Shark's Edge

by Angel Payne, Victoria Blue

“Oh.” She thumbed over her shoulder toward the building. “I mentor a girls’ club. Middle and high school girls—young entrepreneurs.”

  She was fumbling for words, and for some reason it turned me on. Normally the insecure type did nothing for me, but I’d seen the fire in this woman’s spirit. I knew it was solely a reaction to being near me.

  My dick twitched as I put the pieces together.

  Yep. That’s what was doing it.

  I nodded in approval. I appreciated business owners who gave back to the community and especially to youth groups. Having had the rough upbringing I had, I knew the value of outreach programs like hers. “That’s a great idea. You’ll have to introduce me to your group.”

  “What makes you think they’d want to meet you?”

  I cocked my head to the side. Be serious. I was on the Fortune 500 list for the past ten years in a row. And that was just for starters. I was a self-made success story, and I had a ton of valuable information and advice to teach young business people. She knew it, I knew it—hell, even those high school girls knew it.

  “Abbigail.” Her name left my mouth on a sigh, and it felt so right on my tongue. Just like I knew she’d taste so right there too. Her lips. Her skin. Her pussy. Yes. All of it would be perfection. I took another step toward her, invading her personal space exactly like I had in my office earlier in the week. She was so easily dominated. She wanted me to take control of her pleasure. She all but begged me to with her vast green stare as she watched me move incrementally closer.

  “Hmmm?” She tilted her head back. That particular way women do. She looked up at me, screaming kiss me but not saying a word. My cock knew what she was asking. The bugger was jerking in my shorts with every bat of her eyelashes.

  We’ll get there, big guy. This one’s going to be worth the chase.

  “Why is it?” I ran my thumb just above her eyebrow, smoothing out the line of tension that formed there. “Why is it I can’t keep my hands off you when you’re near me?”

  “I— I don’t know. Is that an actual question?”

  “Mmmmm.” I hummed low in my throat and traced my thumb around her eye to the apple of her cheek, where the sun had kissed her pale skin. She glowed a rosy pink from the afternoon heat. I cradled her face with my other hand, reaching my strong fingers around the back of her head while I caressed her lips with my thumbs.

  “I’m going to kiss you, Abbigail,” I growled roughly.

  “Yes,” she breathed out in response.

  “I wasn’t asking. I know you’ll let me. It’s written all over your face.” I moved my mouth closer to hers. “Your glassy eyes.”

  Closer.

  “Your sharp little breaths.”

  Closer.

  “Your parted lips.”

  Closer still. Until my lips were just a hair’s breadth away from hers.

  “I can smell how much you want me. I can smell it on your skin.” I touched my lips to hers but not a true kiss.

  “From between your thighs.”

  Then I crashed my mouth together with hers. Mastering her lips apart with my tongue. Calling hers forward, only to retreat when she responded. Again. And again. When a frustrated mewl worked its way up her throat, I gave her what she wanted, twining my tongue with hers, stabbing and thrusting in deeply until she panted through her nose for air.

  “That’s good.” I pulled back, grinning. “I can definitely work with that.”

  Chapter Seven

  Abbi

  For a second, I wondered why I was still breathing. Or standing upright. Or conscious, for that matter.

  I urgently worked air in and out of my lungs. A mix of fire and ice that claimed my legs—as well as the throbbing currents at their crux. My head felt like a marble tossed in a steel bowl. My ears clanged. My eyesight was foggy. My equilibrium swam.

  And I instantly wanted more.

  How could I not have known? How could I have roamed this planet for twenty-two years and not realized this was what lips were meant to feel like? That a heart was supposed to feel like it was about to explode from my chest? That colors were supposed to be this vivid, scents were supposed to be this mouthwatering, and one man alone was supposed to be the center of my need just seconds after he’d moved away from me?

  Away being relative. Thank God.

  He hadn’t gone far. I hoped it was because he was lost in the same how-am-I-still-breathing mire as I was.

  I gave in to the craving to confirm it. I raised a hand to where his chest was surging like a violent sea. But there was nothing liquid about the texture beneath my touch.

  “Oh,” I croaked, touching the defined muscles beneath his T-shirt. I let my hands drift across his pecs, appreciating the firmness as his torso heaved with each breath. Air sawing in and out like waves on the shore . . . a steady, strong cadence . . . a pulse reflected back through the ocean-blue eyes that bored into me while I explored.

  “Oh,” I repeated again, sounding more like a moan of appreciation the second time, though.

  “Fuck.” Sebastian’s husk jolted through my whole body. “Fuck,” he said again, lowering his forehead to mine and then rolling side to side where we touched, intensifying our heated connection.

  As if his action was my unspoken permission, I slid my free hand around his nape. Holy crap, he even had muscles back there. I prodded and squeezed, hoping to elicit another addicting F-word from his firm lips.

  “Abbigail.” Not quite what I was going for but equally perfect. The man’s dark baritone was instant fire at my core. “Abbi,” he whispered.

  Oh, yes. Perfect.

  Especially if he planned on finishing it by kissing me again.

  Oh, how I needed him to kiss me again.

  Dammit. Please kiss me again . . .

  “Hmm?” All right, so signals got lost between the seductress in my head and the naïf on my lips. Not that Sebastian noticed, based on the hard length pushing through his nylon shorts and my flimsy skirt. How I savored the feel his need. Of his . . . his erection.

  As I forced myself to consciously think it, I gulped hard.

  So did Sebastian.

  Right before he trailed his lips along my hairline, rasping as he did, “Oh . . . Abbigail. What the hell are you doing to me?”

  “Well, nothing involving poison.” Though I tried to laugh it out, the effect was more of a pathetic croak. “Which was why you all but dragged me back here by my hair, right?”

  His determined growl vibrated through both of us. “If I drag you anywhere by your hair, girl, you’ll beg me for it first.”

  And just like that, I was even more bewildered. Thank God he somehow had me pinned to the back wall of the snack shack, nearly holding me off the ground with the weight of his body. “Well, that sounds . . . splendid.”

  Not that this wasn’t. Holy crap, our flirting was a lot more fun than I remembered it being with others in the past—especially as Sebastian reacted by grinding in until my thighs were fully parted for him. And then laved my neck and earlobe with heated licks and bites.

  “Ms. Gibson,” he finally asserted in a sexy murmur, “I don’t do splendid.”

  “Hmmm.” My heartbeat galloped as I did my best to sound coy. “What do you do?”

  He pushed a low growl into the curve between my neck and shoulder. “Well, I can promise a few more S-words will likely be involved.”

  “Like sensual?” I smiled, letting those three carnal syllables swirl down through me. “And slide . . . and satiny . . . and screw?”

  Holy wow. I’d never said all that before. The words, yes. But all in one sentence? With one specific motivation? For one beautiful, dominating man? Never.

  But I was nailing it.

  I was a freaking femme fatale—and I was pretty sure I’d just drawn blood.

  For all of two seconds.

  Before Sebastian Shark twisted his head with the focus of a lion about to dig into his prey.

  He growled into my neck, sending liquid lust throug
h every membrane of my being. And then anchored my head with a commanding hand so he could bite into the meat of my earlobe.

  Hard.

  “Uuhhh!” I repeated the soft but high yelp as he slid to the tender spot below my ear, nipping brutally again. He used the flat of his tongue to soothe the abrasion, though I told myself not to be lulled back to any sense of safety.

  It was wise counsel.

  I was stunned all over again as he leaned back and impaled me with the blue steel of his gaze. Dear God. This man and his hypnotic eyes.

  He only magnified the torment—the magic—when contrasting their sapphire splendor with an onyx-dark scowl. “All right, Ms. Gibson,” he said, his tone a sudden clip of all-business purpose. “It’s time we got clear about some things.”

  I sensed him wanting to hold up his fingers, just like he’d done the first time he had me trapped and horny like this. But this time, I refused to lose my focus to furious tears. I was a temptress, after all. “I’m listening.”

  A long-suffering look clouded his handsome face, matched by his heavy sigh. “I don’t do sensual. I do sex. And I don’t slide with satiny intent. I pound with one clear goal. And I sure as hell don’t screw, either.” By the time he finished the litany, he almost looked amused, and I went from sexual seductress to silly schoolgirl in the flash of five sentences.

  I shifted my weight—as far as was possible, anyway, with my body still locked by his—and forced myself back into the temptress’s head space, trying to salvage the moment along with my dignity. “Fine. You don’t screw.” I nudged up my chin, proud of how the words flowed as if I’d said them a hundred times. “You fuck.”

  He compressed his lips tighter. “No.”

  Oddly—and thrillingly—the air hitched in my throat. “No?”

  “I take.” He moved back by a step, seeming to sense I needed the space.

  He wasn’t wrong.

  “Not forcibly, but not tenderly.” He squared his shoulders. “I take what’s consensually offered to me. My partners enjoy themselves and are fairly compensated for the experience. In the end, everyone goes away happy.”

  Thank God, even more, for that extra space. I was positive I sucked down every bit of air between us as I dropped my hands and then dug my fingertips into my thighs. “But there’s an end.” I abhorred every note of dejection that weaseled its way into my voice. I shouldn’t give a flying crap about his “ends,” happy, consensual, or otherwise. Nothing about today had changed a thing between us. It sure hadn’t changed anything about him, no matter how hard he rocked the hot, doting uncle bit.

  Come tomorrow morning, Sebastian Shark would still be Sebastian Shark. High above the city in his cushy tower, snarling at those below. Even his bromance sparring sessions with Grant Twombley would remain. And of course, complaining about my salad dressing—or the color of his napkin.

  Or maybe none of it—if he still intended to push legal action about my food messing with his sensitive stomach.

  A concept that should have knocked my pulse back to normal but didn’t. It was simply impossible to imagine this looming panther as a weak kitten on a hospital bed. My mind’s eye just wasn’t capable of seeing it.

  Which meant only one thing.

  It was time to get back to my girls.

  “So . . . ” I went ahead and spoke up, since our silence had stretched to the point of uncomfortable. “Now that we have that cleared up, thanks for stopping by today. Don’t call us; we’ll call you.”

  I almost added a small snicker—until Sebastian made it clear he wasn’t laughing. Not by a glowering long shot. I ended up gulping instead, when he hitched back into place in front of me. Every drop of moisture in my throat evaporated as Shark extended one arm to the wall beside my head. In so many ways, this position was more unnerving than his intrusion for the kiss.

  “Hmmm.” He dipped in his head, studying me even deeper. “Tears to deal with the fury . . . but a headlong sprint into sass when someone decides to open up a little.” He closed in tighter, lighting the shadows between our faces with the brilliance of his gaze. “Is this how you keep all the boys away, Abbigail? Or is it just me?”

  I was back to reining in a salty laugh. All the boys? Ohhh, silly man. If you only knew.

  Except that there was nothing to know.

  Leading me back to the behavior that, damn it all, proved his point to a freaking T.

  “And is this how you keep all the girls close and bunched in the panties, Sebastian? By claiming you’ve actually ‘opened up’ to them?”

  What the hell is wrong with me? Why am I purposely provoking the bastard who holds all my cards right now?

  He turned the tables on me again as he scrutinized me from down his noble, carved features, just before rocking his head back a fraction—and bursting with one of the fullest, loudest, most unexpected laughs I’d ever heard in my life.

  I half expected a camera crew to pop out of the bushes and yell some catchphrase from a television show that hadn’t aired yet. Maybe they were shooting the pilot and Sebastian Shark was an executive producer who agreed to star in the season opener to lure viewers . . .

  My confusion had to be broadcast across my features as I waited for him to summon some composure and swing his sights back down on me, seizing me all over again with his intense blues. And immediately intensify the effect with his riveting physical grace and predatory energy.

  “Ohhh, Ms. Gibson.”

  And that bestial grumble . . . that did equally primal things to every nerve ending in my body.

  I shifted my eyes left, then right, and then back to him. “Yes?”

  He curled in toward me. Over me. Drove that blue crystal gaze into me while that devil’s smile kept playing across his lips. “You talk to me like nobody else does,” he husked. “Like nobody else dares.”

  “Maybe more people should.”

  “Maybe we should just keep this between us.”

  His mouth returned to its granite line, but his eyes kept up the smile. I was so entranced by their intensity, I forgot to breathe. When I finally did, my senses were filled with his spicy, masculine musk. My sights were consumed by the defined planes of his chest. My sex was achingly aware of its nearness to his.

  “What does that mean?” I finally countered. “That you trust me now?” I cocked both my brows. “Or are you holding on to the delusion that I poisoned you?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “But you didn’t say I’m exonerated, either.” I aligned my hands at the center of his chest. “Do I have to stab in here and jerk it out of you?”

  His gaze narrowed by a telling fraction. “Not the spot I’d envisioned you jerking, Red.”

  I plowed past his filthy inference. I had to stay focused on the important subject here. “If I’m facing a court action tomorrow, I need to know.”

  Aha. Progress. At least that was what I hoped as he drew in significant air. “I haven’t instructed the sheriff’s office to keep pursuing things. But I haven’t told them to close the file, either.”

  “Which means what?”

  As his assessing scowl became an insolent sneer, I wondered if it was the look he gave business rivals before telling them they’d been bested. “It simply means that I may need to be further . . . persuaded . . . about your innocence.”

  “Persuaded? How?”

  He stretched out his other arm, thoroughly fencing me in with his rippled guns. He waited one more second, as if really-but-not-really weighing options, before murmuring, “Have dinner with me.”

  “Ex . . . excuse me?” A laugh spurted out before I could stop it. “You want to have dinner . . . with me? At night? Sitting down and actually talking to servers like they’re human?”

  He tilted his head to the other side. “Yes, yes, and no.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Yes, I want to have dinner with you. Yes, at night. But absolutely no on the civility with servers.” He straightened his head before qualifying, “Actually,
no on the servers, period.”

  I shook my head. “I . . . don’t follow.”

  “It’s simple. You’ll come to my place.”

  So this was what frozen dread felt like. “I will?”

  “Not tonight, of course.”

  “Of course,” I repeated lightly. However, I did so mockingly. “Let’s just—”

  “I’ll have Craig reach out to set something up. You have any allergies or culinary hard limits?”

  “Hard . . . limits?”

  Dear freaking God. It sounded like I’d never heard the words before. I had—just never in the same discussion as dinner.

  With hypnotic finesse, Sebastian handled my query with a steady stroke along the side of my neck. “Things you can’t or won’t eat, Little Red.”

  “Uhhhh . . . ” I opened my mouth. Closed it. Forced my lips to connect with words again. “No. I . . . ummm . . . enjoy all kinds of cuisine. But—”

  “Outstanding.”

  His smile widened, opening a chasm of bliss in my chest. The man’s smile was more devastating than his eyes.

  “I’ll instruct Craig to get his ass to Belcampo Meats and grab us a pair of steaks. We can talk while they’re on the grill. You like California or French reds better?”

  “I—” Was still having issues with basic language, apparently. “Wh-Who’s Craig?”

  “My personal assistant. He’ll make sure you get the address and all the proper NDA forms.”

  “Your personal assistant? That’s not Terryn? NDA forms?”

  “Terryn is my executive assistant. The NDA is standard protocol, Abbigail. Practically the same agreements you signed when Shark Enterprises signed you on as our caterer.”

  With massive effort to focus, I finally stepped away from his potent hold. “I’m still your exclusive caterer?”

  He pivoted, looking as regal as a king while handing my phone back. “For now, yes.”

  I matched his imperious regard while taking the device. “Depending on how much you enjoy yourself when I fix you dinner?”

  “When I fix you dinner.”

  It didn’t surprise me, but it didn’t put me at ease, either. “With reimbursement for everything . . . after dinner?”