Page 141 of Off the Grid

Her bark back surprises me. “Why?” I ask.

“Why?”

“Did I fucking stutter?” The expression on her face—pain, hurt, apology—almost gets to me. Almost. “Or do I need to repeat the question?”

I’m being a dick. I don’t care. She was a dick to me. Turnabout’s fair play.

“My boss asked me to deliver the warning,” she says.

“You mean your daddy?” I hold my hands up in mock apology and chuckle like the prick I am. “Oh. My bad.”

“Don’t be that way.”

“What way? Trying to understand why my—” girlfriend. Girlfriend? What the fuck, Riggs. “You acted that way.”

“What? Professional? Impartial? Putting a driver in his place for basically saying fuck you to management? You were in the wrong, Riggs. You were the one who fucked up.”

“And you’re the one who made it personal.”

“No, I didn’t. I did my job, as you should have done yours. And I couldn’t be soft on you.”

“And why’s that? So you could prove you were the big man on campus? Congrats. Mission accomplished. Half the crew are pissed at you and half the crew think you’re a bitch. Looks like a win-win to me from where I stand.”

“Fuck you,” she grits out.

“Yep. Sure. Fuck me.” I move. My hands. My feet. Needing to abate the anger and the thoughts in my head. The ones that tell me I’m so pissed because she means something to me. Because I want her to. “But you still haven’t answered my question.”

“Which one is that?”

“Why, Camilla? Fucking why?”

“Because if I hadn’t, then every fucking person in that garage would have looked at me and seen right through me. They would know that . . . You know what? Never mind.”

She goes to turn around, but I have my hand on her bicep and her body spun around to face me. “Know what, Camilla? That we’re fucking? Yeah? So?” I shake my head, trying to think straight when I want to kiss her. When I want to fuck away the hurt that I put in her eyes. “I fucking finished on the podium, and it wasn’t because I did what was right, so what makes you think it’s right or wrong when it comes to being with you?”

She stares at me, chest heaving, jaw clenched, shoulders rising and falling—hurt radiating. She opens her mouth to talk and then shuts it.

And then from one beat to the next, my lips are on hers. I pour every ounce of hurt and anger over her dress-down into the kiss. Every iota of confusion over this sudden realization that I’m falling for a woman where there weren’t supposed to be strings.

There’s a stunned shock at first.

Then the floodgates open and we’re a mix of hands gripping and teeth nipping. Of clothes being discarded and hushed commands.

“Hurry.”

“Quick.”

“I need you in me.”

“I need to fuck you.”

There is no foreplay. Not testing to see if she’s ready for me. The week has been painful enough. The only salve to the hurt is being buried inside her. Is feeling her give for me. Is knowing she needs this as much as I need her.

I need her.

To taste her.

To feel her.