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Was he?
The voices around him dimmed, fading into a buzz of white noise as Rory strolled into the shop, looking as lovely as a beam of captured sunlight. She glanced around, not seeing them in the room in the back. “Hello?” she called.
“Hello to you too,” Shep murmured, lurching to his feet while Billy threw down his napkin and laughed.
“Hang on,” Sam said, rising. “I’ve got her.”
Both Billy and Shep glanced his way. “Aha,” Billy muttered, jerking his chin as if to say told you so.
Sam didn’t respond. He walked out to Rory, each footstep echoing on the concrete floor. She wore slacks and a fluffy pale-pink sweater that curled up around her face. Her eyes widened as he approached, almost as if she hadn’t expected to find him. Or maybe the same stab of heat he felt was now thrusting through her belly too.
He’d used the wrong word. Longing didn’t come close. This was why seeing each other in person was so dangerous. One look, one gulp of her with his starved eyes, and she filled so many of the hollows he’d carried for so many months. If he let her, she’d fill the rest. He could be that greedy. Just take, take, take. Why should he have to give when he’d waited so long?
But then her gloss-slickened lips parted and the jolt of need spread, turning into a warmth that didn’t merely singe. The memory of her sexy laugh
ter exploded in his mind. Air bubbles from champagne. A poem only she knew the words to.
She was whole and real, not someone he held in his mind and heart but whom he couldn’t touch. God, she was so alive.
“Rory,” he managed, lifting his hands to frame her flushed cheeks. Her startled gasp became a moan that flowed between his lips when their mouths fused. She opened for him at once, her dark lashes falling down to hide her eyes. It didn’t matter. He tasted what she felt when her tongue tentatively curled around his.
Excitement. Anticipation. Fear. And above them all, strawberry lip gloss, sweet and sticky.
Somehow getting stuck didn’t seem nearly so scary anymore.
He didn’t settle for her hesitant exploration. Couldn’t. He pushed his hands into her hair, holding her head back so he could plunge the way the ferocious need inside him demanded. She reached up to grip his shirt and held on, swaying against him. Grinding her soft curves over where he was so hard.
She responded as if she’d been waiting for his mouth, angling open for him to do exactly as he wished. Her moans of encouragement drew him down deeper, offering him the permission he hadn’t realized he still needed.
He dropped his arms to her waist, as much for support as to crush her closer. At the meeting of their bodies, the gears in his head shut off. Everything chugged to a halt.
Control…he’d had it once. Not anymore. Not with her.
She shifted her head to breathe and he dragged her right back, sucking her swollen lower lip between his teeth roughly enough that he tasted blood. Then and only then did the fever riding his back begin to subside.
When he finally looked down at her, her gray eyes were huge and hazed with pleasure. His breath whistled through his teeth at the sight—Christ, at the feeling—of her body clinging to his from her breasts to her thighs. Her small fists were still lodged around his shirt.
As petite as she was, she didn’t feel tiny in his arms. On the contrary. She was big enough to take him out with a single blow.
“Weren’t lying about the longing,” she whispered. “There’s a tree trunk against my belly.”
For a moment he stared at her. Then her composure cracked with a giggle and a quick thump against his chest. He laughed, pulling her with him as he turned toward the guys who’d come out of the back room.
“This is Rory,” he said, using her as a human shield for the “tree trunk” he wasn’t about to show off. “Rory, this is Shep, my part-time clerk. And—”
“Billy, the man with the mohawk.” She gave a little wave and curled tighter against Sam’s chest. Not exactly the best move to chop down that wood but he appreciated her attempt to hide it.
“Nice to meet you, Rory,” Shep said when Billy didn’t reply.
“You too.” She glanced at Billy, who was clearly sizing her up. “Did someone forget to tell me there was a quiz?” she asked sweetly. “Since you seem like you’re looking for answers.”
“You’re a smart-ass.”
She shrugged. “Guilty as charged.”
“Then I think we’ll get along just fine.” Billy gave her his trademark half-grin and held up his hand, offering Sam a very obvious thumbs-up behind his spread fingers. Sam rolled his eyes but he didn’t miss how the thread of tension in Rory’s body disappeared.
She disguised her nerves so well that touching her was the only way he knew for sure what she was feeling. A hardship he was more than willing to shoulder.
