“You son of a bitch,” I say with a gasp. My hand flies out, but before it hits his cheek he grabs my wrist.
“You’re playin’ a dangerous game. You sure you’re ready to find out what happens when you keep pushin’ me, Leighton?”
“I hate you,” I fume, my anger building higher when I realize he’s just taken the upper hand I thought I had.
He bends, bringing the tip of his nose to mine. His words for my ears only. “You don’t. Would be better for you if you really did, but darlin’, you wouldn’t have come that close to comin’ just from a kiss if you hated me.” His voice drops impossibly lower, his next words just barely reaching my ears. “Tell me, would you have screamed my name?”
Oh, no, he did not. “I was not about to come!” I scream as fury pulses through me, only to snap my mouth shut when I hear the hushed whispers behind us.
My eyes widen when his lips, swollen from our kiss, twist up into a devastatingly wicked smile. He looks behind me before moving his mouth to my ear. “We’ll continue this another time,” he says before stomping through the crowd and out the front door.
For the life of me I can’t tell if it’s a threat . . . or a promise.
8
MAVERICK
“Let It Ride” by Brantley Gilbert
My lips burn as I rush into the muggy heat outside. It could be snowing and I still wouldn’t be able to shake the heat burning through me.
Grabbing my shirt, I roughly pull until the buttons give and I’m able to yank the soggy material from my body. I use the shirt to scrub what’s left of the pie from my face and neck and then toss the shirt into the bed of my truck. The climb up into my seat is painful when my jeans tighten even further against my straining cock.
What the fuck was I thinking back there? If I wanted to slide back into town without making a big deal out of my return, I just blew that all to hell. I can’t even explain what came over my body. One second I’m taking a pie to the face and in the next I’ve got so much desire for her slamming through me, I couldn’t not kiss her. It felt like we had been at the end of a long run of verbal foreplay with only one way to proceed.
Together.
“Fuck!” I shout and slam my hand against my steering wheel.
I grab my pack of smokes from the cup holder, but when I see it’s empty I crush it in my hand before throwing it on the floor and dropping my head back against the seat.
It was all so simple ten years ago. Cut all the ties to Pine Oak so that nothing and no one was waiting for me here, tempting me to return. I would always have my brother and sister, but they would come to me, and I knew deep down, they wouldn’t give up this damn town to chase me.
But Leighton would.
She thought I didn’t notice, but she did a shit job at hiding her crush on me. But I also knew that if anyone were likely to follow after me, it would be her. She would have given up everything for that. No matter how much I truly did want her back then, I knew I had to cut the ties that connected our hearts. I couldn’t ask her to choose between the life I was fleeing and the one I was running to. So I did the only thing that made sense to a desperate kid at the time. I made sure I hurt a young—too young—Leighton James so badly that she wouldn’t ever think of me the way I knew she had. I killed whatever she felt for me with words that I wish to God I could take back.
It took me a long damn time to realize that I had really hurt her to prevent her from being the one that hurt me. I knew it would happen. I had been fighting the way I felt about her for too fucking long. Lusting after a girl too young to be lusted after. She made me actually think about sticking around the one place I had been desperate to leave.
I craved her.
Hell, I craved her before I even knew what those feelings meant.
And that was long before she looked like the walking wet dream she is now. She looked good back then, but now . . . fuck. She took what I always thought was perfection and amped it up tenfold.
If I were a better man, I would have just said good-bye back then and left her without pain, but I learned way too early that if you let someone get close enough, they would strike you hard enough to draw blood. And I was done letting people get the first slice at my skin.
How many times had I lain in bed and imagined what it would be like to have her in my arms? How many times had I stroked myself dry with the thought of taking her body? How many times had I regretted leaving town without ever feeling her lips against my own?
And now that I’ve held her in my arms, felt the fire of her desire for me still burning deep, I’m not sure I could walk away this time if I tried. I know damn well if I would have let myself feel this years ago, I wouldn’t have left, and the worst part now is I’m not sure if everything I’ve been chasing—everything I’ve lost—is worth knowing what I’ve been missing.