She approached and knew from the way he’d glanced sideways that he was totally aware she’d been standing there.
“You’re not mad that I took your motorcycle?”
“Nope. I could see you knew how to handle a bike. And you seemed to have sobered up enough to steal it. I decided to just wait it out and hope you’d behave.”
Sophia’s brow shot up, and she grinned in the same way that Bunny loved to tease her about… when he’d accuse her of being purposely bratty. “Behave?”
“Yeah, you know. Not get into any trouble. Take a short ride down memory lane and return looking the way you did when you left.”
“I do look the same.”
“I beg to differ. When you disappeared, your dress was clean, you still had one shoe, and there weren’t any abrasions on your face. Wanna tell me what happened in the interim?”
Sophia heard the hardness that entered his tone when he mentioned the bruise. And she almost stepped back when his hand lifted and gently caressed the area on her cheek that still stung. Shocked, unable to move, she gazed back at his mesmerizing stare and answered.
“I went to the beach.”
“Okay.”
“I heard Stasia crying.”
“She was alone?”
“Yes. I mean no. I mean she was alone when I first saw her. She was terrified.”
“And you couldn’t walk away.” He didn’t say it like a question.
“No. I went to her and saw she’d been in the water and looked like a drowned kitten.”
“Uh huh.”
“Well what could I do?”
“Exactly.”
“I had to help her. She was terrified.”
“You already said that.”
“Right. So, I brought her home.”
“You forgot to mention the part where some asshole punched you. I want to know who so I can go back and nail the son of a bitch.”
Sophia heard the menace. In fact, she felt it oozing around them and knew Sam meant every word. Why he would say such a thing, she had no idea. Yet he spoke with enough conviction that she realized he could and would if she gave him the information.
His confidence made her feel protected, and that’s not something that any other man had made her feel ever before. Not knowing how to handle so much emotion, she forced herself to turn away from his piercing brown scrutiny that could steal her breath away.
Everything would have been fine if he’d let her go. But he didn’t. Instead, he used his hands to turn her back toward him, lowered his mouth, and then kissed her. Not a soft kiss one might give as a first try, no not soft at all.
But it wasn’t a hard, hurting force of his mouth on hers either. He just lowered his lips until they hovered inches above hers. Until she could smell the warmth of his coffee breath and feel the heat of his thrilling presence. Then he searched her eyes.
With anyone else trying a stunt like this, she’d have had them either on the floor writhing from being kicked in a place to take their mind off sex. Or, she’d have maneuvered herself away from their manipulation and made them understand her lack of interest.
Instead, with Sam, she sighed, returned his sultry gaze, and waited until his lips were taking possession of hers. Everything about the subsequent kiss blew her mind. The taste of him, the softness inside his mouth when he opened to her tongue and gave her his. The groan of relief she heard as if he’d been waiting forever for this moment.
What the hell was she thinking? How in the world had he gotten under her shield? He needed to leave. She had a job to do. Pulling away from his warmth, she wiped at her mouth as if his kiss needed to be removed and turned her back.
“Goodness, that’s enough of that nonsense. I need to look after Stasia, and you need to leave.”
“No. You need to tell me the truth about what went down at the beach tonight. And I need to check it out. There’s no way a kid her age should be running away, trying to drown herself. She’s terrified and looks like she has good reason to be. Just the fact that she had a man coming after her, putting you in a position where you had to fight him off, tells me there’s much more to the story.”
They didn’t hear Stasia’s return.
“There were three men. And Sophia won.”