Page 30 of Heated (Burned, Inc.)
Goddammit. Everything in me craves to be that guy.
I don’t move, struck motionless by her and my almost resigned need.
My feet moving before I grant them permission, I walk over to the landing, meeting her as she crests the top of the staircase.
For a moment, we stare at each other. I study each feature, separately and together. And those brown eyes take my inventory too. I haven’t cared too much in the past about whether a particular woman found me attractive; since I hit high school, it was just a fact. I’ve never had to work too hard for female attention. But her? Suddenly, I understand the lure of a beautiful predator. If Zora finds my face pretty, my body tempting, then I’ll unashamedly use them both to get what I want—her acquiescence.
Her,my greedy subconscious growls.
I ignore it. She’s not on the table.
Then for precious seconds I battle back the lascivious images of her spread out before me on a table, those gorgeous thighs caging my head, those slim, capable, demanding fingers gripping my hair, dragging me closer ...
Shit.
“Regret already?” I ask, smothering the vision in my head before it ignites into a conflagration. Tilting my head, I catch the flicker of emotion in her gaze before she lowers her lashes.
“Yes.”
The dark fringe lifts, and her unwavering stare is a switch, setting the roar inside me to a higher volume. My thighs clench, and if I wasn’t 110 percent sure she’d send me plummeting ass over head to the first floor, I’d shred every last one of the restraints binding my control and common sense to ribbons and crowd her against the railing behind her, grind my dick against the softness of her stomach, and show her just what that bald honesty does for me.
Honesty.
A shiver rips through me, and I fight like hell to restrain it. I move and excel in a world where deception and half truths are tools and necessities. I employ them myself. It’s business. In my life, honesty is a rarity. I didn’t know it in my childhood; my aunts and uncles saidwhatever they needed to get me for a check. I didn’t know it through college or law school. Everyone lies to get ahead, to get the next big client.
Truth is a turn-on. Whether it’s in a best friend or in the woman tipping her head back and staring at me with a wariness that bothers and arouses me.
“You buying, or are we leaving?”
“I came all the way to a bookstore. I’m not leaving empty handed.”
I nod. “Since I brought you out here, my treat.”
She scoffs. “Not hardly. Besides, my mother would lose her shit if she knew I allowed a stranger to buy me something. That’s just begging for quid pro quo.”
I shrug a shoulder. “She’s not wrong.”
Her mouth quirks into a half smile that strikes me as ... wrong. Not exactly dry but full of a twisted humor that packs not just a story but a whole novel behind it.
“She never is,” Zora murmurs.
Then, after turning, she heads back down the steps, preventing me from asking any more questions. As if it’s going to be that easy.
For the next twenty minutes, I follow her as she peruses the bookshelves and selects and pays for her title. She at least lets me pay for her coffee in the café—as long as she pays for mine. I huff out a laugh as we carry our drinks and purchases over to a small section of crimson upholstered theater-style chairs. The polite thing would be to allow a chair between us, but I’m not known for being polite. And I’m not beginning with her. As soon as she settles into the seat on the end, I sink into the middle one right next to her.
She doesn’t say anything as I set my bag on the floor between my ankles. Or when my knee presses against the outside of her jean-covered thigh. But I don’t miss the tension that draws her body straight, pulls her shoulders tight. The hand wrapped around my coffee cup itches to ease around those taut shoulders, slide under her hair, and cup thenape of her neck. My fingers flex around the brew-warmed cardboard, aching to knead the stiffness from her muscles, feel her loosen and relax under my touch.
That’s the problem, though, isn’t it?
I can’t tell if Zora wants that touch. She’s offered no signs that she does. Hell, she could be here out of guilt, out of pity.
Yeah, fuck, I don’t need her pity. Just the thought cools the flames licking at my skin. That’s the last thing I crave from her.
The only thing I need is her cooperation.
“You saw what I bought.” She nods toward the plastic bag with the store’s logo on the floor. “What did you get?”
“Harlan Coben’s newest release. I saw you bought Kimberly Belle. You read Coben too?”
