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“Take me home?” she bit off.
“I’m not going to force you to go out with me, Brianna.” He dragged his hand through his hair, feeling completely out of place. “I usually read people well. I thought I read a spark of…interest…in your eyes. If I’m wrong about you, then I’ll take you home. I don’t need to bribe women to go out with me, believe it or not,” he said, his voice dry.
He couldn’t help adding that last part on. She’d wounded his pride, whether she had meant to or not.
She faltered. “So now you’re giving up? Wow. I thought you didn’t stop when you wanted something.”
“I draw the line at forcing a woman out to dinner,” he said. She looked at him as if she wanted to throttle him or kiss him into silence. He wasn’t sure which one. “So what is it going to be? Dinner or home?”
“Oh. My. God.” She clenched her fists. “You’re so annoying.”
“It’s simple. Either I was right, and you want to go to dinner with me on a date. Or I was wrong, and I take you home. We keep our relationship strictly professional.” His heart sped up. He wasn’t wrong. He knew it. If he was wrong, she would have jumped at the opportunity to flee his side. Instead, she glowered at him.
“I said I’d go to dinner with you, so I will.”
“Nope. Not good enough. Things need to be clear between us. If you go out with me, it’s a date.” He slid closer to her, tilting her chin back with his thumb. She stared up at him defiantly, refusing to admit she wanted him. Refusing to give in. “Just answer the question, Brianna.”
Her chin jutted out with stubborn defiance. “Fine. We’re going on the stupid date. Happy?”
He fought back a grin. He didn’t like to show his emotions too clearly. Nicole had always mocked him for being transparent. The simple memory wiped away all traces of a smile. “And you’re going out with me because…?”
“Because I want to.” She gritted her teeth. “Not because I have to for my job.”
“Good. Now I can do this without feeling guilty.”
He gripped her wrists, dragged her close, and captured her lips. She tensed, twisted, and tugged. If she’d jerked away, if she’d cursed at him, he’d have let her go.
Instead she melted to him with a breathy little moan, her lips parting beneath his.
He groaned and let go of her. Her arms wrapped around his neck and she dragged him closer, arching her supple body into his. She was like fire wrapped in silk, and she opened to him with an almost vicious eagerness.
His tongue darted past her lips to taste her. She was sweet, luscious, her flavor wild and molten. A tight ache of need unfurled inside him—a craving he’d been denying for far too long. She raked her fingers over his shirt, fisted handfuls of the cotton, and pulled him closer. The heated, wet depths of her mouth dragged him into an undertow of fire that threatened to drown him in the untapped wells of passion sleeping under her cold shell.
They nearly ravaged each other, fingers grasping and clutching at clothing, mouths pressed together with a hunger that bordered on madness. Her breasts heaved against his chest, the twin points of her nipples pressing into him, taunting him. She was panting, pliant, and he wanted her. Here. Now. Raw and rough in the back of the damned cab if he had to.
The cabbie cleared his throat. The car eased to a halt. With a growl, Thomas tore his lips from hers and looked down at her. The glazed look in her eyes, the wanton need written on her face, punched him in the gut. He almost ignored the cabbie. The intensity of the sudden, overwhelming need she roused in him was disturbing. He was accustomed to having to hold himself back.
But one kiss from her made him feel like his leash had snapped.
He rested his forehead against hers. His lips ached from the roughness of their kiss. “We’re here.”
She took a shaky breath. She looked beautifully dazed, almost confused, and she jerked back from him, blinking, darting a glance at the cabbie. “R-Right.”
He shoved his hand into his pocket, tossed a twenty to the cab driver, and helped Brianna from the car. It was more telling than anything that she let him, laying her delicate hand against his arm with her eyes downcast. Her mouth was reddened, her hair disheveled, and he couldn’t help a fierce and primitive sense of pride. He’d broken her poise. He’d left her flushed, flustered, deliciously disarrayed.
To hell with dinner. He was taking her straight to his room.
Chapter Four
As the cab pulled away in a crunch of gravel, Brianna smoothed her disarrayed clothing and looked anywhere but at Thomas. Good God, she’d been all over the man. She wasn’t even sure what had happened. He’d kissed her, and some long-dead part of her had come very suddenly and very vocally to life.
And that part of her wanted his body atop her, locked with her, filling her until she screamed.
Guilt sank its ugly claws into her. What was she doing? She looked down at the band of paler skin on her ring finger and clenched her fingers. It had been far too long since she’d looked at a man, let alone let herself go like that. The last time had been clumsy fumbling with some guy from a dating site. She’d realized then that she didn’t want to get back into the world of awkward first dates and disastrous attempts at forced intimacy.
She’d realized that she couldn’t replace him, and his shadow would always follow her through every failed relationship, every moment of doubt that when the next man said, It’s not you, it’s me, he meant, It’s you. It’s you and all your baggage.
Thomas would be no different. Just because her body didn’t have the sense God gave little green apples didn’t mean she had to let it rule her choices. She needed to keep her distance, or she’d be in trouble faster than she could say “blackjack.”
