Page 5 of Falling for the Enemy

“Yeah, I guess she inherited her charming personality from her mother.”

Jocelyn arched a dark, sculpted brow. “What can I say? We have no patience for strays.”

He met her eyes with another roll of his own. “So…you gonna let me in?”

“Wow,” she said with little inflection. “You really do spare me from having to gag over your silver tongue. What happened? Use up all your best material on tonight’s interviewee?”

“Something like that.” He stepped closer, silently urging her to invite him in. She wouldn’t. She never did.

Instead, she sniffed the air as if she could smell his date on him. Her mocha stare drifted from his tailored jacket to the toes of his Italian leather shoes. “My Goddess, you’re a cliché. So what do you want?”

Mostly, he wanted to silence that sharp mouth of hers. The bratty attitude had been done to death, but that was the default setting. Even in third grade, when she transferred to Hideaway Bay mid-year, she walked in like she owned the place, never caring what others thought of her.

Jocelyn Collins didn’t wait for acceptance. She was a storm of her own making, loud, unpredictable, wild, and catastrophic. She left trails of devastation in her wake and unapologetically went after whatever she wanted, regardless of who or what obstacles stood in her way.

“You really going to make me stand out here, Joce?”

“Yup.” There wasn’t an ounce of hesitation in her response.

“Invite me in. We both know how this ends.”

“Why should I?”

Her greatest ambition in life was to make him beg. “Because you and I both know you want me inside.” He grinned, letting her interpret that as she would.

“I don’t think so, Soren. Last time you came by, you left my toilet seat up and drank all my bourbon.”

“If I recall, you drank it with me.”

“I was only trying to be hospitable.” She examined her nails as if anything was more interesting than his presence.

His eyes drifted down her silk kimono, knowing full well she was naked underneath. Her hair held the tousled remnants of a fallen hairdo, wilting down her sharp shoulders in dark chocolate waves. His attention settled on her bare feet, where the blue paint on her middle toe had chipped.

This was what he chose over Olivia? He needed his head examined.

Warm light bled through the doorway, and distant punk rock drifted from inside the house.

“If that’s all you wanted, I have a book to finish writing.”

Their eyes locked in a challenging standoff just as the song shifted to Joan Jett’s “Bad Reputation”.

She wasn’t going to ask him in, and he sure as fuck wasn’t begging.

Glancing back at the neglected garden where wildflowers erupted in a riot of directions and heights as an endless fuck you to order, he muttered under his breath, “You’re such a pain in my ass.”

“Yet you keep coming back.”

“Shut up.” He narrowed his eyes at her.

She smirked, as if she just scored a point on her imaginary bitch-o-meter. Pouting dramatically, she cocked her head. “What’s wrong, Lord Fancy-pants? Can’t the other girls make you come as hard as I do?”

“Fuck you.”

She laughed. “Make me.”

That was all the invitation he needed.

Lunging across the threshold, backing her into the house, he fisted that bird’s nest of hair piled on top of her head. “You like when I fucking make you,” he growled, crushing his mouth against hers and shutting her up the only way he knew how.