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“Yeah. Ah,” she said.
He nodded his head toward the kitchen. “I need a beer.”
It wasn’t exactly an invitation, but neither had he told her to get the hell out, so Jordan followed him into the kitchen.
Her nose was right on. There was a pan of lasagna sitting on the stove, a healthy portion gone.
“Homemade?” she asked.
He pulled two beers out of the fridge, popped the caps off both, and offered her one without asking.
She accepted it though she didn’t really want it.
“It’s one of the few things I can make, though I admit this is my first time attempting a vegetarian version,” he said, gesturing his bottle at the pan before taking a sip. “Hungry?”
Her lips parted; her heart beat faster. “You made vegetarian lasagna. You didn’t even know I’d be coming by.”
He grinned. “How’d you know it was for you?”
Again she was feeling a little off-balance. Men might cook to get laid, but they didn’t go out of their way to cater to specific food preferences unless they cared about a woman. Hoped she might stop by…
Did they?
She swallowed, her thumbnail playing with the label of the beer bottle, trying to remember why she’d come here in the first place.
She wanted answers, even though she knew she wasn’t owed them. Not really. She and Luke weren’t lovers. They were barely even friends. It was just…
“You could have told me, you know. It would have gotten me off your back.”
Luke went very still, then set his beer on the counter. “Let me see if I’m hearing you right,” he said quietly, coming toward her with slow, angry purpose. “You think that I’d sell out the secrets of two women I cared about—was going to marry—to get some ambitious city slicker off my back?”
She put her own bottle down with a thump. “No. I just meant—”
“That I’m not worth your time unless I’m a complete jackass,” he said, still moving toward her.
“Would you stop putting words in my mouth!” she shouted, temper snapping at the way she’d gone from feeling like the wronged party to feeling like she was on the defensive—at the realization that he might be right.
“Sucks, doesn’t it?” he said, his voice cool even as his eyes blazed anger. “Having someone assume the worst of you without giving you even the slightest chance to defend yourself.”
“Okay, that’s too far,” she said quietly. “I may have made assumptions, but don’t even try to pretend that you haven’t had plenty of chances to set the record straight. You want to get really pissed at someone? Get pissed at yourself, because you could have avoided all this by replying to my very first email, letting me know not to bother. Then you’d never have met me. Just what you want, right?”
Luke’s jaw worked as he stared at her hard. The room seemed to go deathly quiet—Winston’s relentless barks, the cat’s irritated meow, the soft prattle of the television falling away altogether until it was only him and her, with nothing but the sound of their breathing, the tension of their want.
“No,” he said finally, as he reached for her. “That’s not what I fucking want.”
Jordan went into his embrace without a moment’s hesitation, her arms twining around his neck as one of his arms cupped her head, the other wrapping low on her waist, tugging her flush against him.
The kiss was both angry and inevitable, equal parts greedy and generous. Jordan’s nails clung, her body arching into his in a restless hunger she didn’t recognize.
She’d had her fair share of boyfriends, had a handful more of casual hookups, but though she’d hardly thought of herself as frigid, this thing with Luke was new. It was dangerous, and wonderful, and all-consuming.
Jordan wanted more. She wanted all of him, consequences be damned. And there would be consequences for sleeping with someone she was supposed to be recruiting.
She shoved the thought aside at the same moment she dropped her hands to his waist, slipping fingers beneath his T-shirt.
They both gasped as her fingers collided with the warm skin of his back, and Luke’s fingers tangled in her hair, tugging her head to the side so he could drag his lips and tongue over the column of her neck in torturous kisses.
Jordan gave it right back, nails scratching lightly along his spine as she tilted her hips against his in unmistakable invitation.
