LITMIR.BIZ

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lame on the return volley.

      “That works, too,” Chase said, not skipping a beat. Yeah, there was a reason the man had never struck out before.

      She started to chew on her lip, trying to think of what to say next.

      “Don’t chew a hole through it,” he said, smiling and reaching across the space, brushing his thumb over the place her teeth had just grazed.

      And everything in her stopped dead. His touch ignited her nerve endings, sending a brush fire down her veins and all through her body.

      She hadn’t been this ridiculous over Chase since she was sixteen years old. Since then, she had mostly learned to manage it.

      She pulled away slightly, her chair scraping against the floor. She laughed, a stilted, unnatural sound. “I won’t,” she said, her voice too loud.

      “If you’re going to chew on your lip,” he said, “don’t freak out when the guy calls attention to it or touches you. It looks like you’re doing it on purpose, so you should expect a comment.”

      “Duh,” she said, “I was. That was...normal.”

      She wanted to crawl under the chair.

      “There was this girl Miranda that I—”

      “Okay.” She cut him off, growing more and more impatient with the comparisons. “I’m old in town, what about you?”

      “I’ve been around.”

      “I bet you have been,” she said.

      “I’m not sure how I’m supposed to take that,” he said, flashing her a lopsided grin.

      “Right,” she said, “because I don’t know what I’m doing.”

      “Maybe this was a bad idea,” he said. “I think you actually need to feel some chemistry with somebody if flirting’s going to work.”

      His words were sharp, digging into her chest. You actually had to feel some chemistry to be able to flirt.

      They had chemistry. She had felt it last night. So had he. This was his revenge for the six-point-five comment. At least, she hoped it was. The alternative was that he had really felt nothing when their lips attached. And that seemed...beyond unfair.

      She had all this attraction for Chase that she had spent years tamping down, only to have it come roaring to the surface the moment she had begun to pretend there was more going on between them than just friendship. And then she had kissed him. And far from being a disappointment, he had superseded her every fantasy. The jackass. Then he had kissed her, kissed her because he was angry. Kissed her to get revenge. Kissed her in a way that had kept her awake all night long, aching, burning. And now he was saying he didn’t have chemistry with her.

      “It’s just that usually when I’m with a girl it flows a little easier. The bar to the bedroom is a pretty natural extension. And all those little movements kind of lead into the other. The way they touch their hair, tilt their head, lean in for a kiss...”

      Oh, that did it.

      “The women that I usually hook up with tend to—”

      “Right,” she said, her tone hard. “I get it. They flip their hair and scrunch their noses and twitch at all the appropriate times. They’re like small woodland creatures who only emerge from their burrows to satisfy your every sexual whim.”

      “Don’t get upset. I’m trying to help you.”

      She snorted. “I know.” Just then, she had no idea what devil possessed her. Only that one most assuredly did. And once it had taken hold, she had no desire to cast it back out again.

      She was mad. Mad like Chase had been last night. And she was determined to get her own back.

      “Elizabeth was good at flipping her hair. Miranda gave you saucy interplay like so.” She stood up, taking a step toward him, meeting his dark gaze with her own. “But how did they do this?” She reached down, placing her hand between his thighs and rubbing her palm over the bulge in his jeans.

      Oh, sweet Lord, there was more to Chase McCormack than met the eye.

      And she had a whole handful of him.

      Her brain was starting to scream. Not words so much as a high-pitched, panicky whine. She had crossed the line. And there was no turning back.

      But her brain wasn’t running the show. Her body was on fire, her heart pounding so hard she was afraid it was going to rip a hole straight through the wall of her chest and flop out on the ground in front of him. Show him all its contents. Dammit, she didn’t even want to see that.

      But it was her anger that really pushed things forward. Her anger that truly propelled her on.

      “And how,” she asked, lowering herself slowly, scraping her fingernails across the line of his zipper, before dropping to her knees in front of him, “did they do this?”

       Six

      For one blinding second, Chase thought that he was engaged in some sort of high-definition hallucination.

      Because there was no way that Anna had just put her hand...there. There was no way that she was kneeling down in front of him, looking at him like she was a sultry-eyed seductress rather than his best friend, still dirty from the workday, clad in motor-oil-smudged coveralls.

      He blinked. Then he shook his head. She was still there. And so was he.

      But he was so hard he could probably pound iron with his dick right about now.

      He knew what he should do. And just now he had enough sense left in his skull to do it. But he didn’t want to. He knew he should. He knew that at the end of this road there was nothing good. Nothing good at all. But he shut all that down. He didn’t think of the road ahead.

      He just let his brain go blank. He just sat back and watched as she trailed her fingers up the line of his zipper, grabbing hold of his belt buckle and undoing it, her movements clumsy, speaking of an inexperience he didn’t want to examine too closely.

      He didn’t want to examine any of this too closely, but he was powerless to do anything else.

      Because everything around the moment went fuzzy as the present sharpened. Almost painfully.

      His eyes were drawn to her fingers as she pulled his zipper down, to the short, no-nonsense fingernails, the specks of dirt embedded in her skin. That should...well, he had the vague idea it should turn him off. It didn’t. Though he had a feeling that getting a bucket of water thrown on him while he sat in the middle of an iceberg naked wouldn’t turn him off at this point. He was too far gone.

      He was holding his breath. Every muscle in his body frozen. He couldn’t believe that she would do what it appeared she might be doing. She would stop. She had to stop. He needed her to stop. He needed her to never stop. To keep going.

      She pressed her palm flat against his ab muscles before pushing her hand down inside his jeans, reaching beneath his underwear and curling her fingers around him. His breath hissed through his teeth, a shudder racking his frame.

      She looked up at him, green eyes glittering in the dim shop light. She had a smudge of dirt on her face that somehow only highlighted her sharp cheekbones, somehow emphasized her beauty in a way he hadn’t truly noticed it before. Yes, last night in the red dress she had been beautiful, there was no doubt about that. But for some reason, her femininity was highlighted wrapped in these traditionally masculine things. By the backdrop of the mechanic shop, the evidence of a day’s hard work on her soft skin.

      She tilted her chin up, her expression one of absolute challenge. She was waiting for him to call it off. Waiting for him to push her away. But he wasn’t going to. He reached out, forking his fingers through her hair and tightening them, grabbing ahold of the loose bun that

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