Another tickle?
What the heck? She wasn’t looking for a full-time boyfriend here—especially a G-rated one, straight out of a Disney film where the friskiest anyone got was a pillow fight. She couldn’t get distracted thinking about
personal
things like how Shane might look in the morning, where he’d grown up, and what style of pizza he liked to nosh during a football game. She didn’t need to know any of that stuff.
All Gabriella needed was to drink in the sight of his dreamy golden brown eyes, relax in the warmth of his big, strong body, and maybe kiss him senseless—or until he begged her to rip off his clothes. You know, whichever came first.
“All fixed.” With his hand on her upper arm, Shane ushered her into their now private booth. His smile invited her to stay a while. “I’m yours for the night. Let’s get personal.”
“Nah. I have a better idea,” Gabby said as she slid her nimble body into the booth Shane had liberated. She grabbed his hand and pulled him down beside her. “Let’s get
crazy
.”
Their bottles of Black Butte Porter clattered on the tabletop, clinking wobblingly, nearly unsettled by the energy of their coming together. Shane didn’t even have time to breathe.
One minute, he was watching Gabby put down her bottle and get into the booth, and the next he was feeling all her heat and softness and breathless enthusiasm flung right up next to him. One minute, he was imagining her long, bare legs engaged in a more intriguing activity than clambering across a sticky brewpub floor (say, wrapping around his hips as he made love to her), and the next he was almost nose-to-nose with a woman whose sheer dynamism held him transfixed. She was . . .
incredible
.
Feeling muddled and off balance, Shane didn’t know if he should kiss her or hug her, challenge her or congratulate her on being the first woman in eons to truly engage him. With Gabby, he felt both combative and empowered, seen and enlivened. He didn’t know why, and he didn’t care. Maybe this tangle of mixed-up emotions was what he got for ignoring the softer side of life for so long. Or maybe it was just
her
, making him feel this way. But for one night only, Shane wanted all of it.
He wanted the clean and the messy, the complicated and the easy. He wanted to whisper something romantic in Gabby’s ear—so conveniently exposed by her boyish haircut—and find out if he could make her blush. He wanted to hold her hand some more.
He wanted to lose himself in her. And since Shane was there to experience every sloppy emotion he usually suppressed . . .
“The craziest thing is,” he said, unable to squash a smile as he looked at her, “this feels so
right
, right now.”
“Everything feels right in a brewpub past midnight.”
“It’s not just that. It’s you.”
Her arched brows suggested a healthy skepticism that Shane couldn’t help respecting. Gabby laughed. “Wait till you know me better. If you’re impressed now, you’ll be floored later.”
“I don’t doubt it.” He took a pull of his porter, realized he didn’t want to be too drunk to remember this night, and set the bottle aside. “What do you say we skip the ‘impressed’ beginning and go straight to the ‘floored’ middle?”
“Why not go right to the end?”
“Because that’s not the fun part.”
“But everything happens that way.” She gestured, chopping her hand lightly on the tabletop to emphasize. “Beginning, middle, end. You can’t skip parts. No matter how tempting.”
“It
is
tempting. And yes, I can. No rules, just . . . living.”
Her direct gaze met his. “Where did you get such a no-holds-barred attitude, anyway? Did you just get paroled?” She touched his arm and nearly incited a riot in his nerve endings. “Tell me the truth. I’ll know it if you’re fibbing.”
Shane laughed. She was perceptive. Not that he’d ever been in prison, but Gabby had clearly spied the darker side of him. He didn’t doubt she’d guess if he tried to put one over on her.
Oddly enough, though, he didn’t want to try. He didn’t even want to employ a few “fixing” skills, the way he’d done to snag their not nearly private enough corner booth at the brewpub.
“I grew up in foster care. I learned early to live day to day—to take things as they come.” Effortlessly, he signaled for another round of drinks. Even if he wasn’t planning to down more porter, it was only right to pay for the use of the booth. “Some families were good. Some were bad. Some were indifferent.” Shane squinted momentarily, remembering those days. Then he shrugged. “When I wasn’t in trouble, I was invisible.”
“So you stayed in trouble a lot.”
He grinned as their new drinks arrived. “How’d you guess?”
“You look the part. Despite your boyish demeanor, that is. You look . . . like trouble.” Gabby picked up a bottle of porter, put a bottle in his hand, then toasted him. “To bad behavior.”
“Bad behavior?” Warily, Shane drank. “You don’t mean that.”
“I never say anything I don’t mean.”
He liked that. It also scared the hell out of him. The last thing he needed was a woman who saw through his infamous charisma, sussed out his disreputable past . . . and wanted to be with him anyway. It was fortunate this was a onetime thing.
“We have that in common,” Shane told her truthfully.
“I wouldn’t still be here if we didn’t.” Looking sparkly-eyed and pretty, Gabby nodded at his bottle. “You’re not drinking?”
“Not anymore.” Suddenly, more than anything, he wanted to remember tonight. He inhaled deeply, catching a whiff of those spicy scents that clung to her. He felt . . . moved by her nearness, brightened by her smile and her smarts and her straightforward way of putting things. “I want to remember you.”
“Aw.” Grinning, she downed some porter. “Cheesy, much?”
“Obviously, you’ve never met a man who took you seriously. Otherwise, you’d be used to hearing things like that.”
With her bottle partway to her lips, Gabby paused. She eyed him through exotic dark eyes. “Yeah. I scare most men.”
“That’s on them. At least they know where they stand with you. If they can’t handle that”—Shane spread his arms, feeling more in sync with her all the time—“screw ’em.”
“That’s what
I
say!” Shaking her head at him, Gabby gave him another sexy up-and-down look. If Shane hadn’t known better, he’d have sworn he looked his best in roughed-up jeans and a T-shirt. Gabby looked as though she wanted to lick him all over.
He wanted to
be
licked. All over. Repeatedly. Starting now. Eventually and much too soon, her attention meandered back to his face. By then, Shane’s scruffy jeans felt a size too small. There was something liberating about being with Gabby. Maybe it was because nothing real could come of their meeting. Maybe it was because Shane liked a woman, like her, who knew what she wanted. Either way, he wanted
her
. Fake name or not.
He
didn’t
want to “fix” this, either. Given the reasons he’d come out tonight, Shane figured that only a genuine response would be enough to drive back his demons.
He could have charmed and persuaded her, cajoled and manipulated her. He could have had her at his place already.
He hadn’t earned his reputation for nothing, after all.
Instead, insisting on honesty even when he didn’t have to, Shane touched her arm. “Do you want to get out of here?”
“I don’t know yet.” A teasing sidelong look. “Do you want to discuss your tragic misspent youth some more?”
“Umm . . . yes?” He laughed. “If that’s what it’ll take. Sure.”
“It’s not,” Gabby reassured him. “I just wanted you to be willing. I’m practicing Serial Killer Defense 101.”
“I’m not a serial killer,” Shane assured her with perfect equability. “I’m a professional business hit man.”
It was 100 percent brutally honest. But Gabby didn’t believe him. “Wow. That sounds like an incredibly macho way of describing . . . accounting, or whatever.” She waved. “I don’t care what you
do
. I care who you
are
. Also, I care that you’re not in some FBI database. So, smile for my friend Pinkie.”
Shane looked up. A skinny blonde wearing a pink bandanna around her head snapped his photo with her cell phone. For some reason, the burly dude next to her scowled. The old guy beside him looked worried. And the middle-aged man nearby peered at his elbow, muttered to himself, then punched up his own cell phone.
“Your compatriots?” Shane asked, nodding toward them.
“Something like that.” Puzzlingly, Gabby gave them a wistful look. She sent a text, then turned to him. “The important thing is, you’ve been IDed. If I don’t show up for work tomorrow, they’ll know where to start looking for me.”
“You’re not very trusting.”
“I’m not very gullible. There’s a difference.”
“No . . .” Steadily, Shane studied her. “I don’t just mean about this, with me. I mean, you’re not very trusting. With anyone.”
Gabby gazed at him. Again, she seemed amused. Also a little shaken. “Hmm. Perceptive
and
studly. Even if you were wrong—”
“But I’m not wrong,” Shane felt compelled to point out.
“—I think I’d
still
want to kiss you right now.”
Then Gabby leaned forward, took his jaw in her hand, and lowered her mouth to his.
Giddily, Gabriella became aware of a thousand things at once. The feel of Shane’s hard, darkly stubbled jaw beneath her palm. The masculine warmth and soapy smell of his skin. The hardness of his big body and the cacophony of the brewpub and the feel of the bass music pounding up through the floor, up through the corner booth, all the way up into her bones.
Kissing Shane rocked her world in the hottest possible way, and she wanted more of it. She wanted more of
him
. Right now.
It seemed that she’d scarcely had that thought before she made it happen. Gabriella kissed him again. She felt exhilarated and powerful and full of onrushing possibilities—and that was
before
Shane cradled her cheek in his hand, pulled her even closer in their leathery booth, and made her forget all those sensations she’d just registered. Instead, all that existed was Shane’s mouth, soft and wide and wet. All that meant anything were his hands, roving over her shoulders, thumbing over the flimsy straps on her dress. All that could be known was
wanting
.
It was as if, by kissing him, Gabriella had lit the fuse to something unstoppable and explosive and urgent. Their bodies pushed together, crowding in the booth. Their hearts raced, hard and fast. Their breath caught and held. They gasped between kisses as though those kisses were more sustaining than oxygen.
Gabriella had never experienced anything like it—and she couldn’t get enough of it, either. She
craved
Shane—and his confident, arousing touch, too. That’s why, after a little more conversation, she and Shane left the brewpub hand in hand. Her friends’ teasing catcalls sounded, but Gabriella didn’t care.
She didn’t care because she and Shane were heading to her car . . . and then they were stopping just outside it, unable to resist another kiss. And another. They were groping with hands and hearts and smiles toward something she hadn’t come to the brewpub for—but now that it was within reach, she
needed
it.
She needed Shane’s hands, big and agile and gentle. She needed his mouth, kissing her neck. She needed his body, full length against hers as they leaned together on the passenger side of her trusty Toyota and lost themselves in another kiss.
The chilly late-night April air made Gabriella shiver. So did the sound of Shane’s voice as he dealt with that problem.
“Cold?” he asked. “Here. Let me warm you up.”
He did, and in ways that had nothing to do with their bodies. Because his smile reached into her heart somehow and made her feel safe in his arms. His gentleness affected her, too. Gabriella didn’t know if it was his difficult upbringing that had made him so considerate of her feelings or if it was innate in him. All she knew was that she liked it.
She liked
him
. Probably more than she should have.
If love at first sight existed, she thought irrationally as she caught sight of Shane’s handsome, rugged face in the moonlight, then she’d caught a whopping bad case of it tonight.
She only wished Shane hadn’t quite guessed at her inner self so readily. She wasn’t entirely comfortable knowing that he’d been able to deduce her difficulty in trusting people within a half hour of their meeting. Gabriella had thought she’d kept that tendency of hers pretty much hidden. God knew it gave her enough trouble with her staff—and sometimes her friends.
But Shane, surprisingly, had seemed . . . accepting of that quality in her. Maybe that was because he was the same way?
He didn’t seem to be, Gabriella mused as they finally slid into her car. In fact, Shane seemed completely trusting—of her, of their situation, and of what was to come . . . however much nakedness, hotness, and mind-scrambling sex resulted from it.
Maybe that was the mind-set that came from not following rules. After all, he had said, quite succinctly, rules are made to be broken. That sacrilege alone should have made Gabriella not want him. Instead, it seemed to have made her want him more.
She
did
love a bad boy.
But only for tonight, Gabriella assured herself. Tomorrow, she’d be back to following the rules, obeying tradition, and observing the proper chain of command. Tomorrow, she’d be back to doing things her dad’s way. Just like she’d vowed to do since coming home to Portland.
After all, doing all those sensible things was going to repair her relationship with her family. She was counting on it. Because, obviously, she’d pushed rebellion just as far as it could go—and she’d learned to regret it, too.