“You’re overthinking it.” She maneuvered next to him and put the cue back in his hand. “Relax, and just take your shot.” She grabbed the white ball from where it had landed, inches from a pocket, and set it back in the center of the table.
She stood close enough he felt her heat and smelled the sharp tang of cherry. Desire prickled along his skin, spurred by her body and fantasies of licking along her skin. He bent at the waist, careful of how his semi-hard shaft met the edge of the table. “It’s war, right? Things happen.”
Great. She was within pin-her-to-the-wall-and-kiss-her-until-they-couldn’t-breathe proximity, and he was talking about his demons. Rather than dwell on the past, he pushed the stick toward its target. The cue head bounced off the felt and jumped over the ball instead of hitting it.
“Try again.”
He sighed and repositioned himself. “Maybe I shouldn’t have been so picky about the job. I don’t have any actual qualifications to do what I do. Not like real-world experience.” The words tasted foul. What the fuck was his problem?
“Because what you did doesn’t count as experience? I mean, I know you can’t give me specifics, but to keep you interested for so long, it had to be intense.”
Intense.That was one way to put it. He’d tried to make the same point to the interviewer. Sort of. “That’s the problem. Since I can’t go into detail... They say,tell me about a time you solved a really big problem that saved an employer money.I can’t tell them what I really did, so what comes out is,I did some stuff with computers, and it was really high-end, I promise.Yeah, that’s convincing.”
He held up the cue in frustration. “Are you going to show me how to do this right, or not?”
“Fine.” She let out a mock sigh. Moving next to him again, she positioned his left hand properly. She settled her right arm against his and rested her chest against his back. She pressed her cheek against his bicep, helping him line up the cue. “I’d go on about angle and trajectory and all that, but for me it’s instinct.” She pulled back his arm and helped him take the shot.
The balls scattered again, and three more slid into pockets. He had no idea what he’d just done. All he knew was how incredible she felt pressed against him. He dropped the cue but didn’t pull away.
“You’ve gotten better,” she said
“I tried to get a little practice in.” His hand settled under hers.
He should move. Put some distance between them. Her heat seeped into all his senses, pushing past frustration and demons and awkwardness, and driving straight to his dick.Fuck.Riley had always been touchy-feely, but this pushed buttons he never realized he had.
He wanted her. He wanted to strip her down right here and make their dirty talk a reality.
And the last thing he wanted to do was hurt her. A little pain was all right, but heartbreak...
In a single motion, he twisted from her touch, spun, and grabbed her wrists before she could pull away. She locked her gaze on his—eyes wide and shocking blue. When she licked her bottom lip, any words he had evaporated, lost in his desire to dip in and taste her.
“What’s wrong?” Though her question was soft, it stood out among all the background noise. Distinct and tempting.
The few faint snatches of reason left in his head pointed out he didn’t want to go down this road with Riley. She deserved better than a hard-on-fueled fuck-fest in the back of his truck. She deserved better than him.
He dragged the reminder to the front of his thoughts and forced his voice to remain firm. “I know we said the what happened while I was gone is done and over—the past is in the past, sex ruins friendships, all that—so fair warning. You’re way too tempting to ignore when you do things like press your body against me.”
That should have been that. He expected her to pull away, maybe refuse to look him in the eye, and then they’d find a new comfortable middle ground.
Instead, she shifted her weight, rubbing her frame against him. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“It is if you meant what you said.” There was no way she didn’t feel how hard he was, his cock digging into her hip. Impulse surged stronger. The one that wanted to bend her over the pool table, regardless of how crowded the place was, and drive inside her.
She didn’t struggle against his grip, even when it tightened enough for his fingers to dig into her skin. A flush spread over her face, and her pupils dilated. “Do you really think the cyber stuff was a mistake?”
He swallowed. How the hell was he supposed to answer that? “I never said that.”
“You implied it.”
He forced the gears in his brain to unstick—to push past her soft scent, her gentle curves, her skin against his. “Neither one of us wants to get attached,” he said.
“I never said anything about getting attached.” The corner of her mouth pulled up in a mischievous smile, and she broke one hand away from him. She trailed down the chain around his neck, grasped his dog tags, and tugged lightly.
“You don’t want to go down this road.” His restraint had stretched past its snapping point. He gripped her wrist. Hard.
Her delighted gasp didn’t help. “I do. Tell me you’re not interested, and I’ll never mention it again. No hard feelings.” Her lips hovered centimeters from his, obliterating reason.