Chapter Four
Oh, she had a big crush.
Even on the verge of death, that man had looked so hot.
The abs, the enormous perfect dick, the way his face looked half-wild, half hot. The muscles, and the lithe way he moved. The power. The growl in his throat. The raw masculinity that kept drawing her closer.
And then he’d gone and thrown a challenge at her like ‘we can’t be together because it’s the rules’ and everybody knew if you gave a challenge-loving woman something like that, the temptation to break the rules became infinite.
Like now, for example. He was walking slightly in front of her, his gait long and smooth, the T-shirt her Uncle had given her fit him with a perfect tightness on the shoulders and tapered to the V in such a sexy way.
And that butt in those jeans.
“So have you ever slept with a human?” she asked, feigning for innocence.
“Why? Are you in the market to get fucked?” he asked, tossing her an amused look.
“Well, I’m just saying I’m on birth control and that I’m super single.
And you seem to be single, and oh my gosh.
” She stopped in her tracks, locking her legs against any forward momentum.
“Ignore everything I just said. That was not like me at all. I am so sorry.” And she absolutely meant that.
Her cheeks were on fire right now with an embarrassing blush.
She wished the world’s crust would open up and swallow her whole right now so she could escape from this mortifying moment.
“You do one-night stands?”
“Oh yeah. I told you. I’m a cool girl,” she said with an awkward snort. She crossed her arms, but it didn’t feel cool enough, so she rested her hands at her side and hunched over a little and forced a sexy smile. Her face twitched.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“It’s probably just the adrenaline dump,” she muttered as she passed him by, aiming for the barn where her car was parked.
“Your adrenaline dumped a dozen hours ago. And I can hear lies. Want to try that again?”
“Wait, what? You can hear lies? Come on.” She didn’t believe that for a minute.
“Tell me two truths and a lie then. Make it a good one.”
“Uh, okay.” She thought about it as she slid the barn door open. “Okay, I’m ready. I once bought—”
“Lie.”
“What? I didn’t even finish yet.”
“That’s going to be the lie. I can hear it.”
“Fart,” she cussed. Trying to trick him, she said, “I won—”
“Lie.”
“I didn’t get my first kiss until I was twenty!” she blurted out.
“Truth, and also whoa there. Details on that please.”
“I was a late bloomer.”
“Truth again.”
“My bra size is a thirty-four double D.”
“Lie. Thirty-four D?”
“I wish I was a double D.”
“D’s are big enough. Trust me. You’re perfect.”
“I’m…I’m perfect?”
“I could tell you were hot in your scrubs, back when I thought my brother was going to maul you.”
“Correction, when your brother did maul me. Look at this. I am maimed.” She pulled up the sleeve of her t-shirt and showed him the two jagged lines that had silvered with age. “I have to explain these to everyone, and do you know how many people believed me?”
“One. Uncle Tim.”
“Right. I already told you that,” she said, leading him into the dimly lit barn. She pulled the tarp off her car and opened the door while he went down the row of cars and lifted tarps on them to see what they were. Her uncle collected old Fords that had been refurbished.
“Your uncle is awesome,” he muttered, studying the front fender of one.
“He’s the best. Catch.” She tossed the phone she’d found on the floorboard, and he caught it without even looking. “Well, that’s a cool party trick.”
He got this cocky smirk and winked at her. “Why thank you.”
“You know this is really weird seeing you up and walking and winking at me when I was literally wrist deep in your body like eight hours ago. I wish everyone could heal like that. Take this savage humongous scar,” she joked, pulling up her sleeve again.
“That I got from a tiger mauling. Guess how long it took me to heal up?”
Dame straightened his spine and studied it with narrowed eyes. “Two weeks?”
Misty scoffed. “Two weeks? The stitches had just started itching after two weeks. Try six weeks just to get the stitches out, then this big one ripped, they had to use the glue, and butterfly bandages, and then it got infected and I had to do a round of antibiotics, and then when I was finally allowed to use the scar patches, it took another full year of those just to get them to look like your scars on your stomach that you got yesterday.”
He was grinning through that entire dramatic story.
“It’s not funny. I feel fragile around you.”
“You stapled my entire torso back together and you aren’t rocking in a corner from a mental breakdown right now. There isn’t anything fragile about you.”
The smile fell from her lips at the unexpected compliment. “I wish I could tell if you were lying or not.”
“You’ll have to trust me. I’m not. I don’t have a reason to lie. I can’t get in your pants, remember? No use lying. There’s no endgame.”
“Is that really all boys do? Lie for sex?”
He shrugged and poked around on his phone screen. “I have.”
“Ew! And you’re complaining about Chris’s? And also that doesn’t make sense because you just said there is no point in lying because you don’t have sex with humans.”
“Oh, I didn’t say I don’t have sex with humans. I do. I just won’t have sex with you.”
“What? Why not? What’s wrong with me?”
“Mmm, too deep.” He was still looking at his phone and poking around, but this was too interesting not to advance on.
“I’m serious. I want to know what’s wrong with me.”
“There is nothing wrong with you,” he said, his gold eyes darting to her and back down. “There’s too much right with you. That’s the problem.”
This made no sense. Not a lick of sense at all.
“Hold up, I need explanations.”
“Too deep.”
“Daaaame,” she drawled out. “Come on, we are newfound best friends. We’ve saved each other!”
“Are you always like this if you don’t get the answer you want?”
“Well, not with people I don’t care about. If I was standing in a bank line right now and some guy was trying to be mysterious, chances are I’m going to let him stay mysterious.”
“Well, why can’t you let me stay mysterious?”
“Because you have a six pack and you change into a tiger at the full moon!”
“It has nothing to do with the moon.”
“On Fridays and Tuesdays!”
“My Changes aren’t scheduled.”
“And you have bicep veins.”
He frowned and looked at one of his biceps. “Oh, lookey there. I do. I’ve literally never noticed that.”
“And you’re so hot you don’t even notice your bicep veins. You just walk around like this with all your sex appeal, and you can eat three steaks, and you have a murderer brother—”
“Not a murderer yet—”
“And you almost died but your hair is perfect! This is like a movie!”
“Are you on drugs?”
“I’m high on life. I lived. I survived a second tiger attack.
Don’t you feel the hum of the atmosphere, Dame?
You survived too. Look, there is awesome sunlight beaming down on this specific spot and we are the only ones who get to see it,” she said, pointing to a ray that had beamed in from a hole in the barn roof.
“That’s so cool. This dust mote?” she said, pointing to a little speck of dust swirling around in the sunray.
“We’re the only ones who will ever see it.
We are alive seeing a dust mote. In a sunray.
After a steak dinner and homemade apple pie, in a barn full of Fords that people have spent countless hours bringing back to their former glory. How amazing is—”
The speed with which Dame’s lips crashed onto hers was startling.
She yelped and her eyes went wide as she stood there frozen.
He pulled away, his hands up in the air like he surrendered.
His lips were parted, and his eyes were glowing such a bright golden hue.
He’d stepped into that sunray, and it illuminated half of his face, making one eye even brighter.
There was a ring of bright green right by his pupil that she might have never noticed if not for that sunray.
She closed the distance between them and slid her arms over his shoulders, and he lifted her off the ground.
Misty wrapped her legs around him on instinct and pressed her lips to his.
He was ready for her. His mouth moved against her so perfectly timed.
She clutched him harder, and he grunted in pain.
“Oh my gosh!” she exclaimed, releasing him from the grip of her thighs. She jumped down to the ground and stared up at him in shock. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
His eyes were full of pure golden fire.
“Fuck it,” he gritted out, and peeled his shirt off, threw it onto the barn floor, and gripped her waist. He walked her straight backward, lips on hers.
Misty lost her mind and went with it. She didn’t realize where he aimed to take her until she heard the rustle of the tarp on her car.
He lifted it up and yanked her back door open, then laid her down on the seat.
It was still a mess from his injuries last night, but she didn’t give a single shit about that right now.
She didn’t care about anything but the consuming way this man touched her body.
He broke their kiss only long enough to yank her shirt over her head and throw it behind him.
The tarp had fallen back into place, and it was dark in here.
It felt like their own secret world. He tasted so good as he kissed her.
This wasn’t some soft romantic, moving-her-hair-out-of-her-face, gentle-touch lovemaking session.
This was a rutting male needing her body, and her hormones spiking in response. It was fast. It was his hands gripping her waist, and a scramble to get her bra unsnapped so he could grasp her breast roughly as he ground against her.
He angled his face the other way, kissed her deeply, tongue pressing against hers with the pace he rolled his hips against hers.