Off Base(36)

He eyed her impatiently as she came to a clumsy, breathless stop before him. “What, Huntley? I’m not really in the mood right now for this.”

This. Her. Like she was the biggest pain in his ass. Is that how he saw her all these years? She thought he enjoyed hanging out with her. An itchy feeling swept up her neck and swarmed her face. Did he resent keeping an eye on her for Beck? God knew he could have been doing other things with his time.

Her gaze flicked from him to the keys in his hand and resolve hardened inside her. Fine. She was about to become an even bigger pain in his ass. This friendship went both ways. He took care of her. Now it was her turn to take care of him. She was an emergency room nurse. She handled people in all manner of conditions. This wouldn’t be such a stretch for her. Except Cullen wasn’t some stranger. He happens to be someone you regularly imagine naked.

“You’re not driving,” she announced, adopting the voice she used with wayward patients.

“I’ll be fine. I only had a few—”

“You only had a few that I saw. You were drinking before I even showed up.” She snatched the keys from his hand.

He growled. It was the only word to describe it. The sound made the tiny hairs at her nape prickle with awareness. With his tall, hard body, dark hair and molten chocolate eyes, he rocked sexy. She couldn’t walk down the street beside him without women breaking their necks to look him over.

But right now this awareness was different. For the first time he looked at her with an intensity that made her feel like a woman. Not his friend. Not Beck’s sister. She felt stripped bare and vulnerable, the sole object of his rapt concentration.

She was also pretty sure he wanted to strangle her.

A vein throbbed in his forehead. She’d seen him like this one time before. They’d been leaving Java Joe’s and someone had left his dog in the car on one of the hottest days of summer. Cullen had marched back inside and confronted the * with a few choice words.

God, she really was messed up. He was pissed and glaring at her and it actually gave her a thrill. She had to stop this. Get a boyfriend. Get laid. Stop fixating on Cullen like he was some forbidden dessert.

He held out his hand. “Hand them over, sweetheart.”

Her fingers tightened around the keys, the metal digging into the tender flesh of her palm. She wasn’t about to hand over his keys. He made a grab for them, but she thrust her fist behind her back, yelping when he wrapped an arm around her waist and hauled her against him in one hard move that brought them nose to nose.

The heels of her boots lifted off the ground, her toes grazing earth. Her eyes bugged as she stared down at him. Blinking was impossible. His forearm felt rock solid around her. She was no lightweight. She was five feet eight, and it had been years since she felt comfortable in a bikini … hell, even a swimsuit. Her breasts pillowed against his chest, and heat scalded her face as her nipples hardened. Please, please, don’t let him notice that.

The only way she had even tolerated being around him all these years was because he didn’t know the lustful thoughts that swirled through her when she got within two inches of him. That would be too mortifying.

“I’m not in the mood to play, Huntley.”

She shivered at the gravel in his voice and the sensation of his long body against hers.

This man was a warrior. He dealt in death. He played with bombs, for God’s sake. Maybe she shouldn’t challenge him. Maybe she should be scared. He was drunk. Pissed. Hurt. But she knew him. She knew he loved barbecue with a side of barbecue. She knew he mowed the single mom’s yard across the street. She knew he lost his virginity on a beach in Panama on his sixteenth birthday to a girl three years his senior. She knew he loved baseball and secretly liked cats. She knew he couldn’t stand for his feet to be touched, and he thought Jeremiah Johnson was the greatest movie ever made.

And she knew she couldn’t let him drive in this condition.

“I’m not playing,” she countered.

Pressed up against him like this she practically felt petite. They had touched often enough over the years but never like this. She fought to swallow against the tightness in her throat.

“Then stop f*cking with me and give me the keys.”

She gasped. He never used language like that with her. The dirty word shot a spike of heat right through her as she imagined just that. Fucking. Fucking him.

She moistened her lips and that heat spread deeper through her as his dark eyes followed the movement of her tongue.

“I’m not f*cking with you.” God, had she actually uttered that word? Her grandma just rolled over in her grave. “You’ve had too much to drink to get behind the wheel, and after what you just heard tonight I don’t think you’re in any condition—”

“You don’t think I can drive a f*cking truck?”

She flinched.

“I’ve driven in a lot worse conditions than this,” he bit out. “Drunk. With a concussion. I’ve even driven through a smoke-infested desert with gunfire all around me. I’m trained to handle worse situations than this. I’m supposed to know how to deal with this kind of shit.”

She knew they weren’t talking about him driving home tonight anymore. This was about Xander.

“Cullen,” she said softly, her heart aching for him.

The lines of his handsome face twisted tightly. “No. Don’t talk to me like I’m one of your patients, Nurse Collier. I don’t want your pity.” He stepped back, holding his hands up in defeat. “Fine. You can drive me home.” He growled the words like he was just humoring her.