Page 11 of Spark

She blinked up at him.

“I did something, didn’t I, to make you take off like that?”

She snapped out of it. “No. I promise, Dex. It wasn’t anything you did. I just thought everything was just so—” She cleared her throat. “I thought it was for the best.”

“Yeah?” Dex bit out. Why? Why was it for the best?

Ever since she took off, he’d been worried out of his mind. He’d also thought a lot of other things, like she’d seen the size of his dick and freaked, or he did a crappy job of eating her pussy and she’d had to fake her orgasm. It hadn’t felt fake. It sure as hell hadn’t sounded fake, but then what the fuck would he know? Maybe she was just a really good actor?

She nodded.

That was it? All he was going to get? Jesus, he had definitely scared her. That had to be it. What else could it have been? He cleared his throat and tried to gentle his voice when he spoke again. “You okay with me driving you? If you feel unsafe or whatever, I’ll get someone else to pick you up.”

Her hands shot out, the fingers of both curling around his forearm, and she shook her head. “God, no. Please believe me: you didn’t scare me, Dex. It was nothing like that.”

Okay, now he believed her. It was there in her eyes. Relief flooded him. The alternative, of course, was he’d done a shitty job of eating her pussy. Awesome.

His ego had already been beaten bloody when he lost his girlfriend to his brother. Now this, although he guessed that explained a few things. Chloe had probably wanted a man who knew how to get her off, since he was obviously rubbish in the sack.

Merry fucking Christmas to me.

Dex bit back a curse, because despite that realization, electricity was zapping through him where she touched him.

He carefully extracted himself from her hold and picked up her bags instead of saying anything more. What was the point? He’d felt like shit the last couple of weeks because he’d been half hard ever since he had his mouth on her and pissed at himself for whatever he’d done to scare her away.

Turned out she hadn’t been afraid; she just didn’t want his incompetent ass slobbering all over her.

Cool. Now he knew.

He headed down the stairs, with Hattie right behind him. She followed him silently out onto the street, and they climbed into his truck.

She started fidgeting beside him after they’d been driving for several minutes.

He glanced over at her and clenched his teeth. Fuck, she was beautiful.

“Umm, I guess we should keep what happened between us to ourselves?” she said into the silence.

Dex grunted. As if today wasn’t going to be awkward enough already. Now he had to spend hours in the same house as the woman he’d taken home and disappointed. A woman he wanted more of to the point of distraction, even after she’d ditched him, while celebrating Christmas with his family that he really didn’t know all that well—possibly with a hard-on.

He glanced at Hattie again and bit back another curse. Yep, with a hard-on.

The drive to Hugh and Shay’s house took forever. It was also quiet to the point of awkwardness.

As soon as Dex pulled up outside Hugh and Shay’s house—that was covered in lights, had a herd of fucking reindeer on the front yard and a giant Santa on the roof—Hattie all but fell out of his truck and rushed for the front door.

Another spectacular boost to his ego.

Adjusting his dick so he didn’t look like he had the Yule log down the front of his jeans, he climbed out and lumbered toward the front door at a much slower pace.

It opened as he took the steps, and Shay, Hugh’s wife, stood there with a wide welcoming smile on her face and a toddler on her hip. Hugh came up behind her. His cousin was wearing what looked like a hand-knitted red sweater with a green Christmas tree on the front, and he had one kid on his shoulders and a smaller one in his arms.

They greeted Hattie warmly, and she smiled widely and hugged them both. Then she was inside and out of his line of sight. Shay hugged Dex, and Hugh gave him a chin lift since his hands were full, and Dex headed inside as well.

The smell of turkey and spices and pine hit him as soon as he walked in. The place was fully decked out even more than outside, covered in decorations, with mountains of presents under the tree and Christmas music playing in the background.

Joe, Hugh’s younger brother and the middle child of this branch of Coltons, walked out of the kitchen and grinned when he saw Dex. “Didn’t think you’d show. Bet Adam twenty bucks you’d chicken out and stay home.”

Dex shook his head at his smart-assed cousin and looked beyond him, trying to see where Hattie had gone.