“You still here?” he calls out.
“Yup.”
“Can you grab me the hayfork?”
“Sure.”
Hopping to my feet, I put the word in the search bar of my phone. A list of sites about real estate pop up. Shit! I add the word tool after it and stop in my tracks. The image it loads is of a shovel with prongs looking thing, something I can’t imagine him using under there.
“Find it?” he asks.
“I’m looking!”
“What the fuck?” I mutter, looking at the wall, scanning helplessly. The hayfork looks more like a gardening looking thing, not something for a tractor. Why would he even have one?
“Can’t find it?”
I jump, Walker’s voice just inches behind me. His hair is a disaster, flecks of dirt all over his face. He’s filthy, smells of sweat and oil, and is the sexiest thing I’ve ever laid eyes on.
My mouth waters as I try to look away, my face certainly flushing from the knowledge of how wet my panties are right now.
“What are you doing?” I exclaim. “How did you get behind me so fast?”
“Find the hayfork?” His lips twist, clearly entertained, as he crosses his arms in front of him.
“Um, no. Not yet.”
He looks at me, then my phone, and back to me again. “Let me see your phone.”
“No.”
“Come on,” he says, holding out his hand. His palm is streaked with grease, beet red in some spots from grinding against the machine. “Let me see it.”
“Why?” I ask, my breathing getting shallow.
“You were looking up those tools, weren’t you?”
“What? I . . . Why would you think that?”
“You were, weren’t you?”
His tone is teasing, but there’s something else in his eye that tells me it’s more than a joke to him. It’s almost as if he’s angry or bothered. Either way, it makes me self-conscious.
While I’m trying to figure him out, in one abrupt move, he snatches my cell out of my hand.
“Hey!” I say, leaping for it but missing. “Give me that back!”
“Were you or were you not looking up those tools?”
His eyes narrow and I narrow mine right back. If he thinks he’s about to make me feel bad for trying to help him, he has another think coming.
“What’s it to you?” I ask, mimicking his stance. “Why do you care how I found them?”
“Just admit it.”
“Fine,” I all but growl. “I didn’t know what a pin was or lubricating oil or a socket. But I figured it out to help you, you asshole.”
He flinches, not expecting my tirade. Glancing at my phone, he quickly offers it back. I snatch it out of his palm without touching him.
“I don’t understand you,” I tell him, turning away. “You’re an impossibly frustrating man.”
Heading across the garage to where I set my things, I gather the garbage from dinner and toss it in the trash can. I feel his gaze on my back, the crackle of the energy between us as confused as I am, but refuse to turn around.
Instead, my phone goes into my purse, along with the paper and pen I was doodling on earlier. When I do finally turn around, I’m surprised to see him smiling. My head spins, one way with irritation, another with lust, another with confusion as to what he’s even smiling about.
“Thank you for helping out tonight,” he says. His eyes swirl with a softness to them that pulls at my heartstrings.
“Why do you do that?” I ask.
“Do what?”
“Act like you’re so hard, like nothing bothers you. So black and white. And then I see in your eyes that you might not be that way at all.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he dismisses me. Even as he says this, I know even more assuredly I’m right and that just eggs me on.
“Oh, I think I do.”
His jaw sets. “You think you have everything figured out, don’t you?”
“No, quite the opposite. I don’t think I have the first thing figured out about you.”
The silence is heavy, like a wet blanket, almost strangling us with its weight. We have a standoff, the wits of two hard-headed people going to battle and neither wanting to give in.
Grumbling under his breath, he stands straight. I’m not sure if he’s going to walk out the door or climb back under the tractor, but he surprises me. He walks towards me.
My breath catches in my throat, the bite of the metal table behind me scratching into my back as I lean away, needing distance between myself and this man stalking my way.
With each drop of his boots, I struggle harder to seem unfazed by his posture. Hooded eyes. Squared, flexed body. With each second he gets closer, I breathe faster. Gulp quicker. Feel the spot between my legs get wetter.
“Why do you keep coming around?” he asks when he’s standing right in front of me. The top of my head is just beneath his chin, his chest at eye-level. It’s rising and falling as quickly as mine as he takes over every inch of my personal space. With every inflation, a whiff of his cologne shuffles to my nose and my senses continue to be obliterated, completely consumed in every way by him.
“I don’t know,” I say. “It surely isn’t because of your award-winning personality.”
I think he’s going to laugh, but he doesn’t. Just like every time I think he’s going to resemble a normal person, he stops himself. “Then why?”
“You want me to stop? Is that what this is about? Because I was just trying to help you tonight, Walker.”
When he doesn’t answer, doesn’t flinch, I throw out an exasperated sigh.
“You win. Whatever game you’re playing with me, you win. I quit,” I say, reaching for my purse. “Figure out what I still owe you and send me a text. I’ll get you the difference on Monday.”
Just before I swipe up my things, his hand lays on my arm. I just stare at it wrapped around my forearm, his hand almost twice the size of one of mine. It’s cut and bruised and in desperate need of a little tender loving care, but I ignore all that and pull my eyes to his.
Big. Mistake.
I can almost see the guard being pulled down, the shield he erects being cranked back. All the confusing emotions that are usually present are still there, only en masse.
I can’t think. Can’t respond. Just remind myself not to reach out and pull him into me and give him the hug I think he needs, maybe even wants on some level.
“You think I’m fucking with you?” he whispers.
“Aren’t you?”
“Not a chance, Slugger. As a matter of fact, I’m trying my damnedest to not fuck with you at all.”
“Noted,” I say, a little snottier than I intend.
Sucking up my pride, I try to shake him off. He just squeezes my forearm firmly until its clear I’m not going to move. Then he eases up.
“I don’t mean it like that.” He moves himself so we’re face-to-face.
“I think you do. I’m beginning to think a whole lot of what I see sometimes is more hope than reality.”
“What do you think you see?” he asks, taking another step so I’m almost standing between his legs.
“Stop this,” I whisper, my voice as shaky as I feel.
“Why?”
“It’s confusing. I can’t read you.”
He catches my chin with his hand, lifting it so I’m looking at him. His Adam’s apple bobs as he forces a swallow, his delicious lips parting with a small sigh. “Can you read this?”
“Wha—”
His lips capture the rest of the words from mine as his mouth covers my own.
THE KISS ISN’T KIND. It isn’t sweet. There’s no consideration given to anything besides the fervor between us.
He moves forward until my back is pressed against the edge of the table, my face cupped firmly in his hands. His lips part mine, urging them open, until I give in.
My head is spinning, my personal space completely obliterated by Walker Gibson. His solid body is against mine, his scent flooding my airways, the taste of his mouth rocking through my veins and wanting, needing, craving more.
He wastes no time, dipping his tongue past my lips with such a strong, purposeful motion it verges on ownership. I taste his desire, feel the heat radiating off his body, experience the raw, unhinged lust he’s explaining without ever saying a word.
Moaning softly, my hands working their way into his thick strands, he holds me in place with the pads of his thumbs resting on my cheekbones. Each lick, each delve into my mouth, becomes more frantic. More heated. More on the cusp of spiraling out of control.
Moving so he’s straddling me, one foot on the outside of each of mine, I can feel his cock rest against my belly. The length presses against me like a steel rod ready to burst the denim covering it.
Releasing the tufts of hair laced through my fingers, I wrap a hand around the back of his neck. My palm lying against his uncovered skin, feeling the sweat beaded there, sends a full-body shiver racing down my spine. Working my hands down his back, each movement causing the thick muscles to flex and bend under my touch, I make it to the hem of his shirt and then down the backside of his jeans until they’re resting on his ass.
Taking my bottom lip in between his teeth, I moan into his mouth and jerk his body towards mine. My head is buzzing, my blood screaming, my pussy begging for relief.
Opening my eyes, I see his settled on me. He lets go of my lip and takes a step back, his breath as frenzied as mine.
His pupils dilated, his hair a wild, sexy mess, he sucks in a haggard scoop of air. “Does that feel like I’m just fucking with you?”
“You stopped, didn’t you?”
He starts to smile but stops himself. “I stopped for your own good.”
“I’ll put it to you like this,” I say, letting my libido do the talking. If he shuts me down, I’ll leave and never look back. “I need fucked. I’ll let you decide by whom.”