Hell on Wheels (Black Knights Inc. #1)(36)

For a brief instant, he considered lying. But there were so many bitter truths he couldn’t tell her, so many questions she’d asked that he absolutely could not answer. This wasn’t one of them. So…the truth it was. “I like it too much.”

“Huh?” There went her nose again, all wrinkly and wonderful.

“Your touch. I like it too much.” Hell, now it’d be her going out of her way to avoid physical contact. Which was just as well. He was only a man after all, and with her within arm’s reach—not to mention actually touching him—his hold on his usually stalwart restraint was tenuous at best.

Downright threadbare at worst.

Her delicately arched brows snapped toward her nose. “Like it too much. What does that mean?”

Geez. The woman wasn’t usually slow, but she was pulling the ol’ bag of hammers routine with this one. Instead of explaining it, he simply reeled her in until she brushed against the irrefutable evidence centered directly behind his fly.

Sweet lovin’ Lord, it was hell. Or heaven. He wasn’t sure. If his dick had a voice of its own, it’d start shouting a rousing chorus of hallelujahs.

Her beautiful eyes shot wide. “Oh!”

Oh was right.

Lightbulb moment, Miss Morgan. “Yeah, does that clear things up for ya?”

Any second now. Any second she was going to jump back and give him that look she’d perfected over the years. The narrowed eyes and pursed lips, the canted head, the one that said she thought he’d just climbed out from under the nearest slimy rock.

Any second now…

“You want me?” she asked incredulously.

“I’d say that’s undeniably apparent.”

“But you don’t like me.” Inexplicably, she was still pressed against his pulsing, aching-like-a-month-of-Mondays erection.

Not like her? Was she crazy? “Of course I like you, Ali.”

He silently counted to ten and recited the team roster of the 1998 St. Louis Cardinals. Over the years, he’d learned it was the mental equivalent of a cold shower.

“No, you don’t,” she adamantly shook her head.

“Ali,” he knew he must be wearing the expression of a tormented man, “all evidence points to the contrary.”

Okay, so the ol’ Cardinals trick wasn’t working tonight.

And uh-oh, he knew the look she was wearing now. It was the one Grigg so often complained about, all calculating and wily. This was so not going to be good.

“So that’s why you’ve been acting so…so surly and disagreeable all these years?” she asked in disbelief. “Because you want me?”

Surly and disagreeable? He hadn’t been surly and disagreeable. He’d been noble and honorable. Jesus. Couldn’t she tell the friggin’ difference?

Deciding she wasn’t going to budge unless he prodded her, he tried to push her away. With lightning reflexes, she locked her thin arms around his neck and clung like a barnacle on the hull of an aircraft carrier.

“Ali,” he warned, grinding his teeth together against the pleasure/pain throbbing inside his pants. This was getting worse by the minute. Or better, maybe? Christ, he wasn’t sure anymore. His brain was only half working—which he figured was still pretty good considering it was likely being deprived of most of its blood supply. “Back off.”

“Not until you answer me,” she declared with that pointy little chin of hers lifted defiantly.

His patience snapped along with his control. “Yes, damn you! Yes, that’s why I always keep you at arm’s length. Because anytime I get near you, all I wanna do is peel away your clothes, lay y’down on the nearest horizontal surface, and plunge balls-deep inside you until your squirmin’ beneath me like a worm on a hook and beggin’ me to never stop. There! Y’happy now?”

***

Nate expected a number of things from Ali after that rather insensitive and vulgar outburst. The mind-blowing sensation of her lips opening over his was certainly not one of them.

Oh buddy.

Her tongue.

It was sweet and supple and darting in and out, and licking and laving and making him lose his mind.

His wickedest fantasies had nothing on reality. For all their crude, raw carnality, he generally didn’t spend a lot of time kissing Ali in his dreams. Usually choosing to skip ahead to the really steamy parts.

Which he now understood had been a huge mistake. Gargantuan.

Because the hard suction of Ali’s mouth was the steamiest thing he’d ever known—which was saying something considering he’d lost count of the number of lovers he’d had over the years. And some of those gals had had more than one novelty packed away in their big bag of bedroom tricks.

The feel of her skin…

It was hot and satiny smooth beneath his rough hands. Her robe split wide when she shimmied up him like a logger climbs a pine and wrapped her slim legs around his waist. Instinctively, he caught her hips.

Good! Lord!

Hips that were undulating against him in a most infuriating and satisfying way.

“Ali,” he wrenched his mouth away. His lungs were going to burst. “Stop this.”

“No,” she trailed a string of wet kisses across his jaw and down to his earlobe, pausing to suck it into the moist heat of her mouth. His eyes literally crossed. “I want this. You want this. We’re both adults, and there’s been this…this overwhelming chemistry between us from the very beginning. So there’s nothing to stop us.”