Rock Hard (Rock Kiss #2)(30)

Now he’d decided on Charlotte.

“So, where are we going?” Charlotte asked after the last duckling disappeared into the reeds on the side of the isolated road.

“You’ll like it, I promise.” He rarely made promises, but when he did, he kept his word. It was important to him, a vow he’d made as a six-year-old who’d watched the bailiffs repossess the television his mom had worked so hard to get. Brian Bishop, Gabriel’s father, had used the money intended to pay off the television, as well as two months’ worth of rent money, to make an investment.

“Forget the television, Alison.” A huge grin, his father’s hands on his mother’s upper arms. “We’ll be able to buy the f*cking electronics store once I cash in these shares. I had to strike now, buy them while they were at rock bottom. We’ll make a killing when they rise again, I promise.”

Only those shares had never risen. Another dud, like all his father’s other schemes.

“Gabriel.”

It was the first time Charlotte had used his given name. The intimacy of it sliced through the memory that marked the day he’d first understood the worthlessness of his father’s promises. He’d stopped being a child that day. “Yes?”

Voice hesitant, she said, “Your expression got very dark all of a sudden. Is everything okay?”

“Just thinking over a contract situation,” he said, his “father” a topic he preferred to avoid. “See that group of shops? That’s our destination.”

Pulling into the small parking area out front half a minute later, he got out and watched Charlotte hop out as well, stretch her legs. He wanted to put his hand on her lower back, rub to ease the muscles there. And he wanted to hold her close, alleviate his own tension by breathing her in, her soft warmth against him.

Hands fisting in his pants pockets, he led her to a tiny shop with a window to the street.

“Award-winning fish and chips,” Charlotte read out with a grin. “I’m starving.”

He’d taken women to Michelin-starred restaurants and never seen such open, unaffected joy. After buying the meal, which the owner wrapped in greaseproof paper, Gabriel took it to a weathered wooden picnic table by the beach while Charlotte carried over their drinks. They sat across from one another, the food on the tabletop between them, and ate in a comfortable quiet that did nothing to hide the thrumming sexual tension beneath.

Charlotte might refuse to accept it, but it was there. He saw it in her blushes when she watched him, thinking he wasn’t aware, caught it in her eyes in the mornings after he returned from a run. Maybe he’d stripped off his T-shirt a few times in the office rather than waiting till the shower just to see her breath catch.

He was a guy, after all. He liked the way she looked at him.

He’d like it even better if she’d touch and kiss and handle his body like her favorite treat. Sucking would be encouraged. As would licking. Hell, anything she wanted to do to and with him would be encouraged. As long as he got to put his hands on her too. The idea of having her naked and laughing and soft and silky under his hands…

Shifting on the bench, he told himself to shut it down before his hard-on became so obvious he’d have to sit here for another hour to get rid of it. Instead, he focused on all the other things he liked about Charlotte, especially her mind. “You saw the new advertising package PR’s proposing. What do you think?”

As she spoke, face mobile and animated, he watched her. The wind had tugged several of her curls free of the bun in which she’d managed to confine her hair, and he enjoyed seeing them flirt against her face as she talked and sipped her lime-flavored milkshake. They disagreed on some of her points, but it was a friendly disagreement, Charlotte sassing him more than once.

“Hey, no lip,” he said lightly at one point and saw her face go stark white. “Charlotte.” Getting up, he walked around to sit beside her, his back to the table.

His instinct was to touch her, comfort her, but the way she held herself—shoulders hunched in and neck strained as she stared at the tabletop—told him she couldn’t handle such contact. Seeing her shiver, he went to the car and grabbed his jacket. She flinched when he put it over her shoulders and his gut clenched… but then she tugged the jacket around herself, her fingers tight on the lapels.

He sat again, and, angling his body to face her, braced one arm against the weathered wood of the table. “What did I say?” he asked when she shot him a quick look.

Her throat moved, fingers flexing and tightening. “No, it’s nothing.” A whisper.

“I’m not really a T-Rex, you know,” he said gently and got a guilty look in response, Charlotte’s cheeks flushing with color.

“How did you…” She shook her head, shoulders no longer hunched in. “You have to admit you chewed up people and spit them out that first week. Very T-Rex of you.”

Relieved she sounded more like her usual self, he risked tugging on one escapee curl. “I won’t use those words again.” It was obvious the term “No lip” had brought something bad to the surface.

Spark dimming once more, she bowed her head. “Sorry.”

“Why?” he said, continuing to play with the curl that had escaped the bun he hated with a vengeance. It was so distant and stiff and not at all like the fiery woman who was apt to snap at him when he snarled. “I got to touch this pretty hair because of it.”