Playing Dirty

Her open question gutted him. He’d been in the boardroom with billionaires, with sheikhs, with sharks, and he’d bested them all.

The little woman who smelled like cupcakes? She was bringing him to his knees.

“I—” He started to explain, but she cut him off, stepping back, her sudden frown breaking the spell.

“I see.” Her lips pinched together in a mockery of a smile. “I’m not the kind of woman you want to get involved with, right? Not even for a night. Let me assure you, that’s your loss.”

Wait...what?

“Wait just a damn minute.” When Beth would have turned, Ford did as he’d imagined, catching her by the waist and hauling her back into the vee of his legs. This time her pelvis connected with the steel length of his erection, and he savored her sharp little intake of breath. “What do you mean?”

“I think it’s pretty self-explanatory.” Beth regarded him coldly, though she didn’t back down. “My hair, my tattoos... I’m far too wild for you.”

“Oh, do you think so?” The way she was looking up at him, so certain she was right, was a challenge, and he felt something inside him roaring to life to meet it.

She thought he was turned off because she wasn’t his usual type? Well, he couldn’t deny that she was not at all the kind of woman he was usually drawn to, and his instant attraction to her puzzled him more than a bit.

But that wasn’t the problem. The problem was what she made him feel.

“I don’t give a damn about the color of your hair or the ink on your skin. Got it?” The need to prove that she wasn’t the problem was quickly overriding his sense of restraint, the only other thing that had held him back from accepting her sweet offer that afternoon.

“I don’t know you, yet you make me want things I’m not comfortable wanting. Make me feel things I shouldn’t.” His hands at her waist squeezed, hard, to emphasize his point, and he savored her resultant shudder, which ratcheted up his own excitement.

“Why would you be uncomfortable wanting something if it doesn’t hurt anyone else?” She was watching him again, lids heavy over those big eyes. “Or maybe you think that it is hurting someone?”

He kept his stare on her face, absorbing every nuance of her expression, which was open, honest.

Something told him that Beth Marchande wasn’t going to be disgusted with the demands he might make of her.

“Sometimes a little bit of hurt is good, Sir Lassiter...especially when I’m begging you for it.”

“Fuck.” Dragging his hands up her sides, over her rib cage and the swell of her breasts, Ford clasped Beth by the shoulders and tugged her forward, crushing her smirking lips to his own.

Rather than offering him a kiss as sweet as the vanilla she smelled of, she moaned beneath the pressure and opened, her tongue surging out to tangle with his.

One hand slid behind her head and fisted in the long mane of raven and amethyst hair, just as his fingers had itched to. He tugged her head to the side roughly and then dragged his lips down the column of her throat, settling over her pulse and sinking his teeth in to claim.

“Well, what’s it going to be, Sir Lassiter?” Beth’s breathy question rasped in his ear, and she shuddered when his teeth marked her skin. “Are you going to be good? Or are you going to be bad? What do you think?”

Shoving his glass aside—he felt intoxicated just from being near her—Ford stood, making sure that every plane of his body glided against hers as he did.

Her eyes glittered with the same need that he felt as he quickly pulled a fifty from his wallet and tossed it onto the surface of the bar.

“I think...” Ford deliberately wrapped his fingers around her own, drawing them up to his lips to nip. “I think that we’re going to go back to my room right now. And I’m going to find something better for that smart mouth to do.”

CHAPTER FOUR (#ua9bdc36d-b843-5838-8e5f-eff5d1fa8dea)

WHAT AM I DOING?

This woman was different. Exotic. Wild. Not like anyone he’d ever been drawn to before, and he wasn’t sure why he was attracted to her now. He didn’t do exotic, didn’t want wild.

And yet when he placed a hand at the small of her back to guide her out of the heated bar, he swore he almost felt a physical shock from just the press of his fingers to that small dip in her spine.

The Turbo had been his first acquisition on the road to success. He’d kept it because nothing had ever felt as good as that first achievement. That first marker of success that he’d earned on his own, not riding on his parents’ coattails.

Over the decade since its purchase, he’d bought and sold cars, property, investments. Had pursued some of the most interesting and beautiful women in the world. Had grown his small hotel chain into something internationally renowned.

Nothing had come even close to recapturing that thrill, the high of knowing he’d achieved something on his own.

Nothing, that was, until now.

Beth said something to the giant man standing by the door as they passed, making the other man laugh. Then they were outside, the cool air of early fall in Massachusetts as refreshing as a swim on a hot day after the beer-soaked heat inside the bar.

He watched as she shook her long fall of wavy hair back. The bright purple seeming ethereal and mysterious in the fading light.

What was going on with him? Purple hair wasn’t sexy. Full-sleeve tattoos weren’t sexy.

Except that on her, it was.

He stuffed his hands into his pockets as she looked him over. Those blue eyes of hers seemed almost to glow, full of wicked intent as she took her time regarding him from head to toe.

His body responded, dark need curling tightly in his gut. No, he had no idea why he wanted this woman so badly, but he did, wanted her with a craving that seemed primal in its intensity.

“I’d invite you back to my place, but I could tell this morning it wasn’t exactly your cup of tea.” She smirked at him, a knowing little smile that made his mouth water. She was provoking him deliberately.

That exchange they’d had earlier in the garage. The dynamic between them. Unless he’d read it very, very wrong, she wanted the very thing that he tried hard not to offer.

“Clearly you didn’t think I was serious about finding something better for your smart mouth to do.” He couldn’t help it. The needs that he was usually fine ignoring were clawing beneath his skin, begging to tear their way free to be with her.

The sharp inhalation of her breath was confirmation. An ache spread through his core.

Nice men don’t want this.

Then maybe he wasn’t a nice man.

“Coming?” Arching an eyebrow at him, Beth turned and started to walk in the direction of the motel. He couldn’t have stopped himself from following.

The small rectangle of parking lot was bordered on three sides with rooms. He’d been assigned to room twelve, and when he’d checked in earlier he’d been unimpressed by the cheap floral bedspread, the rough green carpet and the dated lighting, though at least the place was clean. Now he noticed nothing but Beth as she kicked the door closed behind them, seating herself on the edge of the bed and looking up at him with a hint of mockery in those insanely blue eyes.

He wanted to fist his hands in the long waves of her hair and taste her lips again, to touch her until she was breathless and all traces of that mockery were gone. He wanted to flip her over and bury himself inside her.

He needed to get a grip, needed to take the control back. So far she’d hinted at what she wanted but had been the one in the driver’s seat.

No more.

“Do you like wine?” The hinges on the small minifridge whined as he opened it. Earlier he’d refrigerated a bottle of the best chardonnay he could find at the tiny grocery store on the corner. He was stymied when he realized that he didn’t have a corkscrew.

Frustration mounted. He was supposed to be in charge here. Why couldn’t he grab hold of it?