NIGHTFALL CAME too soon. Risa had never realized how much she’d hated the earlier winter nights until that night. When she was faced with the prospect of getting ready to go to bed with Micah.
She couldn’t do it. Every time she thought of it, she remembered being in his bed the night before, and that farce it had turned into.
But it was dark. She always went to bed early. She got up early. If she managed to sleep at all. Last night, she hadn’t slept, and her body was demanding rest.
Her mind was another matter entirely.
“You’re worrying too much,” he stated as she found herself staring at her computer screen, the numbers in the accounting program blending in front of her eyes. “You’re tired, Risa. Get ready and go on to bed. I’ll come in later.”
She hated that tone. That compassionate let’s-pamper-the-baby tone. She didn’t need him to pamper or patronize her.
She turned slowly in her chair and glared at him. He was sitting back on her couch as though he owned it, the television blaring some news program as those black eyes flicked over her body before coming back to her face.
As though he was remembering the night before. How did he remember it? she wondered. As the total failure it had been on her part?
“Why would I want to do that?” she asked carefully. “It’s barely ten.”
His lips seemed to thin. God, those lips were so gorgeous, and they could kiss like a dream. Like a particularly hot, wicked, sensual dream. She kne
w. His lips had been on hers, licking at her lips, nipping at them. He had kissed her as though he had meant to devour her.
“You’re so exhausted, you’re close to falling asleep at the computer.” He frowned back at her. “You should be well aware by now that I’m not going to hurt you. Sleeping in the bed with me won’t be nearly so traumatic as fucking me in one, surely.”
Her face flushed. Risa felt the rise of red-hot color washing over her features as she stared back at him in furious amazement.
“That was completely uncalled for.” She jumped from her seat, outraged. “If you can’t keep a civil tongue in your mouth, then don’t speak.”
She fell back on her grandmother’s antiquated superiority. God, was she so lacking that she couldn’t even bear hearing the word from his lips? Fucking. They had fucked. He had fucked her. She wanted to cover her ears in the hopes of blotting out the thoughts. Because she didn’t find it nearly as distasteful as she wanted to. The implications of the word brought to mind the sweaty, slick movements of their bodies together. Her cries. His groans. The touch of his hands, the thrust of his cock inside her.
She nearly had to clench her thighs together to hold back the overpowering lust.
Whore’s Dust, was it? She couldn’t imagine it. Nothing had felt so natural as wanting Micah.
“You go to bed if you’re so tired,” she finally snapped. “I’ll be in later.”
He grinned. That sensually full, mobile mouth curved into a grin of sheer male confidence and superiority. The kind of grin she had seen her friends’ husbands give their wives when they were determined to get their way.
“I’m very tired,” he informed her. “A little minx kept me up well past my bedtime last night, then skipped out on me and forced me to follow after her. I stared into her window like a lovesick Romeo pining for her attention.”
“Or a covert agent hoping she hadn’t managed to get herself kidnapped before you could capture her murderer,” she snarled back in reply. “Orion matters so much to you that you were willing to fuck someone you didn’t even know to get to him?”
His brow arched. “Such language, Risa.” Amusement glittered in his black eyes. “Be careful. You’re liable to give me a hard-on talking that way. I’d be extremely uncomfortable sleeping if you did.”
She almost lost her breath at the thought. Micah, aroused, in her bed. A shiver worked up her spine before she managed to turn away from him and stomp to the window on the opposite side of the room.
She stared into the park across from the apartment building, fighting to make sense of her response to him rather than any other man.
Not that there had been men to choose from, unfortunately. But Micah was like the epitome of men. Look in the dictionary for “male” and there most certainly would be a picture of him staring back.
He was tall, dark-skinned. Jeans hugged his ass. A white cotton shirt emphasized his leanly muscled shoulders. And he wore boots. He was wearing boots. Cowboy boots that were well worn, faded, and scarred. The perfect kind of bad-boy boots.
“Risa.”
She jumped as his face joined hers in the glass of the window; then his hands fell on her shoulders as he pulled her back, allowing the curtain to fall into place once again.
Risa shuddered at the warmth of his hands even as she pulled herself away from him and turned to glare at him.
“What?”