“I haven’t the foggiest,” she answered through lips suddenly tight with tension, her normally glowing face pale with an unease that he longed to wipe away, replacing it with something so much brighter and more vital.
“Kyra.”
Her eyes widened, and he could tell she tried to sound casual as she said, “And just what did Kyra have to say?”
He raised his gaze from the bruised rose of her beautiful mouth to snag her glittering glare. “Stop going all prickly on me and just answer the question. Why the hell didn’t you just explain what you really wanted from me?”
“I tried,” she argued, shrugging her shoulders as she tried to jerk her chin free of his grasp. “But you took it all wrong!”
Damn it, she had him there. “Well,” he muttered, “you could have tried explaining to me about your past.”
“My past?” she repeated in a quiet voice, her brown eyes narrowing suspiciously. “What difference would
that
have made?”
“Knowing how you felt about me, and what you thought I wanted from you—or what you thought I
didn’t
want from you?” He snorted, shaking his head in frustration. “Fuck, it would have made things a hell of a lot easier to understand where you were coming from last Friday, I’ll tell you that much. And I sure as hell wouldn’t have jumped to my own dumbass conclusions when you started talking about my pain-in-the-ass reputation.”
A sudden spark of recognition flared in her gaze, hot and bright and angry. “Kyra had no right to tell you anything. Just what exactly did she blab about?”
“You mean after she threw her chai tea in my face and told me along with the rest of Roy’s customers what a first-class bastard she thinks I am for breaking your heart?” He sent her a wry smile, holding his hands out at his sides so she could see the full extent of the damage Kyra had inflicted upon his once white shirt.
“Yes…after that,” she muttered, though there was an unholy gleam of humor in her eyes when she looked at his tea-splattered clothing.
“Enough for me to understand that the men you’ve known have been complete idiots.” He kept his voice gentle, wanting to show her tenderness, though it was hard when the need to nail her sweet little ass to the nearest wall was driving him so hard. Hell, the need to ride her hard and make her come stayed with him twenty-four hours a day.
“Oh my god,” she groaned, covering her face with her hands. “I’m going to strangle her!”
“Why?” he laughed softly, stroking her curls back from her face before trailing his hand down the side of her neck, making her shiver with awareness despite her embarrassment. “Because she’s your friend and she cares about you? Because she thinks you deserve some happiness? Because she was willing to make a spectacle of herself to get me to realize what an ass I’ve been?”
“Some things are meant to be private,” she argued, obviously sensitive about the details of her past experiences with the opposite sex, which in Mark’s opinion was ridiculous. It wasn’t her fault they’d been too blind to realize what they’d let slip through their fingers.
“It’s supposed to be some big secret that you’ve known nothing but a string of idiots who weren’t man enough to realize what an incredible, fascinating, sexy-as-hell woman you are?” he grunted. “Tight-assed, snot-nosed little runts in the mud, like that last jerk, Craig?”
Shock jerked her gaze back to his as she peeked at him from between her fingers. “That’s it,” she growled. “Kyra deserves to have her tongue cut out!”
Mark grasped her wrists and pulled her hands from her pink face, wondering if she was always going to blush in front of him…and almost hoping so, he found it so adorable. “Hey, don’t go getting all pissed about it, angel. If she hadn’t explained things, I’d still be thinking you were only after my—”
She immediately cut him off. “
Don’t
say it,” she groaned, her husky voice stifled, thick with emotion. “I did
not
just want you for sex, Mark Logan, but it was humiliating when I realized that you didn’t even
want
to go to bed with me!”
“What?”
She thrust out her precious little chin and glared up at him. “You heard me.”
“Wait a minute. You mean to tell me you
honestly
didn’t think I wanted to fuck you that night?” he asked, dumbfounded by the truth burning there in that brilliant cinnamon-brown gaze. “Shit, Kyra said as much, but I guess I still wasn’t really buying it. Not even when she told me—”
“I don’t care what Kyra said to make you change your mind about me,” she muttered. The mutinous look in her eyes said she was more than ready to do battle with him on the subject. “I do
not
want pity sex from you!”
“
What?
” he grunted this time.
She huffed and jerked her wrists free, crossing her arms over the gentle swell of her breasts. The soft mounds looked suspiciously free beneath the soft cotton of her T-shirt, making his mouth water. “You heard me.”
“Will you stop repeating yourself?” he growled, moving even closer against her.
She answered with a step back. “Then stop saying ‘
What?
’.”
Mark took a deep breath, held it, then blew it out slowly, resting his hands on his hips to keep them out of trouble. “Okay, let’s start at the beginning. What the hell made you think I didn’t want to get your sweet little ass in bed? I’ve wanted to sink my dick into you, lady, from the first time I set eyes on you, and I’ve wanted it more every goddamn day. But I’ve never wanted it as much as I did after spending the evening with you, getting to know you…realizing that I’d—”
She cut him off, muttering, “You were surprised when I asked.”
“Only because I’d been trying so
hard
to control myself that my damn hard-on was ready to explode,” he gritted through his teeth, feeling the vein in his temple tick with his temper. “I didn’t want to fall all over you like some sex-starved maniac and scare your sweet little ass away.”
“You got angry!” Melanie argued, refusing to be intimidated by his attitude.
He made a sarcastic snorting sound that was utterly male. “Because I felt stupid as shit. When you blurted out that crap about my reputation, I thought you only agreed to go out with me because you wanted a one-nighter. I thought you didn’t care a goddamn thing about me—that you just wanted my body.”
“Well, I do want it,” she huffed, fluttering her hand at him, before crossing her arms back over her chest. “But I’d like everything else that goes along with it.”
“Yeah, well, that’s good then, sweetheart, because you’ve got it. All of it. In fact,” he rumbled in a low growl, narrowing his green eyes on her with a primal, savage intensity that made her want to pinch herself to see if this was really happening, “I’d be willing to bet my
life
on the fact that this body isn’t ever going to want anyone but
you
, not ever again. And that’s not just some line I’m throwing at you. It’s the honest-to-god truth.”
A deep breath staggered in her lungs, a shivering spike of excitement racing beneath the surface of her skin. He cupped her cheek, staring down at her with so much tenderness, she didn’t know how she kept from simply melting at his feet. “Honestly, Mel, I don’t know how you could think any man wouldn’t give his soul for the chance to be with you,” he rasped in a smoky, black magic voice.
“It wasn’t just you.” At his puzzled expression, she struggled to explain. “Kyra told you the truth. That’s what guys have
always
wanted from me—conversation. It’s like I’m nothing but a set of ears. Normally it doesn’t bother me so much, but with you…
aargh
,” she growled, trembling as she struggled to explain. “I couldn’t take it from you, too. I wanted to talk to you and get inside your head and learn everything, every single intriguing little detail about you, Mark. But I wanted…I needed…”
“It’s okay,” he murmured, gentling her with the warm press of his rough-silk lips against her temple as he pulled her close, the animal heat of his body making her jerk with shock, as if she’d pressed her wet fingers to a live wire. “I get it now,” he breathed against her hair, his strong arms wrapping around her in a possessive hold, while her hands clutched at his powerful biceps and her nose pressed into his chest, the sinful scent of his skin making her feel drunk with pleasure.
“I was an ass, baby, but not anymore. You wanted this too, didn’t you, sweetheart?” he asked in a whiskey-rich voice, moving his hot palms down to her shorts-covered backside and lifting her into the hard evidence of his arousal, his cock an impossibly long, breathtakingly thick ridge within the thin confines of his running shorts. “Unlike those other jerk-offs you’ve known, you wanted me to rip off your conservative little clothes and fuck your beautiful brains out. Wanted me to cover you with my hungry body and shove my thick, heavy cock hard into you,
inside you
, didn’t you, angel? It’s okay, you can talk to me,” he coaxed with a deliciously wicked grin as he trailed his hands up the sensitive line of her spine, long fingers sifting through her hair as he cupped them around her skull. Using his possessive grip on her curls, he pulled her head back, demanding she hold his stare. “Tell me everything, all of it. There’s nothing going on inside you that I don’t wanna know about, Melanie. Whatever you want, I can promise you that I want it more.”
“
Damn
,” she moaned thickly, knowing her dazed expression mirrored every fascinating reaction zinging through her body, from her scalp down to her toes. Hot and thick, the love and lust pulsed through her system. She could feel it in her eyelids and the fierce heat of her earlobes, down to the tight, aching tips of her breasts…and lower, where it all centered deep inside, her inner muscles clenching with want while her needy flesh went slick with hot, violent desire. “
Oh god
.”
“Just call me Mark, sweetheart,” he drawled with a teasing smile, using his hands on her backside to rub her over the hard mass of his cock, making her breath catch at the mouthwatering, head-spinning sensation, even while she laughed at his comeback. Then his smile faded, replaced by a smoldering, serious look in those soft green eyes. “I’m going to be honest with you and tell you what I should have told you that night. I want more with you, Melanie Green, and…uh…I should’ve made that clear from the very beginning, honey. I want a woman I can talk to and share my life with, who makes me ache to take her with a long, rough ride from nothing more than a smile, and that’s you. You turn me inside out, twisting me up inside, and I’m…I…shit, this isn’t easy,” he muttered, “and I’m making an absolute ass of myself, but I’ve never done this before.”
She smiled up at him, deliciously lost in the moment. Lost in him. “Done what?”
“Mel, I want you. In my life. Permanently. Not just for sex, though the sex is an absolute given. Uh, actually, if I don’t get the sex soon, there’s every chance I might actually start begging here, but—”
“Yeah?” she sighed, pulling his head down so that she could press a kiss to the hot, silky skin of his cheek, trailing her lips along the hard angle of his jaw.
“I want it all,” he growled. “I want you to move in with me. Live with you, be a part of your life every damn day. Have you be the most important thing in mine. For…hell, forever, Melanie. Which…uh, means that someday, when you’re ready, I’m going to want my ring on your finger and my name after yours.”
Shock nearly made it impossible to speak, but she managed to gasp the words out of a tight throat. “You think you’ll want to marry me someday?”
“Not think, honey.
Know
. But I won’t rush you into anything, I promise. We’ve got plenty of time.” His arms pulled her tighter into the heat of his body, wrapping around her until she felt wonderfully crushed…needed. “I’m in love with you, Melanie Green, and if there’s any chance at all that someday you’ll feel the same way about me, then I’m—hell, I’ll do anything, Mel. Just tell me what I have to do.”
“But…you…” she mumbled into his chest, “all those other—”
It seemed he knew what she was going to say before she even said it. “Forget my dumb-ass reputation. I know I can’t change it, but it doesn’t mean anything, sweetheart. I don’t know how to make you understand what you’ve done to me, but I’ve changed,” he struggled to explain, a dull wash of color burning across the sharp angles of his cheekbones as she peeked up at him. “That’s not who I am now, and I…uh, you gotta believe me when I tell you that, because it’s true.” He stared down at her, the look in his mesmerizing green gaze begging her to believe in him. “I thought I was content with the way things were, and then I met you and it damn near knocked me on my ass. Hell, it was like being hit upside the head with an I-beam. I want you, Mel, and it just isn’t going to be enough until I’ve got you. That one taste last Friday damn near drove me outta my mind. I’ve done nothing but think about it…but live it over and over in my head until it’s driving me crazy.”
“I can’t believe that you’d want me,” she thought, surprised when she realized she’d said the words out loud, watching as his beautiful mouth twisted with emotion.
“I don’t know how you could doubt it, Melanie. You’ve haunted me, woman. Your taste, your scent,” he whispered, his beautiful voice rough with want. “The way you feel in my arms…the way you shatter when I make you come. God, Mel, it’s been all I could do to stay away from you. To stay away and not come begging you to want me for more than just a one-shot deal. To want me forever, because the only woman I’ll ever want again is you. I knew it all along, baby. I just didn’t know what the hell to do about it.”