Thrill Ride (Black Knights Inc. #4)(77)

You better do this thing before you lose your nerve, that annoying voice whispered through her head, punctuated by a flash of lightning that briefly illuminated the second-floor loft. This time, she chose to heed its advice. After all, too much more standing here, gawking, and she’d need someone with a shovel to scoop of the puddle of estrogen-y goo she’d melted into because…Oh. My. God…the way Rock’s shoulders filled out that T-shirt, the way his large, western-style belt buckle lay flat against his washboard stomach, and the way his dark goatee drooped at the corners when he skirted the bike in order to wipe down the gleaming front forks, was just too much.

Patting the packages she’d hidden in her bra, she made her way toward the staircase and quietly descended to the shop floor as thunder echoed overhead. The smell of motor oil and freshly ground metal assaulted her nostrils, but she’d become accustomed to the odors after all these months working at BKI and, more than that, she’d actually grown to like them. They reminded her of everything she loved…her job, the Knights…Rock…

The stained cement was cold beneath her bare feet when she stepped off the stairway, but it did nothing to mitigate the fire in her heart. She now knew why he’d been holding her at arm’s length, knew why he maintained he could never fall in love with her. And seriously? It was all a giant load of crap.

She was determined to make him see it was all a giant load of crap. Tonight. Tonight she was going to push past his defenses, shove all her chips on the table, and go all in.

“Rock?” When she whispered his name, he leaned around the front of the motorcycle, his eyes sparkling in the overhead light, his short hair sticking up from the fingers he’d undoubtedly run through it, and, oh crud, was he hot.

Hot and stubborn and so, so, so much in denial.

“What’s wrong, chere?” His tone was concerned. “Couldn’t you sleep? Did the storm wake you?”

She shook her head, her tongue feeling like it’d swelled to ten times its normal size. He stood—a series of bunching muscles and fluid movements—and walked around the side of Patriot.

“You’re not having nightmares about that run through the jungle, are you?” His brows angled down toward his perfect nose. “I knew I shouldn’t have—”

“No,” she interrupted him, surprised to find she could actually talk with that swollen tongue. “It’s not that.”

Then what is it?

She expected him to ask the question, which would give her a lead-in to her proposition. But he remained frustratingly mute, lifting a dark brow in question as a flash of lightning screamed through the tall windows, highlighting the colors of the tattoos on his arms, delineating the hard lines of his biceps.

Well, fine. Fine. She’d just do this the hard way—or the easy way, depending on how you looked at it.

“I want to make love you,” she blurted just as thunder cracked nearby.

And it was obvious by Rock’s narrowed eyes, by the way he cocked his head, that her statement was completely drowned out by the racket.

Crud. To work up the cojones to utter those words once was one thing, but to have to repeat it? Good grief, it was like Mother Nature was playing the world’s cruelest joke on her. Mentally flipping the bee-yotch the bird, Vanessa took a deep breath and tried again. “I want to make love to you, Rock.”

And, yep, he definitely heard her this time…

Oh, how she wished she had a camera, because the expression on his face was priceless. If she’d told him she wanted him to smear himself in motor oil, roll around in glitter, and then let her spank his ass with raw fish fillets, he couldn’t have looked more dismayed.

“You know what we discussed in the jungle,” he said, his deep voice even lower than usual, rippling up her spine, a form of thunder in and of itself. “About you havin’ stars in your eyes and about me not wantin’ to hurt you.”

“It’s bullshit,” she spat. “Because no matter what you think you know about me, the truth is I don’t expect this thing to end in a white wedding and orange blossoms. It’s simply this…I want you. I’ve wanted you since the first moment I saw you.” She shook her head. “No, that’s not true.”

His square chin jerked back on his neck, and a little grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Now doncha go holdin’ back on my account, ma belle.”

“Hey,” she planted her hands on her hips, “you’re not one to lecture me on how to sugarcoat things.” Because she remembered what else he’d told her in the jungle. I’ll never fall in love with you…“The real fact of the matter is, I haven’t wanted you since the first moment I saw you; I’ve wanted you since the first moment I heard you speak.” She caught her lip between her teeth before grinning and wiggling her eyebrows. “Your voice, it’s like butta,” she said, doing her best impression of Mike Myers’s Saturday Night Live Coffee Talk character.

She could tell that, despite the seriousness of the conversation they were having, he was having trouble holding back a chuckle. Which was what she’d aimed for. To inject a little levity into the electric atmosphere.

Rock was easier to coerce—which, yeah, that’s totally what she was doing—when he was feeling amiable. “You kill me woman,” he said, his eyes sparkling.

She shook her head. “I don’t want to kill you. I want to make love to you. And I’m tired of your excuses.”