Branded as Trouble (Rough Riders #6)(12)

“You don’t have to explain to me.”


“But I do. He’s interested in getting a tattoo on his—”


Colt held up his hand. “I don’t wanna know where you’re tattooing him, to be real honest.”


Dammit.


“You go on and have fun. Much as I complain about him, Blake is a really good guy. He’ll treat you right.”


She was tempted to snap off, how nice that I have your approval, but that’d be bitchy and she’d acted bitchy enough. And truthfully, she didn’t want his approval. She much preferred his smartass disapproval or his…jealousy.


“Don’t wait up,” she said half-jokingly.


“Don’t worry. With you gone for a few hours, I’ll probably finally sleep like the dead. I won’t notice if you do come home in the middle of the night.”


Six hours later, India slammed the door a little harder than necessary when she and Blake returned to her apartment.


They finished off the caramel apple dumplings at her dinette table. Coldplay drifted from the stereo. A sharply scented lemon verbena candle filled the air.


“I appreciate you taking a look at it, Blake.”


“Be my pleasure.” Blake scraped his fork across the empty plate. “Although, I’d hoped the invitation into your bedroom would be extended in a different context, India.”


She grinned. “I imagine you did. But I’m not looking—”


“For a relationship, yeah, yeah, yeah.”


“How’d you know that’s what I was going to say?”


Blake looked at her from beneath incredibly long black eyelashes. “Because it’s the same old tune, you’re just a different singer.”


“You run into this problem a lot?”


“Yep.”


“So if I said, ‘Blake, baby, let’s burn up the sheets for just one night?’”


He stood so fast his chair crashed to the floor.


India laughed.


“What? You think I’d turn you down?”


“No. But I’ll admit you don’t seem like a one-night stand kind of guy.”


“Wrong. I totally am that guy, it’s just the ladies don’t give me a chance. I must look like a ‘relationship guy’ to women instead of a


‘one-night wild f*ck’ kind of stud,” he grumbled.


“There are worse things.”


“Yeah? Name one.”


Shoot. Her brain wasn’t crafting reassurances very quickly.


“Women thinking you’re a player.”




Her skin had warmed the metal. He traced the tiny ring with the very tip of his tongue, then drew the beaded nipple into his mouth.


With his each rhythmic suck, she dug her fingernails deeper into his skin.


As Colt kept nuzzling her breasts, kissing a line up her bared throat, using his teeth and his tongue and his lips, somehow one of India’s hands had moved to his groin.


His breath stalled and he groaned.


She took that as a positive sign and she went from rubbing the length of his shaft, to curling her fingers around the base and stroking upward.


The softness of the fleece beneath the heated grip of her palm felt good, too damn good, because it’d been too damn long since he’d experienced a woman’s touch. She had to stop.