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Riley’s mouth went dry, and she reached for her water glass, wondering just how inappropriate it would be to dump it over her head in an effort to keep from jumping his bones in public.
His tone had been flippant, but the mental image he’d created had all of her nerves tingling.
This wasn’t going according to plan. She was supposed to have a couple of casual buddy-buddy beers with him and the rest of the gang and then head home with nothing more than a cuff on the shoulder and a “thanks for the favor.”
Instead she’d left with him. Alone.
She hadn’t checked her phone since they’d left the Irish pub, because she knew what she’d find there. A slew of text messages from her friends, ranging from pep talk to lecture.
Julie: Go get some already.
Grace: The tiger stalks her prey—go get him. PS: I know you’re new at this, but you know not to forget the condom. Right?
Emma: Code Red! This was not the plan …
And it was Emma’s text that she was dreading the most because she knew that out of the four of them, Emma was the most rational about this kind of thing. Once upon a time, that dubious honor had gone to Grace, but then Grace had gone and snared a jet-setting ladies’ man, and her loins and brain had turned to sex-addled mush.
A transition that had Riley simmering with jealousy.
She wanted that kind of hormone-driven awareness. Wanted the glow of morning sex and the soreness of rough sex and the soul satisfaction of meaningful sex.
All of which she was pretty sure were simmering just beneath the surface of the man next to her.
The question was how to get beneath the layers of resistance. And God knew she wasn’t up for another rejection.
“I should go,” she said quietly.
“Wisely avoiding my bait, I see,” he teased.
She rolled her eyes and slid off the stool as she fished some cash out of her wallet. “Puhlease,” she said. “Even if I wanted to bite, we’d both know the ‘bait’ would get snatched back at the last moment. You talk a good game, but—”
His fingers wrapped around her wrist, and for a second she thought he was going to acknowledge what was between them. But when her eyes flew to his, he merely nodded in the direction of the money in her hand as he pulled out his own wallet. “Put that away. I’ve got this.”
She shrugged, knowing Sam well enough to see that it wasn’t up for debate. She put her wallet away.
“Walk me to the subway?” she asked, not quite ready to see the evening end.
He pulled out several bills and gave a wave at his friend, who was at the end of the almost-empty bar flirting with a pixie-cut blonde. “What would Liam do?”
Like any overprotective big brother, Liam would have marched her all the way to her front door while giving a complimentary lecture on how loose-fitting clothes were all the rage and was she sure she didn’t want to become a nun?
But Riley wasn’t at all sure she wanted Sam to walk her to her front door. Not when her brain was all addled with whisky, and the high of winning the game, and the intoxicating awareness of a man who was supposed to be off-limits.
“Ehhhh—”
“Exactly,” he said, knowing Liam as well as she did. “If I’m relegated to a brotherly role, this will be a door-to-door excursion, McKenna. I won’t be able to look your mother in the face at dinner next week if I let you get wooed by some creep on the subway.”
“Yeah, because the New York subway system is where all women search for eligible men. And while you and my mother are having this little chat, are you going to mention you were the last creep to woo me?”
He glanced down at her as he held the bar door for her. “Wooed, huh? What happened to that oh-we’re-all-wrong-for-each-other-and-it-was-awkward-and-icky talk?”
Riley shivered a little feeling the unexpected chill in the air and didn’t object when he slid the jacket he’d been carrying over her shoulders. It smelled like leather and soap and Sam.
Riley thought about her response as she let him hail a cab, noting how different it was from her last date, in which her companion had cowered under an awning while she’d stood in the rain.
“Let’s just say I had a moment of weakness,” she said as he held open the taxi door for her. “I thought you were more than merely tolerable to look at.”
He slid into the cab next to her. For a second Riley considered sitting in the middle of the seat just to feel him against her, but she didn’t want to risk putting him on edge. Not when he seemed relaxed around her for the first time in weeks. Actually, make that years. Hell, had they ever been relaxed around each other? Truly?
