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“At the Wake.”
“I’m not a Cliff Bunny.”
“I call bullshit.”
“You think you have me pegged.”
“One hundred percent. I know you like what you see.”
She tapped her foot, mulling over his words. How was she to deny that? It was true.
An older man, wearing a black vest over a faded brown tee, knocked on far end of the counter. “Can we get some beers, brother?”
Julia studied his long gray beard, the patches displayed on every surface of the vest, and the colorful tats while trying to come up with some retort and failing.
“Coming your way, Jolly,” the bartender said. He glanced back at Julia before heading toward that end of the bar and winked. “I’ll be off about eleven-thirty. I’ll see you then, Julia.”
ChapterTwo
Tarik rounded the back corner of the Wake farthest from the parking lot, eager to fulfill his earlier promise. He slowed to a stop. Julia waited in the pale wash of moonlight, on her damned phone.
He clenched his jaw, then worked it loose when realizing he had no right to be annoyed. They were complete strangers who were hooking up. Back here, they could fuck among the privacy of the giant oaks, if she was alright with that. If she was loud, well, that was on her.
He studied the woman whose bold inspection had given him a hard-on earlier while working the outdoor bar. She was beautiful—stunningly so. The dark brown eyes he had noticed when making her drink were animated, windows to her thoughts. He liked that. Reading women could be a pain in the ass; he had a trail of mistakes littered throughout his forty-two, coming up on forty-three years.
The body-skimming gray tank highlighted toned arms and a nice rack, and the baggy, torn jeans didn’t detract from her toned body. It was obvious that a sweet ass was hidden from his hungry hands and eyes. That dark thick hair of hers was pulled up into a messy something, exposing an elegant neck. Yeah, he had noticed it all. How could he not? He rolled his lips in anticipation of sampling the taste of her.
He chuckled softly to himself. If her intention had been to fit in at the Wake tonight, it was an epic failure; she had arrived with the confidence born of the Cliffs’ silver spoon.
She was animated now. Angry. Clipped speech carried his way. Her left hand fisted and opened repeatedly, as if she wanted to punch something. He wasn’t close enough to overhear.
Twigs cracked under his boots as he renewed his approach.
Her eyes snapped to his.
Julia said goodbye to whoever she had been talking to and flashed him a smile. “Hey.”
“Hey, yourself.” He glanced at the phone then back at her. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, just a little hiccup. The friends I came with want to leave.” Her eyes held his as she slid the phone into the hip pocket.
He reached for her hand, not missing how those shapely breasts pebbled under her clinging tank.
“How much time do we have?”
“I negotiated thirty minutes,” Julia said, tucking her phone against her hip and in her pocket.
Thirty minutes. Not much, yet he sensed those minutes were going to be more than a hookup. The beginning of an addiction.
“My friends are ready to go home, so I set my timer.” She added. “They’re pretty pissed.”
“I don’t appreciate being timed. You and me? We’re organic.”
She accessed her phone, canceled the timer, and eased it back into her pocket.
Laughter escaped him. “You brave thing. They know what you’re up to?”
“Well, I told them I met a guy and we were having a nice discussion.”
