The memory of taking her up against the tree had kept him up for hours at night. It had been as if he’d been watching a movie of some cool guy who had lots of experience with women. But his body had gone on autopilot. There’d been no premeditated thinking, just wanting and then grabbing her and more sex.
“Which car is yours?” he asked curtly, and she pointed to an old blue Buick wagon with wood panels parked across the street. He cut across the middle of the street, half dragging her alongside him. He opened her car door and practically pushed her inside. “I’ll call you later,” he said.
“Peter…” she called after him, but he was halfway to his own car already.
Allison sat in her car, hands on the steering wheel to keep them from shaking any harder. What the hell had just happened? Her perfect date had turned into a nightmare. She’d teased Peter about being an alien, but after seeing him take on three men and beat them with ease, she might have to reassess her stance on paranormal activity. What he’d done hadn’t been quite human. If he’d offered an explanation or comforted her after the fight, maybe she wouldn’t be alone in her car about to cry. But no, he’d run off as if there were a fire under his ass, and this time she didn’t believe him when he said he’d call.
More to the point, she wasn’t sure she’d answer if he did call. He’d freaked her out.
Eventually she made it home, climbed the stairs to her room, and burrowed under her covers. Eight hours later she was awoken by a light touch on her cheek. She blinked, then sat straight up. A large hand covered her mouth before she could scream.
“Allison, it’s me, Peter.”
She was too young to have a heart attack, but that didn’t stop the organ from pounding a beat harder than Led Zeppelin’s drummer. She grabbed at his hand, and when he moved it away from her mouth, she whispered, “What are you doing here? How did you get in?”
It was hard to see him in the shadowy dark of her room, but she thought he shrugged. “You saw what I can do this afternoon. Entering your house is nothing. Especially since you don’t have an alarm.”
Okay, now she was freaked, and having seen his martial arts demonstration earlier, she knew there wasn’t a chance of escaping, and yet she couldn’t take her eyes off him. The majority of her brain was screamingstalker—call the police, but this was Peter, the boy she’d trusted to make love in the woods.
“Don’t be scared.” He scooted back to the foot of the bed, and she immediately backed up until her spine aligned with her headboard, her arms curled around her knees. “I won’t hurt you. I would never hurt you,” he whispered gently.
She didn’t relax her pose and remained straining to see him in the dark.
“Shoot,” he muttered, and her mattress lurched slightly as he stood. “I scared you this afternoon, and I’m scaring you more now. I’m sorry. I’ll go. You never have to see me again.”
“Wait,” she cried as he was reaching the door to her bedroom. The fact that he was ready to leave reassured her he meant her no harm. She watched his dark shadowy form freeze and spin back to face her. “It’s okay; you can stay.”
Slowly he stepped to her bed and eased himself down. It was a narrow twin bed, and Peter’s huge body dwarfed the small mattress. “I shouldn’t have come to see you, but I couldn’t stay away,” he said. “We can’t ever have something long-term between us, but I didn’t want to end things the way we did.”
“Why?”
“Because you were scared of me.”
“No, I meant why can’t we ever have something long-term, but yes, you scared the hell out of me. Where did you learn to fight like that?”
He was silent for a while, obviously struggling with what to tell her.
“You told me you were in training. Are you training to be a boxer?”
“Not quite, but close enough. And the training is why this thing between us can’t go further. There are all these expectations for me, and I don’t want you caught up in it.”
He was trying to protect her? From what? She’d made it pretty clear she was open to a fun summer fling, not looking for marriage. Still, it hurt that he was ruling out something long-term before they’d even begun. And his cryptic words about training and getting caught up in his world kind of freaked her out. She pulled the covers up over her knees protectively.
Peter leaned in until their faces were inches apart. “I amnothinglike the other guys you know. If my life were my own, I’d buy you a house in the suburbs and marry you and make babies. But I don’t have that to offer you, and, trust me, you don’t want what I have to offer.”
“Marriage? Babies? We’ve known each other two days. And I’m going to—”
“New York. I know,” he said almost bitterly. “You’re going to be the next Blondie, and I will not stand in your way.”
“Then what do we have?”
“This,” he said, and leaned in to find her mouth and take her in a deep kiss. As soon as his lips touched hers, all her fear and anger morphed quickly into passion, and she tugged him down to deepen the kiss. Just like at the concert, their passion exploded into an inferno. His large body pushed her willingly back into her mattress, and the comforter crushed up between them as an unwanted barrier.
She couldn’t get enough of his mouth and ached for more. “Get under here,” she ordered and tugged the blanket out from between their bodies. She heard him kicking off his boots and she sat up to yank her extra-large T-shirt over her head. Her panties were next. Peter stood next to the bed, ripping off his clothes silently and quickly.
When they were both naked and pressed head to toe under the blanket, she said, “We have to be quiet. My parents are down the hall, and my brother is next door.”
He kissed her quickly. “I’m not the problem. If memory serves, you were the one making all the noise.”