Other than Rico and her relatives, this was the first male phone number she’d had saved on her phone. She nudged it to look at the screen and scrolled to find his name. The picture she’d taken of him on his Harley popped up. She smiled.
“Don’t get any ideas, Pixie,” he said softly.
She glanced up to find him staring at her lips, and then into her eyes. “I’m not,” she lied. Leaning close, she hesitated a fraction from his mouth. When he didn’t stop her, she closed her eyes and pressed her lips to his. This time, she brushed hers against his. At his soft moan, she deepened the kiss, her tongue finding his in a wildly erotic dance. A smoldering blaze licked along her nerve endings.
Lost in the drugging way he kissed her back, she didn’t realize the exact moment when he’d lifted his hands to cup the back of her head or when he trailed his thumb along her jaw. His hands were big and slightly callused. Rough, yet holding tenderness. Just like the man himself, she realized.
He broke the embrace, and then pressed his forehead against hers. His breath came in short, quick pants.
Priscilla shifted, pressing her lips against his forehead, along the scruff of his cheek, and then to his jaw and chin.
“You’re playing with fire,” he warned.
“Does that mean I’m going to get burned?” She feathered kisses on his lips, loving the taste of him, teasing him, and then along his cheek.
“Absolutely.”
His hard, terse answer brought her up short. She pulled away, gazing into his smoky gray eyes lit with an intense, breathtaking blaze. She gasped at the searing heat. “And you? Will you get burned, too?”
“I already have.”
She swallowed hard. “How so?”
“I’ve been branded. By a very hot, very sexy Pixie.”
***
Griffin sipped his black roasted coffee as he watched her roam through his house, taking pictures and measurements. How could she stir his senses like that? How could she make him forget everything he worked for, especially his mission?
When he opened the door to her, she’d taken his breath away. Her wind-tousled strawberry blonde hair reminded him of her lying by his fire the other night. The skinny jeans she wore molded to her shapely legs. The buttoned-down silky green blouse with the low slung belt around her hips outlined her curves. After kicking off her ankle boots, she padded across his wooden floors as if she belonged there.
Turning to him now, she pointed upstairs.
“No,” he bit out.
Her weak smile came and went. “Good idea.”
“At last, we agree on something.”
“Tempting fate?”
He chuckled. It came out strangled. “You believe in fate?”
She shrugged, going to her notepad and scribbling more notes across a page. “I suppose I do. Fairy tales and fate.”
“Hopes and dreams?” He sounded cynical, even to his own ears.
“What do you have if you don’t have dreams, right?”
When he failed to reply, she glanced up at him. Something inside him shifted. No, she was not getting to him. He wouldn’t allow her to come between him and his revenge.
“Nothing, Griff? You don’t want something so bad that you think about it day and night, that keeps you going even through all the sad things, that you ache for it to happen because then you will feel something so wonderful, so joyous that it means you did something that matters? That you mattered?” Tears glistened in her eyes.
His heart jolted. She’d touched that spot in him that he kept sheltered and hidden.
She brushed the tears away quickly. “Sorry. My mother calls dreams foolish and a waste of time.” Priscilla gathered her things.
He went to her, and then knelt to help her with her scattered paperwork. Her hand brushed his. A jolt of electricity surged from his hand and up his arm. They both stilled. Looking into her big, green eyes, he felt the air rush out of him. “Once, I did dream.” Now, all he had was revenge to hold onto.
“What happened?”
“Someone stole it.” She had no idea it was her mother.
“Can’t you get it back?”
“I’m trying.” Only when I take Agnes King down, he vowed. Only when he could restore his father’s reputation. But what would that do to Priscilla? He shouldn’t care. But he did.
Chapter 8
Early Monday morning, Priscilla stood shoulder to shoulder with Rico on one side and Evelyn, the wedding boutique assistant, on her other side. In the crowd of King’s employees, she waited along with them for the big announcement.
Of course, she already knew. And as a part of the King family, she and Francie had been in the managers’ meeting an hour ago as Charlie and Marcus broke the news and introduced Griffin as the new head of King’s.