone after all.” He stalked over to where she rested with her back against the building, still warm from the day’s sun. Before she had a chance to scoot away—or maybe she hadn’t wanted to move—he had his hands landed on either side of her head. “Must be a sign.”
She’d been here before. Too many times to count. Dwarfed by a large man in a physical position of power and crowded against a wall, unable to escape. Thankfully, it had been years, so her body no longer reacted with a reflexive tremble of fear as it readied itself for whatever painful punishment was coming her way.
Instead, when she breathed and the combination of masculine body wash, liquor, and clean sweat invaded her senses, her knees nearly buckled.
Holy crap, had a man ever smelled so good? Who the hell even knew the smell of a man could make her all tingly inside? Surely not her. The men in the community only ever smelled like tobacco, gunpowder, or hay.
“Do you agree?” he asked in a low, husky voice that made shivers run down her spine.
“Huh?” Agree? Her brain had short circuited the second he got too close, and she seemed to have lost all control over her body.
A deep chuckled rumbled from his chest. “Us. Outside. Alone. It’s a sign.”
Oh right. She gazed up into his sparkling eyes, blinking to clear the cobwebs. Didn’t exactly work. The man needed to take about six giant steps back so she could think. “A sign of what?” she managed.
“That we need to fuck.”
Her mouth dried up. Who spoke like that? She’d been away from the community for two years, and while not a social butterfly by any means, she’d been around people enough to be hit on and observe others in the same situation. No one spoke like that, with such a blatant offer of sex. Certainly not her husband.
The one she was still married to. Another reason to end this right now. She’d be legally married until the day Roger died. For one, she couldn’t afford a divorce lawyer. Even if she could, the risk of discovery involved with sending divorce papers wasn’t worth it. So on paper, she’d stay married though in her mind she never was.
More concerning than all of that was the thrill she experienced at his crude words, and the hungry way he licked his lips while staring at her.
What the hell was going on with her?
One of his eyebrows slowly rose while he continued to watch her as though waiting—
Oh shit! Waiting for her to respond.
“I…uh…we, um, I…”
Way to go, Mak. That oughta kill his attraction.
“I’ll take that as agreement,” he said, lowering his lips to her ear. “We taking this inside, or you good to go right here?”
What?
Right there…as in outside the clubhouse with a party raging on just one wall away? If her brain had been functioning, she’d have laughed out loud at the insanity of the question. He couldn’t possibly have meant it how she’d taken it.
Could he?
When she didn’t speak yet again, he pulled back and gave her a wolfish grin. “Out here it is, then.”
Somehow, he’d taken her silence, rapidly rising chest, and racing pulse as an affirmative answer. With a nearly inaudible growl, he ran his nose along the column of her neck.
“You smell like fucking candy.”
Mak gasped and flattened her palms against the building. If she could have, she’d have held on for dear life as it felt like she was about to fly off the surface of the earth.
“Shit,” he whispered back near her ear. “This is gonna be fucking explosive.” He captured her earlobe between his teeth and gave a little tug.
Mak squeaked as goosebumps erupted over her body. Ten seconds ago, if someone had told her a nip to her earlobe could make her entire being throb, she’d have laughed until she cried. She’d had sex countless times and never reacted as she’d just done to a split-second scrape of teeth against her ear.
“Th-thunder,” she said, as she peeled her hands off the wall and pressed them to his chest. Her mind seemed to be at war with whether to push away or yank him closer.
He however, had no such conflict in his head.
“Shit, my name sounds good on your lips, babe,” he said exactly half a second before he joined his mouth to hers. Flames licked at her skin,