Draco’s ebony brows twitched into a line above his masterful nose as he slid the phone back into his pocket without looking at it. He was trying not to see the visible tremors that shook her slender frame under the double-breasted jacket that looked at least two sizes too big for her.
‘Get in!’ he snapped, fighting off an irrational surge of tenderness; combined with the lust that still circulated hotly through his veins, it made for a contradictory and uncomfortable mix. It was a massive mistake to equate small and delicate with vulnerable or in need of protection—she was as tough as nails.
Or she’d like the world to think she was.
Ignoring the mental addition, he added with silky sarcasm, ‘Unless you would prefer to walk? Or possibly wait for a serial killer? They do say that they come along in twos, or is that buses?’
Her scornful glance swept upwards from his polished toes but she only made it as far as his waist and stalled. At some point, like her, Draco had changed. The dark jeans he now wore fitted just as perfectly as the tailored trousers of his morning suit, though the cut of the denim emphasised his lean hips and the muscularity of his thighs.
Swallowing past the sudden aching occlusion in her throat, she wrenched her eyes clear, gave a scornful snort and angrily retorted, ‘You’ve never caught a bus in your life!’ She stopped, frowning darkly as her accusation drew a startled laugh from him. ‘And statistically speaking—’
The pistol-shot snap of Draco’s long fingers made Eve jump and indicated his opinion of statistics and his diminishing patience levels. She was glad of the interruption as it was hard to focus on statistics when she was thinking how it felt to be plastered up close against those iron-hard thighs, feeling the shocking imprint of a rock-hard arousal on her belly.
He gave a sigh, intoning wearily, ‘Get in, Eve. I’ve better things to do than stand here arguing the toss.’
Eve, who had been swaying slightly, blinked hard. She knew about red mists but the one that floated in her brain clouding good sense was darker and it had warmth and depth and— No, don’t wrap it up, Eve, she told herself impatiently. It’s just lust; get over yourself. So the man knows how to kiss?
‘Thank you, but I’ve said if you could—’
He raised an ironic brow and she stopped, catching her full upper lip between her white teeth as she gave a sigh and surrendered, if not to the dark mist, then to the practicalities of her situation. So she accepted a lift from him—what was the worst that could happen?
She brushed a strand of curling chestnut hair from her eyes. The only thing she’d achieved when she’d looked in the engine earlier had been a bang on the head, which had shaken half her hair loose. Of course it had gone into frizz mode immediately. Her eyes went to his dark head. After they’d kissed his hair had been sexily ruffled. Now it was smooth and sleek and yet it was still sexy.
‘That’s very kind of you—’ Her eyes connected with his and she stopped speaking, her heart beating hard and fast. There was nothing that could be even loosely termed as kind in his eyes right now; the feral glow made her insides dissolve.
She sounded like a prim schoolmistress and she looked— His eyes slid of their own volition to the full curve of her cushiony lips, and he groaned silently. He recalled how she kissed like a sex-starved angel, and gritted his teeth against the ache in his groin that packed the kick of a mule.
‘I’m not kind.’
Eve gave her head a tiny shake, causing a curling tendril to attach itself to her mouth, and she detached the strands with an impatient frown.