His Texas Touch

Review’s main entrance.

He gave her a slight tug when she tried to quicken her steps. “I’m taking you to my sister’s party.”

“Told you I have my own ride.”

“And I told you that I’m tryin’ to turn over a new leaf.” He gave her a wink when she glared at him. “Leavin’ a little thing like you to make your way out to my ranch all by your lonesome just didn’t seem like the gentlemanly thing to do.”

“Only you could make the gentlemanly thing to do sound self-serving and suspicious.” Her voice was still tight as their steps carried them into the lot.

Sam pressed a hand to the center of his broad chest and turned her to him when they approached his truck.

“Will you ever think better of me, Avra Ross?”

“Highly unlikely.”

Soon after voicing the statement, Avra felt the unyielding metal of the passenger-side door behind her back. Crowded against the truck and Samson’s equally unyielding frame, she was kissed—and thoroughly. Soft moans gathered instantly at the back of her throat and Avra didn’t care how loudly they sounded. She moved to her toes, positioning herself more comfortably against him, and thrust her tongue hungrily against his.

Sam had released his hold on her arms the second he crushed her mouth beneath his. He kept his hands sprawled on either side of her along the door of the F-150. Somehow, and he couldn’t fathom a guess as to how, he managed not to touch her except to kiss her.

Avra tunneled her hands into his hair, shivering as the soft mass brushed her fingers. She scraped her nails along the onyx whiskers that darkened his copper-toned face and toyed with the buttons along the short-sleeved shirt hanging outside his dark denims. When he at last showed mercy and broke the kiss in midstroke of his tongue, she let her head fall to his shoulder. Desperately she worked to slow her breathing and shivered anew when he nuzzled his nose against her ear.

“Guess I’ll have to keep trying, huh?” He looked down into her face, frowning slightly as he studied her ever more intently.

Avra could only press her lips together in response to his query. Sam appeared satisfied and eventually stepped back to open the passenger door and wave her inside.

* * *

“What are you doing?” she asked when they arrived at her building and he shut down the truck’s smooth engine.

“I’m going in.”

“Why?”

“Are you packed?”

“Yes, and I only have to grab my bag and I’ll be right out.”

A smile tugged the shamefully sensual curve of his wide mouth. “You’re lying,” he said after studying her for a beat.

Avra rolled her eyes past the windshield. “So what’d you ask me for, then?”

“To see what kind of lie you’d come up with.”

Avra opened the door and left the truck cab in a huff.

Sam chuckled and left the vehicle with ease.

Of course the guards knew Sam. Almost everyone in Houston worked for or knew someone who worked for Machine Melendez.

“Evenin’, Miss Avra,” Claude Bevins greeted and tipped his cap before grinning broadly at Sam and extending his hand for a shake.

“Need us to have your truck parked, man?” Joel Henries asked after he’d shaken hands with Sam, as well.

Grinning, Sam waited for Avra’s coffee-brown eyes to come to his dark ones. “Thanks, guys, but we won’t be long. Ms. Ross is spending the night at my place.”

The look she sent his way should have reduced Sam to a pool of waste on the lobby floor. It had had a similar effect on others. Sam’s grin merely broadened when she left him standing with the guards.

“Better head on up before she changes her mind, boys.” He clapped Joel’s shoulder and slanted a wink toward Claude and sprinted off.

Avra didn’t bother holding open the elevator door. She was only intent on closing out the sound of Sam’s laughter with the guards. The cherrywood doors were almost sealed when a hand slid between them. Sam eased inside the car a few seconds later. Avra slapped him as soon as the doors closed at his back.

“High school was never my favorite game to play, Sam.”

“What?” He raised both hands in an innocent move that mocked the grin on his face. He sidestepped her in the small confines of the car, when she moved to hit him again.

“You are spending the night at my place, right?”

“Oh, please.”

“What?”

“You jackass, you know that’s not what you wanted them to think.”

Taking the risk of being hit again, Sam stepped close. “What is it you think I wanted them to think? Ahh…” Enviously long lashes shielded his eyes then. “That you’re going to my place to have sex with me…”

Avra snorted. “That’ll never happen.”

“Is that right?” He slammed a fist against the elevator’s stop button without looking toward the control panel. “Never?” he probed.

There wasn’t much space to retreat. Correction: there was no space to retreat when one shared an elevator with the likes of Samson Melendez. Avra cleared her throat but refused to show any other trace of unease.

“Is this crowding supposed to intimidate me or have me panting like an idiot and hoping you’ll do something I didn’t know I wanted?”

The unexpected challenging inquiry softened Sam’s

copper-kissed features with thoughtfulness instead of humor.

“Have you put much consideration into me doing something like that, Av?”

She rolled her eyes, edging away from him in one cool move. “Is this your way of making me change my opinion of you?”

Sam leaned on the opposite wall of the car and raked his pitch stare down the rigid line of her back, which she’d turned his way. “What’s the point in tryin’ to better myself when you’ve already told me it’s pointless?” He studied the lines in his palms and waited for her answer.

Avra looked up at the floor number, which had lit up when Sam stopped the car. “I’d never tell you it’s pointless to better yourself, Sam.” She turned her head a fraction. “It’s only pointless to think bettering yourself will get me in your bed.” She didn’t need to turn around. She could feel his wide frame less than an inch away.

“I never said it had to be my bed.”

His words preceded touch. Avra bit her upper lip and swallowed when one of his big hands smothered a small yet full breast. Not long after, he’d worked the nipple into a firm nub beneath her shirt and eased it past the barrier of her bra.