Page 53 of The Outpost (Jamison Valley 4)
Maybe in my dreams, I’d get a kiss because I had no idea what it would take to get one for real.
“Morning.”
I gave Beau a small smile and a wide berth but didn’t respond. Instead, my eyes stayed firmly locked on the coffee machine as I maneuvered around him to the counter.
“Sabrina.”
I ignored that too. My embarrassment from last night hadn’t faded a bit.
“Hey, can you look at me?” he asked. When I didn’t move, he did his jungle growl.
I turned from my coffee cup and leaned back against the counter, crossing my arms over my chest.
“Look, we need to talk about last night,” he said.
“We don’t. Let’s forget it.”
“I had fun last night. I’m not going to forget about it.”
Fun? Rejecting me when I’d asked him to kiss me had been fun? Telling me I wasn’t ready for sex with him, whatever the hell that meant, had been fun?
Embarrassment morphed to utter mortification and then to blood-boiling anger. Heat rose from my chest and up my throat, but before I breathed fire, I clenched my teeth together so hard my molars hurt.
“I pissed you off,” he guessed.
Opening my mouth still wasn’t safe so I widened my eyes and nodded vigorously.
“Would you mind telling me how?”
Men! Did they always need women to spell things out? Fine. I’d make his mistake perfectly clear. His innocent expression was doing nothing to save him.
With one hand firmly planted on my hip and the other holding up three fingers, I let my temper rip. “Number one. When a beautiful woman asks you to kiss her, unless you’re married, have a girlfriend or have a damn good reason not to, do the right thing and kiss her. Number two. If you don’t kiss her, it is not an appropriate excuse to tell her that it’s because sex between you would be incredible. That makes it worse! And number three. When you completely embarrass a woman, the last thing you should say was that it was fun!”
I added a fourth finger, not exactly sure what it would entail, but he stopped my rant by stepping into my space and hoisting me up on the counter.
“Beau, I hate to be hauled around,” I said through clenched teeth.
“Quiet and listen. It’s my turn.” He said it loudly enough that I shut my mouth. Somewhere during my rant his innocent expression had hardened in frustration. “I told you that if I kissed you, we wouldn’t stop there. There was no way I was fucking you the same day you told me that you considered yourself a whore. That’s my damn good reason for not kissing you last night.”
My teeth stopped grinding together and my spine relaxed. That was a good reason. Damn.
“I didn’t mean to embarrass you,” he said. “I’m not sure what kind of assholes you’re used to spending time around but I don’t get off on hurting a woman’s feelings or embarrassing her.”
My embarrassment came back but this time at my own hand. Beau was one of the good guys and I had just gone off the deep end and assumed the worse.
“Okay,” I said, holding up my hands. “I’m sorry.” I had no desire to fight and I was woman enough to know I’d just been beaten in that argument.
Beau jerked back an inch, staring at me with wary eyes. “That’s it?”
I nodded. “You’ve won your case.”
“This was too easy. It feels like a trap.” His eyes narrowed. “Is this going to come back and bite me in the ass?”
I grinned. “No. Once my bruised ego heals, this will be all but forgotten.” Though it might take a day or two. Beau’s refusal to kiss me had been quite the blow.
“I didn’t mean to bruise your ego.”
“Then what did you mean when you said I wasn’t ready?” It had been bothering me all night and morning. These cryptic messages he had been giving me were making me crazy.
