Page 14 of Anger Bang
Unsettling? Try clammy-palms-and-heart-palpitations petrifying.
He let out a little scoff of a chuckle, and the corner of his upturned mouth went up a little bit higher. “Were you proposing a friends-with-benefits situation?”
“I was, but we aren’t friends,” she said, the words coming out before she could stop them. “So acquaintances with benefits for the night.”
Thea snapped her jaw shut faster than a mousetrap.
Yeah, little too late with that one.
Kade cocked his head to the side and shot her an indulgent, crooked smile. “Does that mean wecan’tbe friends?”
Was he flirting?
With her?
Did he not understand she was already a sure thing? None of it made sense. When she tried to unravel the reason why the guy who looked like he knew exactly how to use only his thumb to grievously injure a man was sounding as if he was totally into being temporary friends with benefits, all she got was a brain full of white noise.
Well, that was a lie.
She had white noise and fantasies of him wearing only that cocky smile she’d seen outside of Jackie’s trailer when he’d told her to keep his flask. The image sent a shiver of dirty delight through her, and she let out a shaky breath.
This was a bad idea.
This was absolutely tempting.
This was a my-sister-is-in-a-bridezilla-induced-temporary-insanity situation.
She wasn’t gonna do this.
Or was she?
She shouldn’t.
Then why in the hell did you propose a one-and-done anyway?
Because she was so damn tired of everyone just expecting her to smile nicely and accept whatever they offered. Because she wanted to stop being a welcome mat. Because she wanted to be the kind of woman who saw what she wanted and went for it. Because she wanted to win just this once so she’d know what it felt like. She’d wanted all of those things for her entire life and had never even gotten close. Well, that stopped now. Thea Pope was going to make her dream come true.
Maybe.
If she could get up the courage.
Four steps.
That’s all that was between them. Her gaze went from his mouth to his broad shoulders, to the way his T-shirt did nothing to hide the fact that he was as solid as a brick house, to the way his jeans hung to his hips and—
Was that the outline of a very nicely proportional thick dick pressing against the denim?
Sure, itcouldbe a trick of the flickering lights from the firepit or her imagination or wishful thinking.
Or it could be real and that meant he was thinking all of the naked, sweaty, orgasmic things she was, which meant maybe he kinda liked her, too, and then—
Thea shook her head, scattering the cacophony of her thoughts and grasping tight on the only way she could imagine this working.Yeah, maybe you should have thought about the logistics before you asked in front of the entire world if he wanted to get an anger bang out of their systems.
That was true, but that didn’t mean it was too late. She could make this happen. She had to make this happen. All they needed to do that were three things: parameters, rules, and clear expectations.
And bythey, she meant herself, because this way lay danger. She could feel it like a dark current under the desire rushing through her.
In another century, Kade would have been the rakish smuggler getting women from one end of the coast to the other to toss good sense and their reputations aside along with their skirts. Totally her fictional catnip. In real life? Even the idea of speaking to someone like Kade made her break out in a cold sweat.
