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She gasped and pressed closer. Her nipples were tight, aroused, and they thrust against his chest. He wanted them in his mouth. He wanted to spread her out in the limo and drive deep into her. He’d wanted her for so long and, he’d tried, damn well tried to stay away.
But she’d come to him. Entered his bar. Walked up to him.
Kissed him.
And sealed both their fates. Because once you had a taste of the thing you craved most, you couldn’t go back. Couldn’t put the damn genie back in the bottle and pretend that you hadn’t just been granted your most desperate, desired wish.
Everything had changed when she kissed him. And now…
No. Not like this. Not our first time.
His wandering hands had been sliding down toward her delectable ass. He yanked them back up to her hips. Curled tightly around her waist and lifted her up and off him. Deliberately, Beau put her back in the seat next to him.
Her lips were red and swollen from his mouth. Her eyes were wide. Dazed.
He could still taste her.
And he’d left the faintest red mark on her throat. His fingers slid over that mark, then fell away. Mine.
“I…think I understand how this works now.” Her voice. Husky. Sexy as sin. She sucked in her lower lip, then let it go. “When I make a statement that isn’t true about you, you kiss me to say it’s a lie.” A slow exhale. “You’re saying you did not knock out Everett and cuff him and?—”
He kissed her. Fast. Deep. “You’re delicious.” He backed off. How long would his razor-thin control hold with her? “And you’ve got the basic point of the game.” Only it didn’t feel like a game.
It felt like a dangerous temptation. Because he didn’t want to stop with just a kiss. He also didn’t want his first time with her to be in the back of a moving limo with Royal up front. The jerk would never let him hear the end of it if Beau pulled a move like that, not with Avalon.
She was too important.
“Okay. Okay.” Her hands fisted.
No, he couldn’t have that, either. He reached for her left hand. Opened it up. Smoothed his fingers over the faint marks left there by her short nails. “You don’t need to be afraid of me. I would never hurt you.” The last thing on his agenda. No, correction, hurting her was not on his agenda at all. It never would be. But protecting her? That would be the first item. Always.
Her head dipped as she looked down at their hands. Her hair slid forward and hid her face from him. “I should be scared of you.”
His other hand moved under her chin. He lifted her head up. And pressed a soft kiss to her lips. “Everyone else can be afraid, but not you.” Never you.
“You’re…the stories said you’re a crime boss.”
He couldn’t look away from her. “Stories say lots of things.”
“You…you aren’t kissing me. That means the stories are true.”
He’d been many things over the years. “All my businesses are legitimate now.” Now being a very important word. “And I haven’t killed anyone.” Yet. He kept the yet to himself. If he got his hands on the bastard who’d left her to die in that house of flames all of those years ago, Beau knew exactly what he would do.
And no one would ever find that body. It was, after all, much harder to convict when there was no body. Juries tended to have a whole lot more reasonable doubt when there was no dead person.
“You’re going to hunt the man who was driving the car last night, aren’t you?”
“Damn straight, I am.” Beau had plans for him, too. And if the bastard turned out to be the same pyro who’d torched her home in New Orleans so long ago…
Hell will feel like a blessing after what I do to you.
“You’re doing all of this because you feel…protective of me.”
Sure, they could go with that. It was true enough. When it came to her, his protective instincts were one hundred percent in overdrive. “I don’t like bastards who hurt or try to hurt women. Really pisses me off.” The limo slowed again. This time, he knew they were nearing her hotel.
“Do you think the man last night was the same one who torched my home all of those years ago?”
The game wasn’t played with questions. It was played with statements. And he’d already been on the receiving end. His turn to see what she would reveal. “You go face to face with killers all the time because you have a darkness inside of you. One I suspect was born on a long-ago night when the heat of New Orleans got too intense for us both.”
