Dirty Score, A Rough Riders Hockey Novel(15)

He didn’t understand how she could make such a simple outfit look so hot, he wanted to strip her to the skin. Like, now. “That is one amazing little black dress.”

She smiled, but her dimples didn’t show, and her grin didn’t reach her eyes. “It’s not a little black dress. It’s a get laid dress.” She pulled a card from her billfold. “And I agree, it has been quite a night. In fact, it’s been quite a month, hell, quite a year. For me, anyway. Hopefully, it’s all about to get better.”

“I should let you go, then.” He forced the words out, trying to wipe the idea of Mia with another guy from his mind. “I’m sure there are a dozen guys who’ll take you up on that, and they’d all be better alternatives to Kilbourne.”

Rafe glanced toward the bar. He needed alcohol. Large quantities. Right now. But he’d have to find it somewhere else, because no amount of liquor would erase the sight of Mia picking up another guy. She’d never been a pickup type of girl. Sure she’d had a ton of boyfriends, men Rafe had occasionally met when she’d brought them into town—and God, talk about twisting the knife, every meeting had dug into Rafe like a talon—but she’d never been known to do the one-night-stand thing.

Rafe didn’t know which was worse to imagine—Mia giving her heart and her body to a boyfriend, or Mia giving her body to a stranger.

His guts were a turbulent mess. He needed to get out of here. Away from her. “I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to Top Shelf tonight. Maybe—”

“You had a sure fuck waiting,” she said, cutting off his offer to get together another day. She returned her wallet to her purse and met his gaze. “I get it. Priorities.”

A raw stab of guilt hit. And yeah, even shame. But he knew Tate would never have repeated locker room talk. “Where’d you hear that?”

“I was at a bar with a dozen drunk Rough Riders. Where do you think I heard it?” Attitude snuck into her voice. “Secrets are not bragged about in a locker room. You should have learned that when you got busted for shoplifting at ten, screwing Tina Jenkins under the bleachers at the homecoming football game at fourteen, landing your first threesome with members of the dance team at sixteen—”

“Stop.” He issued the command a little too harshly, but he didn’t need her bringing up every last indiscretion from his life right now—most of which had been his way of pushing Mia from his mind. A few other people in the lobby cut looks of concern at them. He lowered his voice and asked, “What’s going on with you?”

“Me? Oh, well, that’s a really long conversation.” Her eyes roamed his body in one hungry glance—the way other women looked at him, not Mia. And she started toward him in a slow, fluid stroll. Her dress ebbed and flowed over all her curves, making Rafe’s mouth go dry. Making his palms sweat. And when she kept closing the distance, Rafe lifted a hand to stop her before she was pressed against his body, but she was still way too close.

She tipped her head back and met his gaze directly. Her warm, delicious scent made a deep hunger roll through his body. A repeat of the ravenous streak that engulfed him when she’d pressed her lips to that hot spot behind his ear. His brain hazed at the edges. Thick desire collected low in his gut.

“And talking,” she said, her voice soft and sultry, “is the last thing on my mind.”

“What’s going on, Mia?”

Her hands pressed against his abdomen, and the contact shocked Rafe, shooting electric awareness across his skin. Then her hands moved up his chest, tightening the skin all along his torso and spreading heat deep into his body.

“I’m collecting a debt.” She reached out and tapped the Up button on an elevator. “That’s what’s going on.”

He cut a confused look at the glowing button, then narrowed his eyes on her. “Are you drunk?”

That made her laugh. “Oh no. I want every moment of tonight crystal clear in my memory.”

The elevator doors opened.

“What are you doing?” Rafe asked.

“Going up to my room.”

He felt like his brain was in a game of Pong. “I thought you were staying with Tate.”

“Not tonight.”

She stepped back, and Rafe was caught between holding on to her and letting her go. He wasn’t ready for her to disappear. But he knew by the uncontrollable gnawing ache swamping him from shoulders to toes, he wasn’t ready to dive back into a friendship with her again either.

Mia fisted a hand in his shirt and pulled him toward the elevator.

His brain flipped to full-scale alert, and his body put on the brakes. “Whoa.” The farther he stayed away from any private spaces with her, the better. “I’m not going upstairs.”