Tamara stared at him, shock forcing all the air from her lungs.
His eyes gleamed, cold and sharp as razors from beneath thick black lashes. “You shouldn’t come here if you can’t handle yourself, baby.”
She blinked, still unable to process quite what was happening. The heat coming off him was incredible and he smelled of hot metal, oil, and clean, male sweat. And something else, a spice she couldn’t quite identify.
Her mouth dried, her heart battering itself against the cage of her ribs, that strange knot of sensation in her gut gathering excruciatingly tight.
For God’s sake, pull yourself together. He’s just another man being an asshole.
Yes, good point. After the problems she’d been having with Scott at work, she was getting really sick of men being assholes.
She swallowed. “Perhaps you should have thought of that when you decided to have women’s self-defense classes at night, in a shady part of town.”
“The classes aren’t for the likes of you. They’re for women here, not fucking sightseers.”
Her heartbeat was now like a drum in her head. She could barely hear anything over the sound of it. “Look,” she said, trying to keep her voice level. “I just want to go home. So back the hell off.”
He smiled. “Make me.”
* * *
Jackie Ashenden, author of the 11th Hour and Motor City Royals series, lives in Auckland, New Zealand, with her husband, the inimitable Dr. Jax, two kids, and two cats. When she’s not torturing alpha males and their stroppy heroines, she can be found drinking chocolate martinis, reading anything she can lay her hands on, posting random crap on her blog, or being forced to go mountain biking with her husband. Jackie also writes the dark, sexy contemporary Nine Circles romance series for St. Martin’s Press. Visit her at jackieashenden.com.
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