But she couldn’t.
His face was all hard planes and angles, the stubble along his jaw giving him a disreputable, piratical look that made the shivery sensation inside her get even worse. There was a hard cast to his mouth, making it seem cruel and yet somehow sensual at the same time. And his gaze was so intense, all velvety blackness between thick, dark lashes… She couldn’t look away from him.
This wasn’t her friend. She didn’t know who this man was and yes, that terrified her. It also made her want to reach out and touch him.
“The keys, Vivi,” he prompted, in a tone that was gentle and yet held a note of such authority that she was extending her hand before she even knew what she was doing.
He took the keys from her, and as he did so, his fingertips brushed lightly over her palm. The sensation was acute, as if she could feel every ridge and whorl on the tips of his fingers, a wave of heat sweeping over her, making her shudder in helpless reaction.
She tore her gaze from his, trying to act like nothing was wrong, like she hadn’t had a full-on body shiver in response to his touch. “I was just going to get something from the car,” she said, trying to cover the moment and hoping she didn’t sound as breathless as she feared she did. “I thought you might have gotten me some clothes or something, since all I have are these pajamas.”
As soon as the words had left her mouth, she wished she hadn’t said them. Because she knew without even having to look at him, that his attention was now on what she was wearing - or rather not wearing - and that, too, was only adding to the weirdness of this whole interaction. Because she’d never been self-conscious around him, not once.
But now she was bitterly aware that her tank top was thin and tight fitting, and so were the matching shorts. And the blanket around her shoulders hid nothing. And now her skin was prickling all over with goose bumps and…Oh God…her nipples were hardening.
Instantly, she began to fold her arms over her chest to hide them, the blanket sliding off and down onto the ground.
Or at least, she attempted to fold them. Until Rhys closed his fingers around her upper arms, stopping her.
Shocked, her attention snapped back to him, and everything seemed to recede, the only sound the frantic drumming of her heartbeat. Because he wasn’t looking at her. He was looking down her body, to where the cotton of her tank pulled tight across her breasts.
To where her nipples were pressing very obviously against the fabric.
Hell. Could this get any worse?
Embarrassment swamped her and she tried to pull her arms out of his grip, but he didn’t let her go. “Keep still,” he murmured with that same gentle note of authority, making it very clearly an order, not a request.
But Vivi had had enough. This was too weird and she couldn’t make sense of her own feelings, and after everything that had happened last night, she couldn’t deal with it. She jerked out of his grip, making as if to step around him. Except he shifted with her, then took one more step forward, crowding her back against the counter, coming so close they were almost touching.
She couldn’t breathe. Could barely believe what was happening.
Rhys was right in front of her, a wall of hard male heat, staring down at her as if she was as much a stranger to him right now as he was to her. Then he went ahead and made everything immeasurably worse by putting his hands down on the counter on either side of her, caging her.
She couldn’t stop looking at him. Couldn't stop staring right into his eyes, watching the gleam of heat begin to smolder, then burst into flame.
You know what this is. You know what’s happening.
Panic gathered in her throat.
She’d been so good, never letting her physical feelings for him show, never allowing herself to see him as anything more than her friend, and she'd been happy and comfortable with that. Determinedly so. Yet now, over the space of one night, she couldn’t quite see her friend anymore.
Now all she saw was a man. Tall, dark, broad. Powerful. Dangerous.
Maybe this is who he’s always been and you’ve just never noticed.
She hadn’t wanted to notice, and for years that’s exactly what she’d done. So why was it all falling apart now? What had changed? Had it been simply that moment the bullet had gone past her ear and he’d pulled out his gun? And was this all some kind of primitive female response to how he’d shielded her? Protected her?
She shouldn’t find that attractive, a turn-on. She couldn’t. She wasn’t some damsel in distress that needed rescuing and never had been.
But regardless, she didn’t want to feel this way about him, especially when she already had a perfectly good man who was potential boyfriend material. A man who might be good for her, whom she might end up settling down with. A safe man.
And that’s what she ultimately wanted; a great husband to go with being made partner. A healthy relationship to go with her career success. Security and stability. Safety.
Rhys was….not boyfriend material let alone a good potential husband. He was her friend and that’s how he had to stay.
“What are you doing?” she forced out, her voice thin and breathy, not like hers at all. “Let me go.”
He looked at her, the flame in his eyes burning bright. “No,” he said.
6
Vivi’s gaze went wide, a red flush sweeping through her clear olive skin. The fear he’d seen there the evening before was back, which should have been enough to make him move away, but along with it was something else. Something linked to the shiver that had gone through her when he’d taken the keys, and to the fact that her nipples beneath her tank top were very obviously hard.
He didn’t think it was fear. No, he knew it wasn’t. Women didn’t shiver under his touch or get hard nipples because they were afraid of him. Or if they were, it was a very special kind of fear. The kind they enjoyed.
Vivi probably had no idea about that kind of fear, but she was feeling it all the same, he could see it in those beautiful green-gold eyes of hers.
This was a mistake and he’d known it the moment he’d seen her take the keys, and had come up behind her to stop her. Because he’d got too close and she’d nearly walked straight into him. He hadn’t thought that being so near her would be a problem. Christ, she hugged him all the time and he’d never felt like he did now, as if he was boiling up and she was an icy lake he could dive into.
But then she’d looked up at him, all wide eyed, like she’d never seen him before in her entire life. And her scent was around him and the warmth of her body mere inches from his, and he hadn’t been able to stop himself from taking a step closer.
Her eyes had widened even more, fear flickering in them, and even though a part of him regretted it, that other, darker part of him felt nothing but satisfaction. He wanted her to be afraid. He was pleased that she was. Because it meant she saw him as something other than the safe friend he’d always been to her. That meant she saw him.
He’d regretted shattering that illusion last night and yet, right now, he found himself not very sorry at all.
He’d already decided he wasn’t going to pretend any longer, not when there was no point hiding who he was. So maybe it was time he quit pretending about other things, too. And not just because he couldn’t have her stealing his keys and driving off back to Austin. That would only leave her wide open as a target to Jason and that wasn’t happening. She had to stay here where he could protect her, and if a bit of fear helped emphasize that, then he’d use it.
There was also the fact that he did want her to see him as more than a friend. More than the lonely teenager he’d once been, and definitely not the stray she’d adopted.
He wanted her to see that he was a man. A man who wanted her.
And now maybe she did, because she was turned on, too, and he knew that was because of him. Because he’d touched her.
That fact alone made him harder than a teenage boy watching his first porno.
He’d wanted Vivienne Hale since
way back in the tenth grade, when Jimmy Duncan had asked her to go out with him and she’d said yes. And he’d felt like someone had punched him in the face. He’d never known what jealousy or possessiveness was until that moment. It had been intense, primal. It had made him so fucking mad.
But those were things he shouldn’t feel, because they made him remember Clayton, his mom’s boyfriend, and how that asshole used to lay into his mom whenever he got mad. How he’d used to lay into him and Scotty, too.
Rhys had determined he wasn’t ever going to be a prick like that, a man who let his emotions control him, and so he’d fought his jealousy and anger hard, kept them locked them away. Kept everything locked away.
Until now.
Until Vivi was right up close to him, looking at him the way he’d used to fantasize about, with a delicious combination of fear, anticipation and excitement she probably didn’t even realize she was radiating. And now all those feelings were shoving against those locks and wanting out, a building pressure that was going to explode if he didn’t do something about it.
“Rhys.” She said his name in the kind of voice that had also featured highly in his fantasies, soft and thick and breathless. Her arms were by her sides, her fingers curled into fists. “I don’t know what you’re doing, but—”
“You know what I’m doing.” He stayed exactly where he was, watching her face. Studying the ebb and flow of the emotions she made no effort to hide. “I’m stopping you from leaving.”
Her hands half-rose as if to push him away, only to stop short of touching him. “Okay, I won’t go. Just…m-move back. You’re crowding me.” Her cheeks were the most delicious shade of pink, the diamonds in her necklace sparkling like stars in time with her accelerated breathing.
He could step away. He could give her room. He could even try going back to being the friend he’d always been, keep things as they were.
But he didn’t want to.
Before, he’d thought about finally making a move, about asking her out on a date. Courting her nice and slow so she could see he was as good a bet as that asshole Neil.
Any chance of that was gone now, so what was the point of holding back? He’d never been a man who pussy-footed around.
He lifted his hand and touched the necklace at her throat, allowing his fingers to brush against the silky skin beneath it and feel the frantic beat of her pulse.
She froze like a deer in the headlights of a car.
“Those are real diamonds,” he said softly. “Did you know that?”
Her lashes fluttered as she blinked, the late afternoon sunlight coming through the windows picking out the red and gold highlights in her hair. There were even glints of red and gold in her lashes as well, which he’d never noticed before. “I don’t care about whether they’re diamonds or not,” she said, her voice thick. “All I care about is going home. But you won’t let me leave and—”
Gently, he took her chin in his hand and pressed his thumb down over her mouth, stopping her flow of words. “Quiet,” he ordered, keeping his gaze on hers. “I know you’re afraid, but running back home and pretending it didn’t happen isn’t going to solve this.”
Her throat moved as she swallowed, the diamonds glittering, and he could feel the lush softness of her mouth tighten under his thumb, the flush in her cheeks deepening even further.
Of course she was afraid. He knew how much she hated change and last night he’d not only changed things, he’d exploded them completely. But doing her usual thing of getting mad then retreating somewhere safe wouldn’t work this time, the situation wouldn’t allow it. Not when being somewhere safe involved him.
No, she was going to have to deal with this, with him, whether she liked it or not.
“Let’s get one thing straight,” he went on quietly but firmly. “You’re not in charge anymore, Vivi. I am.” He kept up the pressure on her bottom lip for the sheer pleasure of it. “And you’re staying here with me so I can protect you, understand?”
“No. I don’t understand.” Her mouth moved against his thumb. “And I don’t want you to be in charge.” She was staring hard at him, anger sparking green and hot in her eyes. “Not after you…when you…took out that gun…and…”
“Say it.”
She held his gaze, unflinching. “You shot someone, Rhys. You killed them.”
“If I hadn’t, you’d be dead.”
Her jaw tightened and she pulled her head away from his hand, her bottom lip dragging across his thumb in a way that made his already hardening cock get even harder.
“I’ve changed my mind,” she said. “I don’t need to know why any of that happened, and I don’t want to know, either. All I want to do is get home, have my birthday weekend, then go back to work on Monday, and that’s all.” She heaved in a breath, her breasts pressing against her tank top. If she’d been even an inch closer, they would have been pressing against his chest. “What I don’t want is you getting in my face and touching me. You’re supposed to be my friend, Rhys. Not…not anything else.”
He looked down into her pretty eyes, years of practice enabling him to read her emotions effortlessly. She was afraid, but her pupils were dilated and it looked to him as if she wanted to drag her gaze away yet couldn’t.
“What if I want it to be something else?” He made no attempt to soften the words. She knew who he was now so there was no reason to continue being someone different, the friend she’d always known. “What if getting in your face and touching you is exactly what I want to do?”
She blinked. “What?”
He shifted closer, easing his hips up against hers so she could feel exactly what she was doing to him, then lifted his hand and took her strong, stubborn chin firmly between his thumb and forefinger, tipping her head back. “I think you heard me.”
The breath went out of her, sharp and audible, her gaze wide.
She was so fucking close and all he could think about was how many years he’d spent thinking about her, fantasizing about her. About what it would be like to touch her, kiss her, be inside her. To make her shake and burn, and cry out for him. To make her want him the way he wanted her.
He’d held himself back to protect her, to keep her safe from him. Because for the longest time, all he’d wanted to be was the man she thought he was. A trusted friend. A confidant. A person worth spending time with. A good person.
Maybe once, a long time ago, he’d actually been all those things. But he wasn’t now and hadn’t been for many, many years. So why bother with the act? Perhaps it was time to be honest, both with her and with himself.
“Rhys,” she said, half desperately. “You’re my friend.”
“No. I’m not.” He slid his thumb across her lower lip, relishing the lush give of it. “Not anymore.”
She went still at that and he felt a shiver go through the entire length of her body. “Stop it.” Her voice was hoarse. “You’re changing things and I don’t like it.”
“I don’t care whether you like it or not. Things have already changed.” He lowered his head a fraction, her mouth so very close now. “Do you know how long I’ve wanted you? Years, Vivi. Fucking years.”
She made no move to either push him away or avoid him, her gaze fixed to his, her shock almost palpable. Yeah, this would be hard for her to hear, especially on top of everything that had already happened, but he was done with pretending.
He was done with holding back.
Rhys let go her chin and cupped her face in his hands, stroking along the line of her cheekbones with his thumbs. Her skin was petal-soft, like he’d always known it would be. “I’m going to kiss you now,” he said, his voice gritty to his own ears. “So if you don’t want it, you’d better fucking tell me.”
Her lips parted, but nothing came out. She was looking at him as if she’d been hit over the head with something hard and was still reeling from the blow.
He didn’t wait. He couldn’t.
He bent his head and covered her beautiful mouth with
his.
Vivi was frozen. Rhys was kissing her. Rhys was kissing her. Her friend Rhys, the guy she’d known since she was fifteen years old. The guy she’d never suspected had any other feelings beyond friendship toward her. The guy she’d sworn to herself that she would never feel anything but friendship for. And yet, here he was. Kissing her.
I’ve wanted you for years…
She had no idea how to process that, not on top of everything else. She’d thought her life was pretty stable and secure – at least that was the point she’d hoped she’d gotten it to – but in the space of a night, everything had turned on its head. There had been too many shocks, too many unexpected changes and this felt like the last straw.
A sudden, blind panic collected in her throat and she lifted her hands in an instinctive movement, her palms pressing against his chest, trying to shove him away. But it was like pressing against a wall. He was so hard, like rock. And he was so…hot. She could feel the heat of him against her palms, seeping through the cotton of his shirt, burning against her skin. Heat everywhere….
She trembled.
You’ve always wanted this.
The thought whispered deep inside her, a knowledge she’d tried very hard not to think about. But she had to think about it now, didn’t she? There had been a reason she hadn’t shoved him away the instant he’d gotten close. A reason her heart was beating like it was going break through her ribs. A reason her nipples had gotten hard.
And it wasn’t only fear. There was more to it than that. Desire. For him.
In many ways, although it complicated things between them immeasurably, in this moment, that desire also made it very, very simple. In fact, at a time when it felt like everything was collapsing around her, desire was the simplest thing of all.
The heat of his body. The feel of all that firm muscle beneath her palms. His mouth, on hers. His tongue tracing her lower lip and pushing inside, tasting, exploring. The need that moved through her like a wave.
The Hitman Next Door: A Texas Bounty Novel Page 8