“Whatever?” His disbelieving chuckle grates on my nerves. “Has anyone ever told you that your temper is out of control?”
I spin around, fire in my veins and fury in my voice. “No, it’s not,” I grit out as I stare at him. The moonlight is at his back, the stark white of his dress shirt highlighted right along with the lipstick, and his green eyes search mine. “Out of control is a man who has spent the better part of the last two days trying to get me to admit that I want to have sex with him. He’s teased me. He’s turned me on time and again. He’s frustrated and aroused me. And when I don’t bite, when I don’t give in and sleep with him right away because God forbid he needs to understand that I’m not another one of his playthings he can toy with . . . he goes out and finds someone else who will.”
His expression morphs through a range of emotions: confusion, anger, misunderstanding.
“What the fuck are you talking about, Harlow?”
“That lipstick doesn’t really seem to be your color.” I lift my eyebrows, then I turn on my heel and stalk toward the coach.
“Lipstick?” He asks through a laugh that has me clenching my fists as I reach the door. “Christ, Harlow.”
“Leave me alone.” I fumble with my key in the lock and yelp when his hand is on my bicep, turning me around.
“I didn’t do shit. Kostas tried to distract me to prove that he should get a shake at you.”
“Nice try.”
“It’s the truth.”
“Says every man who—” Thank God I stop myself from saying the word. Cheats. I fall silent as I try to rein in my own thought process while trying to make sense of it. So I fight against him. Out of confusion. Out of frustration for my own feelings betraying me. Out of hating the fact that I’m actually in like with Zane and it’s more than just the incredible sex. “Says every man who’s trying to play the field.”
“Will you just listen to me?” His hand tightens on my arm. “We went to a jazz lounge. Kostas brought three women up to the booth and—”
“Save it, Zane.” We glare at each other under the muted light of the parking lot lights. Images that flash through my mind make my stomach churn. “I don’t need to know what happened or that there’s lipstick elsewhere on you.” The smile I give him is anything but friendly. “You’re exactly who I pegged you to be. Shame on me for being fooled otherwise.”
“You’re infuriating.”
“Good. It goes both ways then.”
“You want to know the worst part?”
“Pretty sure I don’t.” I try to yank my arm from his grip but he just steps in so that my back is to the coach and he’s in front of me.
“It’s that the whole time I was with Kostas, each time the chick tried to run her finger up my thigh or kiss my cheek . . .” He pauses and that muscle in his jaw tics as he grits his teeth and stares at me. “All I could think about was you.”
The woman in me who wants to believe, sags internally in relief. The woman in me who’s been hurt by his type and doesn’t want to be upset again stands taller.
“Convenient explanation.”
“Christ woman, will you stop being so goddamn stubborn?” He runs his free hand through his hair. “I’ve tried giving you your space. I’ve tried letting you figure out for yourself if you’re coming back to this and want to make another mistake with me. But I’m sick of waiting, Harlow.”
When his lips crash to mine, my back pressed to the cold steel of the coach, I resist him. My hands are on his chest pushing him away and I’m sparring with him in the form of angry kisses on soft lips.
His hand fists in my hair as he takes complete control despite my resistance.
And just when I begin to relent to the heat of his mouth and the frustration in his touch and the desire reverberating between us like it’s the third person in the space, he rips his lips from mine. But he doesn’t move far. His breath feathers over my lips, his breathing ragged, his eyes boring into mine.
“I didn’t kiss her because all I could think about was kissing you. Don’t you get that? All I wanted was to have you again.”
We stare at each other as his words sink in.
One.
By.
One.
All I wanted was to have you again.
My hand turns from being flat against his chest to fisting in his shirt and pulling him down to me.
“This is just sex,” I whisper as a reminder to myself and to him to keep emotions out of it. The emotions that on my part are slowly creeping in when they have no place here.
“Just sex,” he murmurs back, amusement in his voice. But when his lips meet mine and every hard inch of his body brushes up against mine, all thoughts are lost.
Want. Need. Now. Please.
Those are the four words that keep circling through my head as Zane treats my lips with a sweet reverence laced with riotous desire.
“Inside.”
“Inside,” I repeat his words as he opens the door to our right and I walk up them backwards so as not to have to break the kiss.