Chapter 5
TWO DAYS AFTER the Incident, Holly pulled into the Brownsboro district and parked on the edge of the dirt-covered street. As neighborhoods outside of Hartford went, this one wasn’t the worst, but close to it.
Brownsboro’s potential was great, with its convenient location near a new apartment complex and revitalization project on the strip where several upscale restaurants had recently opened their doors.
When her father let her know about Brownsboro, Holly had begged to be on the project. It was slightly out of her league, but she’d listed Dalton’s abilities and argued that together, they’d be the perfect team to run the project.
After a few anxious hours, her father agreed. Dalton had jumped at the chance to work on the project, and Holly hadn’t been surprised. If there was anyone unafraid to do difficult work, it was him.
Except for her. She was difficult and he wouldn’t do her. She spotted him on the other side of the street, his pale blue shirt stretched over his strong back, hands on his hips while he leaned over a clipboard and talked to a foreman. She grabbed the bright yellow hard hat from the front seat of her BMW and put it on. At the sound of her shutting her driver’s side door, Dalton turned his head. The moment he spotted her, his brow crashed down.
So not happy to see her…but still so sexy. He turned back to the foreman. In her world, men who wore suits and ties were dull and drab. Being on site with the grouchy best friend of her brother was an exciting experience of jeans and tees and muscles and damn, Dalton had a great ass.
He fit here. He fit with her. All she had to do was convince him. Despite his firm “no” in her office, she’d glanced to his southerly hemisphere and caught sight of something equally firm. He was attracted to her, he just hadn’t wanted to admit it.
They’d known each other a long time, so his hesitance was understandable. But she needed him to see things the way she saw things. As part of her New Holly Resolution, she refused to take no for an answer. She was going to nail this.
So to speak.
“Hello, Mr. Thomas,” she said on approach.
“Ms. Larson,” he said without looking up. He scribbled his signature on the form on the clipboard and handed it back to the foreman at his side. “You run into problems, Carl, you let me know.”
Dalton turned, his tongue darting out to wet his lips. She had to push her knees together when desire thrummed low in her belly. She dragged up her courage by the bootstraps.
“I’m not taking no for answer,” she informed him.
Dalton took a step closer and curled one hand around her upper arm. She tilted her chin and met his stormy blues, but he wasn’t angling for a kiss. He tightened his grip and walked with her to her car. She took a few quick steps to keep up with his long-legged gait, struggling to clip through dirt and gravel in high-heeled shoes. He noticed and slowed, releasing her when they were in front of her car.
“The answer is no, Holly.” He opened her car door for her. Chivalrous while being a prick. Interesting mix. “End of discussion. You can’t do this here.”
“You told me I could review the plans at the job site.”
“Yes. Review the plans. Not talk about this. You and I need to keep things professional between us.” He sent a glance around the immediate area, and hers followed. One semi-bored guy with a shovel looked up and then away. “Seriously, Holly.”
“Seriously, Dalton,” she snapped back. But his firm brow didn’t let up.
He leaned a hairbreadth closer. “You do realize that there are rules against us being colleagues and being together, right?”
She felt her face blanch before her cheeks warmed. She’d never thought of it that way.
“I could get fired and then we’d have an uncomfortable meeting in your father’s office. Do you want that?”
“Of course I don’t want that. I begged my father to put you on this project with me!”
Dalton’s shoulders visibly relaxed.
“It’s just…” Her mind was spinning as she reached for a bartering chip that might work to her favor and get them on even ground. Oh! The idea hit her like a flash. She would hit him with the mother of all threats.
One that would have him saying yes in a heartbeat.
“You’re my first choice”—she rested her hand casually on the open door of her car next to his—“but if you say no, I’ll be forced to have experimental dirty sex with some random guy.”
The scowl dashed from Dalton’s face, replaced by stone cold shock.
“One of Jace’s college buddies, maybe? Mitchum always liked me.”
“Mitchum Tate?” he growled.
Mitch was the biggest douchebag ever. She knew it. Dalton sure as hell knew it.
“Or you.” She lifted one shoulder into a delicate shrug and tried to make it appear careless. “I prefer you.” Gingerly, she reached through the open window on the car door between them and touched a button on his shirt. “I know you wouldn’t hurt me. After you teach me your tricks, or at least a few of them”—she peeked at him through her lashes—“you and I can walk away better for the experience.”
Dalton shook his head once, but before he opened his mouth, she felled him with a final blow.
“Just pretend you want me, Dalton.” Her voice was hushed, lost under a backhoe firing up in the distance. But she could see the exact moment concern blotted out the shock on his face.
Dalton had heard every word.
Chapter 6
PRETEND? THE WORD hit him like a bare-fisted punch.
He wouldn’t have to pretend to want her. He’d wanted Holly Larson since her twenty-first birthday. That night, he’d done the quick math and calculated that the five-year difference between them wasn’t very alarming after all. As they danced under a sea of pale pink helium balloons tied with gold ribbons, Dalton had glanced at Jace and quashed his desires. Being in the Larson family circle, and having the opportunity to work at LLM, was a dream he never would have dreamed if he hadn’t become best buds with Jace.
He refused to betray the family by taking advantage of Holly.
But today, the note of sadness in her eyes reminded him of the way she’d acted at the party the other night. Something told him this was deeper than her wanting to get laid. Maybe this was about her taking control of her life, like she’d said. Jumping into the experiences she’d been denied.
Damn, he couldn’t blame her for it. Hadn’t he found his opening the minute he’d been welcomed into the Larson home? He’d finally had an excuse to escape the Brownsboro district whenever Jace invited him over. And when it came time to get his first job, it hadn’t been the local factory that received Dalton’s application. He’d driven straight to LLM in a suit Jace had let him borrow and talked to Clark man-to-man.
Holly was still looking up at him, her gorgeous face a mixture of determination and vulnerability.
The guy she’d mentioned—Mitchum—was a total frat boy dick-weasel. Dalton thought of Mitch kissing Holly. Mitch touching Holly. Mitch sleeping with her, and then breaking her heart into a million pieces. He nearly burst into red-hot flames of anger at the thought.
“Mitch is out of the question,” he growled.
“Does that mean you’re saying yes?” Her eyebrows raised, hopeful.
“It means find someone else.”
“There’s no one else. I want someone I can trust. Someone who knows what he’s doing.” Her fingers played with his shirt button again.
He took a fortifying breath, prepared to tell her no all over again. It was for her own good.
She spoke before he could. “Let me tell you a story. You used to brag to Jace when you guys were in high school.” She rolled her eyes. “I was naive, so I didn’t always follow. But I remember vividly when you were talking about taking this one girl out and you parked in the woods. You said you took off her bra—”
He grimaced. “Tell me you walked back to your room and quit listening.” The sun beat down overhead and a bead of sweat trick
led down his neck and into his shirt.
“Shhh. I’m not done. You were bragging about how soft her breasts were and how she panted when you kissed her nipples.” Holly giggled. “Like a dog.”
He was going to die of humiliation. Holly never should have heard any of that.
“And then you mentioned getting your hands in her pants and I just couldn’t fathom it.” Her eyes widened. “Anyway, I went back to doing whatever I did, but that story…I thought of it over the years. When I started dating, I thought of it all the time. I want that.”
“It’s not a rite of passage,” he mumbled.
“It’s not about that. It’s about being with you that way.”
He froze, his eyes locked on hers. The something more he’d suspected hovered in the air between them, but then she blinked and the moment of bald honesty was gone.
“That’s my proposition,” she stated. “Take me parking.”
He laughed, then sobered when she didn’t laugh with him. “Take you parking.”
“Yeah. And some other things, but parking is the number one thing.”
He shook his head.
“Mitch would take me parking.” She took off the hard hat.
“Mitch would drink a beer he found on the side of the road.” Dalton had seen him do it once. He narrowed his eyes at Holly, suspecting he was being played like a saxophone. “You won’t call Mitchum Tate.”
“I will.” One pale eyebrow rose. The wind swept a few strands of her hair over her sticky lip gloss. He wanted to move the strands away. Palm her cheek. Tell her she had things all wrong. If she wanted great sex, she needed to find a great guy. Not check off a bizarre sex bucket list.
He’d seen her this determined once before. The day she’d accepted her promotion. Clark had said she’d specifically asked to work on the Brownsboro project, and was adamant about working on it with Dalton. When Holly found something she wanted, she was a force. It’d been an admirable quality, up until she’d used it against him.
“No sex,” he said.
She chuffed. “Not the first time, but my deal is absolutely for sex. And look, Mitch already asked me out.” She fished her phone out of her pocket and showed him a text stream.
Dinner party next weekend at my place, gorj. Jace can’t make it, but you can rep the Larsons.
Dalton skimmed her response: Checking. I’ll get back w you, then Mitch’s: Wear something sexy.
What an asshole. Dalton had seen the guy with his dates. He was demanding and piggish and had a master’s degree in ass-grabbing. Picturing Holly being accosted by the son of a bitch, or worse, falling for him and coming home with tears glittering in her soft green eyes, made Dalton angry enough to tear Mitch from limb from limb.
“Please?”
Begrudgingly, Dalton could admit he was the safest choice for Holly. He’d never harm her. He wanted nothing but good for her. She’d promised this was a “just for now” situation. It was like she knew she had his back to the wall.
“This ends after we park.”
“No deal.” She shook her head. “I have three things I want to do with you.”
His chest constricted, his imagination detailed and filthy in equal measures.
“Three things,” he said through clenched teeth. “And you won’t tell your family.”
“Come on. I’m not stupid.”
No, she was a cunning vixen.
He stared her down for a couple of sweaty seconds, turning over his options.
“Dalton?”
Numbly, he nodded. “Yeah, okay.”
“Yeah?” Every inch of her brightened. Her eyes, her smile, her posture.
“Yeah, Holly,” he grated, hating the pound of excitement in his gut. He’d finally get to kiss her, and a hell of a lot more. “That was a yes.”
Chapter 7
AS HOLLY HAD so brazenly pointed out on the job site this past week, Dalton was no stranger to making out in the car. Hell, he’d grown up in the shittiest neighborhood in town. It wasn’t like he’d had a pool house to whisk his dates off to like Jace had. So, car it was. A jet-black 1975 Trans-Am. He’d rebuilt it from the engine up and it had been his pride and joy in high school. Looking back, the thing had been a heap, but it was a sexy, shiny heap, and plenty of girls had dropped their panties in it.
Now in his responsible sedan of adulthood, he parked at the top of Boone Hill, where a fleet of new-builds would soon be constructed into gargantuan homes for wealthy families. On top of a mound of piled dirt, he shook his head at their surroundings. A woman like Holly Larson deserved better. Arguably, better than him, and definitely better than making out at a construction site. Then again, she was in the biz, so maybe this kind of stuff turned her on.
“You’re sure, Hol?” he asked anyway. “You have a nice place.” She was a decent girl. Decent girls didn’t ask to be felt up in idling cars unless they were looking to slum.
But he knew this wasn’t some experiment for kicks for Holly. Not like it’d been when head cheerleader Christie Kirkham had wanted to piss off her boyfriend and had asked Dalton out. Not that he’d been against it at the time. Christie was hot. Holly was pretty damn hot herself, and her layers made her even more desirable.
The smell of fresh sawdust piped through the vent, and Holly’s gaze was focused on the house frames standing like sentinels. “Remember when I told you about the girl you took parking—”
“Let’s not rehash that tale of debauchery, yeah?”
“Who knew you were such a prude?” She laughed, the sound like chimes in the wind. “Well. I thought of another example.”
Fantastic.
“There was this time at one of my parents’ parties…”
“Don’t tell me you saw something.” Please, God. Her hearing him talk shit with Jace was bad enough. If he’d known she’d been paying this close attention to him, he never would have given her such horrendous examples of what jerks guys could be.
“I was seventeen, then, and very worldly.” She gestured to herself, one hand over her breasts. Holly Larson wasn’t seventeen now. With the moonlight shining on those high cheekbones and her clear, concise way of speaking, it was obvious she’d grown into a vibrant, sexy woman. A woman who wanted him to touch her everywhere he could reach tonight.
Goddamn. It was a gift.
“You and this really gorgeous redhead were in the billiards room.”
He remembered her. Shelly. No, wait. Shelby. “She wasn’t that hot,” he argued.
“Pfft.”
Holly was hotter, but since that would sound like a line, he kept it to himself.
“You laid her down, but the room opened to the back of the couch, so I couldn’t see what was happening.”
“Voyeur.”
“I just wanted to know what it would be like to be with…someone.”
The pause made him suspicious. Someone? Like him? His cheeks warmed and he reached for the vent.
“With you,” she confirmed. “So thanks for giving me the chance at experiencing, well…you.”
Her eyes, wide and earnest, were focused unerringly on him. She meant it. She seriously meant it. The guy who used to have a net worth of a Trans-Am was starring in Holly Larson’s fantasy.
She shouldn’t be thanking him. He hadn’t earned her.
Palm on her jaw, he leaned over the console and kissed her mouth like he’d envisioned that day she showed up at the construction site in Brownsboro. He didn’t want to talk about what he’d done with other girls in cars or at parties, and he didn’t want to think of Holly seeing or hearing about any of it.
He meant to pull away. He’d wanted it to be a quick experimental kiss to end the suspense. He meant to…but he didn’t.
The second his mouth closed over hers, there was only one girl. Only one set of full lips tentatively pressing against his. Only one pair of hands resting on his chest. A small whimper came from Holly’s throat, penetrating the tight space in the car.
Since he’d picked her up at
her place this evening, the air had snapped with heat and vibrated with tension. Yeah, in the attraction department, they had nothing to worry about. Which ironically gave him a lot to worry about. Worse, her mouth tasted better than any mouth he’d ever had on his own. She wasn’t a girl he could kiss once and walk away from. He already wanted more.
She tentatively licked his lower lip and he responded by sliding his tongue into her mouth. She accepted and it tangled with hers, wet and hot, while her fingers moved to the back of his neck and scraped into his hair.
Incredible.
The kiss was all he could think about. All he could focus and concentrate on. Until she pulled her panting mouth away from his and uttered three words that stopped him cold.
“Dalton. Touch me.”
Chapter 8
HOLLY LOST THE heat of Dalton’s mouth and nearly kicked her own ass for interrupting the flow. His kiss was exactly as she’d dreamed. Firm, warm, gentle. He tasted like spice cake and man, and oh, he smelled good.
Dalton had always smelled good, but this close, his scent curled into her nostrils and saturated her senses. Every part of her tingled and surged toward him in an effort to get more, more, more.
“Patience, Hol,” he said, his voice a scratch in the darkness. One wide hand wrapped around her ribs over her shirt as her heart battered her chest with hectic beats.
“Sorry,” she whispered. “I’ve been waiting for this for a long time.” Ten, eleven years now.
He smiled, a little crooked and a whole lot tantalizing. Just when she thought he might back out, he tipped his chin. “Lay your seat back some.”
She obeyed, reaching for the lever on the side and inching the car seat into a reclined position.
“That’s good,” he said when she’d gone far enough.
He shifted in his seat, coming closer and reaching for the hem of her shirt, his fingers brushing the skin of her belly. Holly almost hyperventilated. She forced herself to take in air. This was supposed to be explorative and temporary and now that he’d kissed her, she was freaking out because part of her knew the truth: She’d never get enough of him.
50 Hidden Desires Page 3