Surprise turned to outrage in a flash of her green eyes. Instead of continuing to retreat, she was the one advancing on him this time.
“I’ll say yes if I want to.”
“Like hell you will.”
She moved a step closer. “Just because you saved my life doesn’t mean you can tell me how to live it.”
Everything went still for Gabe. “Do you want to say yes? Do you want to date my brother?”
Megan stopped, too, right where she was, her eyes wide, her breath coming in short pants against the towel she was gripping closed at her throat.
“No.”
The breath he hadn’t let himself take came rushing through him in a flood of relief. “I swear,” he said, hearing the pure raw need in his voice and knowing he couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it, “I tried to have self-control.”
Megan’s lips were wet where her tongue had just come out to lick at them. “Me too,” she admitted in a whisper.
As he reached for her hips and took a handful of the towel in each hand to pull her body into his, Gabe admitted to himself that jealousy over Zach changing her tire was just the final excuse he’d needed to take what he wanted all along.
Megan.
He wanted Megan.
And tonight he was finally going to have her.
* * *
Megan stood in the circle of Gabe’s arms, knowing everything she wanted was just a breath away—and that, at the same time, it could all be gone just as fast. He’d kissed her before and still left.
Right or wrong, she knew that if that happened tonight, she’d be left needing, wanting, without him.
She’d never been a woman to trade on her looks for anything in her life. Just as she’d never deliberately acted against what she knew she should do. She shouldn’t seduce Gabe into staying. Not when she knew better. Not when a whole lot more than just one hot night could end up on the line.
But there was a first time for everything, she was starting to realize...even listening to that wily and seductive little voice in her head that told her everything would be all right, that it wouldn’t hurt anyone or anything for her to take this one night and enjoy every single second in his strong arms until the sun rose again in the sky.
Maybe if that sensual woman buried so deep inside of her hadn’t been lured out little by little over the past few days by this beautiful man, she might have been able to ignore the voice. The need.
But, for one night, desire insisted on getting its due.
She lifted her gaze from Gabe’s mouth to his eyes just as she loosened her grip on the towel. She felt him still against her as he realized what she was doing. And then, he was shifting his grip on her hips to give her the room to let go of the towel completely.
White cotton fell away from her damp skin and landed in a heap on the ground...leaving her completely naked before Gabe.
“Sweet Lord, you’re beautiful.”
His reverent whisper ran over her, through her, caressing the nerve endings at the peaks of her br**sts, the throbbing heat between her thighs, all the way into that spot in her heart she’d vowed to keep safe from a man like Gabe.
She waited to feel his hands come back around her hips, naked skin against naked skin. She knew what would happen now, that in a matter of moments she’d be beneath him on the bed and they’d be going after each other without any preliminaries necessary.
But a moment later, as his hands slid gently into her wet hair, she realized her mistake. Gabe Sullivan wasn’t like other men, who would have gone straight for the ultimate prize.
On the contrary, he was surprising her with—oh my!—a sweeter kiss than any other man had ever given her.
His mouth covered hers, molding her lips with his so softly she almost couldn’t feel anything at all. Just warmth. And so much pleasure as he deepened the kiss, as he found the curves of her lower lip with his tongue and slowly slid across it, that she couldn’t hold back a whimper.
“Gabe, please.”
She didn’t realize that she was begging—already, with nothing more than just a soft kiss—until he said against her mouth, “Slow, baby. That’s how we’re going to do this tonight.”
“I don’t know if I can do slow,” she said, her body reinforcing her words by moving closer to him so that her bare br**sts were pressed into his chest.
The rough gauge of his long-sleeved wool shirt rubbed so deliciously against the already hard points that she gasped at the incredible sensation of rubbing her naked body up against his fully clothed one. There was something so deliciously naughty about it all. Megan had only ever been naughty, had only ever let herself get that close to danger and the adrenaline that came with it, in her private fantasies.
But something about Gabe made her suddenly want to see all those dangerously seductive fantasies come to life.
“Megan.”
He groaned her name, sounding like a man lost, just as lost as she knew she already was to him. His hips ground against hers, backing her up against the wall, her thighs opening to let him in. And oh, how she loved the way the thick bulge behind the zipper of his jeans pressed into just the right spot.
She shouldn’t be this close to the edge, shouldn’t be only the barest touch, the slightest caress away from coming apart for him. But the truth was that every moment they’d spent together not touching, not kissing, trying to keep their distance from each other, had been foreplay. Some of the most intense foreplay of her life.
“I could take you now, could be inside of you in seconds.” His voice was rough at her ear, his words blunt and oh-so-sexy, making her heart race with wanting what he was describing. “Just like this, up against the wall, your legs wrapped around my hips, with you coming around me as I take you hard and fast.”