Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 63716 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 319(@200wpm)___ 255(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63716 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 319(@200wpm)___ 255(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
Exasperation crackled through me. Did she have to make everything so fucking difficult? “Come on,” I grabbed the phone out of her hand and turned in the direction of my car. I added with elaborate, sarcastic courtesy, “I insist.”
“I insist you give me my phone back,” she snapped, but she followed me even after I dropped it back in her open palm. “Of course this is your car,” she said when she reached my Porsche.
“Have you ever just said ‘thank you’ for anything in your life?” I asked, opening the passenger side door and all but dropping her into the low bucket seat. When I got around to my side and got in, she had her arms crossed, one hand wrapped around the camera strap, holding it on her lap. She looked pointedly out the window until I said, “I’m not psychic, Laurier. You’re going to have to tell me where you live.”
Willow unraveled her arms long enough to put her address in my navigation system, then went back to staring out the window. You’d have thought I was torturing her instead of helping her. I drove slowly, drawing it out. At one point, she looked over at the speedometer, then pointedly at the traffic going past us.
“Safety first.” I bared my teeth, torn between wanting to laugh and wanting to shake her for being so obstinate. What the hell did she have against me anyway? And why did I care? No, not care. That was the wrong word. I didn’t care what Willow Laurier thought of me. I just wanted her to be a little fucking appreciative, that was all. I’d pushed my way through that crowd for her. And I didn’t want to think about why.
Inevitably, despite the excruciatingly slow pace I set, we reached her apartment building.
“Thanks for the ride,” Willow bit off when I pulled into one of the guest spots.
“See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?” I goaded. “Now this time like you mean it.”
She unsnapped her seatbelt and turned toward me with a wide, fake smile. “Thanks so much!”
My lip curled. “Maybe you’re on the right side of the camera after all.”
Her smile dropped into a glower, and I laughed out loud. Before I could stop myself, I reached out and ran my thumb over her full, scowling lips. Her eyes widened.
Fuck. What had I done? What was I still doing? My hand was still touching her face, thumb at the curve of her mouth, her soft hair brushing my wrist. I should pull away, but slowly, she was lifting her own hand. She was taking hold of my wrist, and she wasn’t throwing my hand back in my face, she was staring at me. Those green-gray eyes were turbulent, confused.
The jolt that had zapped me the first time I ever touched her came back in full force, but this time it didn’t stop at my elbow. It went all the way through my torso and ended at my cock. Before I could think better of it, or anything at all, I undid my seatbelt and slipped my other hand into her hair. Willow reached up and held onto that wrist, too, but she still wasn’t pushing me away. Her mobile mouth wasn’t scowling anymore either. I wondered if she could feel it, too, this humming, buzzing energy between us. It had been there since the moment we met. It was what ran underneath all of our interactions, fueling our disagreements, and now it was like a track of lighter fluid, guiding the heat we’d been trying to ignore.
Following the track, I pulled her closer, leaned in until my mouth was just above hers. Waited again for her to tell me to fuck off, for those eyes to spit out sparks again. But instead, she closed the distance herself. Her lips pressed against mine for an instant, and the humming, buzzing energy increased tenfold before she sank back, her eyes wider and more turbulent than ever, just inches from mine.
But I hadn’t gotten enough. I pulled her back to me, wishing the gearshift wasn’t between us. Grateful that it was. I took her mouth again, sweet, soft, pliant. A complete contradiction from our prickly, acidic encounters. Her personality might have been all thorns and spikes, but her hair was silk, and her skin was velvet, and she was kissing me back. Lips parting under mine, she let go of one wrist to curl her fingers in my shirtfront, pulling me closer.
I don’t know what would have happened if a train of cars on the road behind us hadn’t suddenly started laying on their horns. Hazy thoughts of dragging her onto my lap had only begun to form, underlined by a faint regret that my car didn’t have a backseat. But then a line of angry beeps laid down in succession, layering over each other, like voices climbing over top of one another, and the spell was broken.