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“Eden?” He couldn’t explain the relief the one word gave him. She wasn’t with some other guy. She was here. Right here. The soft skin of her arms beneath his hands, her herbal scent filling his lungs, and her gold-flecked eyes staring up at him with… anger? The answer to the question came when she hauled off and slapped him hard across the face.
“It was you who sent someone to threaten me the other night, wasn’t it?” She spoke between gritted teeth. “You caught my slip about your little brother and figured out that I knew who you were and wanted to make sure I wouldn’t tell anyone.”
So Eden knew who he was and probably had known since he was stupid enough to show up at The Lemon Drop. But that news didn’t concern him as much as the other news.
His hands tightened on her arms. “Someone threatened you?”
“Don’t try to play stupid now. Why else would you be at my grandparents’ house?” She grabbed the front of his shirt in her fist and pulled him closer. “And if you think you can gain my silence by using my Mimi and Pops, you can think again, Nash.”
It was a mixture of things that caused Nash to short-circuit. The fact that someone had threatened her. The way his name sounded coming from her lips. The feel of her knuckles pressed into the center of his chest. And the brush of her hips against the hard-on he’d been fighting all day. Unable to fight against his desires anymore, he did what he’d wanted to do ever since she strutted into his hotel suite and offered him a slow burn.
Nash kissed her.
CHAPTER NINE
It was hard to think when being consumed by the big, bad wolf. And Nash Beaumont was the big, bad wolf. Not only was he a master of seduction and manipulation, he was a stalker. Something she had figured out after spending the entire day stalking him. And she might be able to overlook him stalking her at work, but he was not going to get away with harming her grandma. No matter how hungry his wolfy lips, or how nippy his wolfy teeth, or how salaciously hot his wolfy tongue felt against hers.
And she was going to pull back from his kiss and tell him just that… any second now.
He didn’t kiss gently. He devoured her as his hands gripped her butt cheeks, pulling her against the thick, hard ridge beneath his fly. At the feel of his erection, a moan escaped from a place deep down inside her—a mating call that sounded both aggressive and needy. Nash answered the call by moving her out of the opened doorway and pinning her against the back door of the Volvo with his hips.
“I want you.” He muttered the words while still kissing her. “Now.”
Eden didn’t quite understand what the wordnowactually meant until she heard the zing of a zipper, followed by her sweatpants being tugged down.
She ended the kiss and grabbed them before they dropped to her feet. “Are you crazy? We can’t have sex in the middle of the street.”
Nash stared at her, then glanced around, as if noticing where they were for the first time, before he stepped away and got mean.
“What the hell are you doing to me?” He zipped his pants.
“Me? I wasn’t the one who pinned you against a car.”
“No. You were just the one who followed me home, asking for it.”
“Asking for it? I did not ask for it. And you should talk, Mr. Stalker Man. What were you doing at The Lemon—?” She paused. “Followed you home? You live here?”
About then, a blinding light flashed in her eyes. She squinted and wasn’t surprised when her grandfather yelled down from the top balcony of his house. “Eden? Is that you?” The light moved to Nash, who had turned at her grandfather’s voice. “Nathan?”
“Not Nathan, Hammond,” her grandmother scolded. “How many times do I have to tell you that the nice young boys who live next door are Nash and Grayson?”
Eden looked at Nash. “You live next to my grandparents?”
“Shit” was Nash’s only reply before her grandfather continued.
“Well, I don’t know how nice that one is. From what I could tell, he was trying to get into our granddaughter’s pants.”
Eden was mortified, and she actually thought about hopping in her car and driving off. But before she could, Nash grabbed her hand and spoke between his teeth. “Don’t you even think about leaving me to deal with this alone.” He slammed her car door so hard that the entire frame shook, and then pulled her across the street and up the steps to her grandparents’ front door.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Being respectful.” In the brightness of the porch light, Nash didn’t look happy. But he did look hot. The photos on the web didn’t come close to depicting how good-looking he was. He had a raw, rugged beauty that was all hard angles and lean muscles. Some of those muscles flexed beneath his suit jacket as he reached out to ring the doorbell.
While they waited for the door to be answered, he turned to study her like she had been studying him. In her sweats with no makeup, a scraggly ponytail, and the ugly floral scarf she’d tied around her neck to hide the bruises from the attempted strangling, she wasn’t at her best. Still, she met his gaze head-on and tried not to get lost in the indigo depths of his eyes. They stared at one another for a second… or possibly an eternity before his gaze lowered to her lips. Was he going to kiss her again? God, she certainly hoped so. That hope fizzled when he spoke.
“I never should’ve kissed you.”
Eden’s anger returned. “Well, don’t worry. It won’t happen—”
