“This isn’t a business deal, honey.”
“That’s why I didn’t shake your hand.” She sounded breathless, and a little bit dazed, and dammit all if it wasn’t a thousand times more intoxicating than Mindy’s careful seduction from last night.
“Then let’s go.” Now he was in a damn hurry. To get out of here before she changed her mind. Before he lost control completely and took her against a wall.
“What about my car?” she asked.
“I’ll get you back to it.”
“Okay,” she said.
He put down a twenty on the bar, and ignored the way the bartender stared at him, hard and unfriendly-like, as though the man had an opinion about what was going on.
“Tell the man you’re with me,” he said.
Faith’s eyes widened, and then she looked between him and the bartender. “I’m with him,” she said softly.
The bartender’s expression relaxed a fraction. But only a fraction.
Then Levi took her hand and led her out into the night. The security lights in the lot were harsh, bright blue, and she still looked beautiful beneath them. That was as close to poetry as he was going to get. Because everything else was all fire. Fire and need, and the sense that if he didn’t get inside her in the next few minutes, he was going to explode.
“Levi...”
He grabbed her and pulled her to him, kissing her again, dark and fierce and hard. “Last chance,” he said, because he wasn’t a gentleman, but he wasn’t a monster, either.
“Yes.”
Seven
Faith felt giddy. Drunk on her own bravery. Her head was swimming, arousal firing through her veins. She had never felt like this before. Ever. She had gone on a couple of dates, all of which had ended with sad, sloppy kisses at the door and no desire at all on her part for it to go any further.
She had begun to think the only thing she was really interested in was her career. That men were irrelevant, and if men were, then sex was, too. She had just figured that was how she was. That maybe, when the time came, and she was ready to settle down, or ready to pull back on her career, she would find her priorities would naturally restructure and sex would suddenly factor in. But she hadn’t worried about it.
And now... It wasn’t a matter of making herself interested. No. It was a matter of life and death. At least it felt like it might be.
He took her hand to his heart, and helped her into his truck. She didn’t say a word as he started the engine and they pulled out of the parking lot.
Her heart was thundering, and she was seriously questioning her sanity. To go from her first make-out session to sex in only a few minutes might not be the best idea, but it might also be...the only way. She was half out of her mind with desire, just from feeling his lips on hers. Even so, she honestly couldn’t imagine wanting more than sex.
This man, her secret.
It had been almost funny when he had said something about taking a man home to meet her family. There would be no way she could ever take him home to meet her parents.
His frame would be so large and ridiculous in that tiny farmhouse. The ice in his veins, the scars on his soul, so much more pronounced in that warm, sweet kitchen of her mother’s.
No, Faith didn’t want to take him home. She wanted him to take her to bed.
And maybe it was crazy. But she had never intended to save herself for anything in particular. Anything but desire, really.
And this was the first time she had ever felt it.
What better way to get introduced to sex, really? An older man who knew exactly what he was doing. Because God knew she didn’t.
And for once, she wasn’t going to think. She wasn’t going to worry about the future, wasn’t going to worry about anyone else’s opinion, because no one was ever going to know.
Levi Tucker was already her dirty secret in her professional life. Why couldn’t he be her personal one, too?
Suddenly, he jerked the car off the highway, taking it down a narrow, dirt road and into the woods. “This isn’t the way to your house.”
