She shot him a quick frown. “Explains what?”
“The absolute fearlessness I sense in you.”
Warmth bloomed inside her at the compliment.
“Some people don’t like it. They find it intimidating.” Her chest tightened. Simon had been one of those people, and he’d found himself someone less…fearless.
Owen’s eyes held hers for a second. “I think it’s fucking sexy.”
Liquid heat pooled in the junction of Bria’s thighs, and she tugged him closer to her. “I’m going to fuck your brains out, Owen Blackthorne.”
He lowered his head to hers. “I have no problem with that at all.”
“G—”
He silenced her good with a brief kiss so hot and hungry and downright horny that she almost came on the spot.
Pulling away, she gazed up at him, breath ragged and shallow.
Jesus, what was it going to be like when they were behind closed doors and didn’t have to stop for public-decency reasons?
“C’mon.” She spun on her heel and hurried through the party. She didn’t want to wait any longer to find out.
It was fucking time.
Both metaphorically and literally.
Thank bloody God they were almost at Bria’s apartment.
It was tricky walking with a hard-on, especially in shorts a size too small for him. Owen tried to discreetly adjust himself again as he powered along beside Bria. One of the wings of the massive stingray pinned to his shirt kept getting in the way, and he’d mistakenly palmed it more than once instead of his cock, trying to get his imprisoned erection into a more comfortable position.
He was in mid-stride/adjust, Bria weaving them in and out of the crowd, when he caught sight of Tilly a few feet away laughing with a group of people all dressed like sexy scientists save for one, who no doubt was meant to be a sexy Frankenstein’s monster.
As if alerted to his attention via some kind of sibling psychic connection, she locked eyes with him across the distance, raised her left hand up a little, and tapped her index finger to the watch on her wrist. He was pretty certain she was reminding him of the curfew she’d given him, and not merely acknowledging the fact he’d given her the watch for her eighteenth birthday.
He pointed to his own watch-less wrist, pulled an oops face, and kept following Bria.
Even with the slight limp, Bria had the sexiest stride of any woman he’d ever known. Fierce, determined, deliberate.
His cock throbbed in eager anticipation.
She was unlike any woman—any person—he’d met, and it was doing his head in. In the few moments he’d been with her, he’d felt more alive, less on the edge of possible expiration, than he had for months. Since his first headache that had turned into a seizure back in July, and even more so since his biopsy a week ago, he’d been existing in a holding pattern. Coming to visit Tilly was meant to shake him out of it. It hadn’t, not really. Not until he’d met Bria. Whether she knew it or not, Bria had taken that holding pattern and kissed it into oblivion.
What would it be like to spend every remaining day of his short life with her? Not just tonight?
Whoa, mate. Pump the breaks there. For one, you don’t have an assigned used-by-date yet. And for another, this is only a hookup.
Was it though? He’d had more than one hookup in his time, although to be fair, you could count the number on one hand. This felt…more than that.
He swallowed, swiped at his mouth, and took a deep breath.
“Everything okay?” Bria asked at his side.
He flicked her a quick glance, and it suddenly dawned on him the dog-ears headband she’d worn when he’d first met her was nowhere to be seen. Back in the pool perhaps? Her unconstrained hair now streamed over her shoulders in long, damp waves of deep-copper red he wanted to run his fingers through.
Everything about her appealed to him; her personality, her fearlessness, her humor, her feistiness, and her body.
Yeah, everything.