He wasn’t a man used to denying himself when he wanted a woman, but Indy was different. She’d shown him her sass and determination. Honestly, if he’d been able to forget about her, he would have been...well not happier per se but it would have made life easier. Instead he was catching feelings for her. She’d been in his head and on his palate all night.
He’d showered and masturbated when he got home, hoping that would level off his hormones and give him a modicum of relief, but again, no. Indy Belmont was still in his blood and playing hell with his senses. Nothing he’d created in the kitchen had satisfied him either.
Probably because he had only seen the glimpse of the woman she was. She’d shown him the spunky, feisty bookshop owner determined to rejuvenate her town. She’d given him a taste of her passion when she’d touched him and kissed him in her kitchen.
He admired her. He wasn’t going to deny it. But he needed her naked in his bed. On top of him and under him, facing him, her back pressed against him. He wanted her every way he could have her. He just felt like if he had her then maybe, he could finish that dish which danced elusively around him. And then, maybe, he could stop thinking about her.
She shifted on the bed. He could tell she was wearing some sort of T-shirt. Her hair was down—not as long as he’d guessed it was—and it was curlier. It framed her face and fell only to her shoulders. She had on a pair of horn-rimmed glasses and her heart-shaped face was free of makeup.
Her lips were a natural dusky rose color, and her eyes were big and brown behind the lenses of her glasses, inviting him closer to delve into her secrets. Or was that only his imagination? He wanted her in a way that he hadn’t wanted a woman in a long time.
She hadn’t responded after he had emphasized how much he liked her. Hell, he had a hard-on and they hadn’t been doing anything but talking.
Except talking was all it seemed to take sometimes. Her voice was soft and gentle late at night. Though he knew she lived alone, it seemed she had quieted her voice.
“Did I scare you off?” he asked. Because he didn’t figure her for a woman who’d be scared of anything. Especially a man.
“No. I wish I could be some kind of sophisticated woman who knew what to say to that. But I’m not.”
“Just be yourself. Did I scare you?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head making a few tendrils of her curls bounce around her face.
“Turn you on?”
She chewed her lower lip for a minute and then slowly nodded.
“Good. That’s what I was hoping for. You turn me on too.”
“Really?” she asked sounding skeptical.
“I’m not a guy to lie.”
“Oh, I got that about you,” she said. “You have all these upper-crust manners some of the time, but most of the time you walk around as if you own the world.”
“Don’t I?” he asked, teasing her.
She shook her head. “No, dear beast, you don’t.”
Dear beast.
He had felt like one ever since that night ten years ago. Not the car accident but who he’d been before it. The way he’d turned away women who he’d deemed not pretty enough for him, hurting more than one according to overheard comments later in the evening. Then he’d beaten that punk after he’d attacked Rory. Screamed at his grandfather.
But he’d never felt at home with the name. He’d wore it because he’d known deep in his soul that there was something savage about him. Even with his money and manners, there had been something monstrous about him since the moment his parents had died.
“If I did, would it be easier to claim you?” he asked her.
She laughed, and it was a loud full-bodied sound that made his dick even harder. “I’ve given you the wrong impression of me if you think there is anything easy about me.”
He smiled but it was getting harder to keep things light. No, there was nothing easy about Indy. She was complex and intricate. A nice person but not a pushover. Sexy and shy. She was so many differing things at the same time, and all it did was heighten his need to claim her as his own.
“I remember you bullying me into coming to the spring renewal even though I won.”
“Bullying!”
“You weren’t about to take no for an answer.”
“You’re right about that. But I just pushed because you’re big enough to take it.”