Slow Burn by K. Bromberg Page A

then he gives me that flippant, smart-ass quirk of his brows above his hidden eyes. “Yep, and look where that got me.”
    “Well, it’s not like we’re exactly friends.” What the hell is that supposed to mean, Haddie? My God, I’m losing it. Fricking losing it.
    “We’re not friends?”
The mocking tone in how he makes the statement pisses me off, pushes my buttons as I glance down to my phone still in his hand. He takes a step closer to me. I retreat one step, but my back bumps against the back of his vehicle. He takes another, the space between us receding. With the angle of the sun, I can just barely make out his eyes through his lenses, and they meet mine with an amused curiosity.
    I swallow down the sudden lump in my throat from his nearness, my pulse erratic and the words that are always on a constant flow from my brain to my mouth a faltered jumble on my tongue. What the hell does Becks have on me? It’s like some stupid hold I can’t crawl out from under.
    He raises his eyebrows again in a gesture denoting he’s waiting, and in a move that is so unlike the sure-footed woman I am, I force words out that don’t make any sense. “No, not friends … we’re kind of like family.”
    Becks throws his head back and laughs loud and free, an almost palpable release of tension, before he lowers his head back down to look at me. He shakes his head back and forth, bemusement on his face. “City … that’s a whole lotof fucked-up after what we did the other night, but strangely, I follow your logic.”
    And for the first time, I see the Becks I know come through. The boyish smirk that tells me I got to him. That my comment knocked the attitude back and relaxed him some. “So, rules, huh?”
    Now that Becks is back in slow-and-easy mode, I feel a little bit more stability beneath my feet. He throws me when he shifts gears and goes all alpha on me. Definitely hot but at the same time confusing as fuck.
    He just gives me a measured nod again and glances down at my hand held out for my cell phone before disregarding it and looking back at me with his lips pursed in a lopsided smirk. He’s not giving in until I keep talking. And that’s fine. I can talk until the fricking cows come home, but he’s making it difficult the way he keeps getting closer and closer, the space between us dwindling, the air around us feeling as if it’s becoming scarce.
    Fuck a duck. Get a grip, Had
. Chastity belt, chastity belt, I repeat to myself, trying to infuse some of my own humor into the situation to calm the nerves I never get but that are suddenly running rampant.
    “It’s okay. I get it,” I say with a nod, and I’m not quite sure if I’m talking to myself about why I’m suddenly on edge or to Becks about the need for rules. I breathe out a sigh, readjusting my thought process off of him. Onto him. And damn if my dirty mind doesn’t conjure up images of me on him.
Riding him
. Jesus, I need to get my head back into this thing—out of the gutter. I try to shake those thoughts. My head clears, but my thighs clench as his tongue darts out to wet his lower lip, completely oblivious to my thoughts.
    “Mm-hmm,” he murmurs, letting me struggle with my response. He reaches out, and I think he’s going to give me my phone and put me out of the unfamiliar tongue-tied misery I’m in, but no such luck.
    His finger grazes my cheek as he pulls a strand of hair off my face. My breath hitches and my pulse races, but I bat his hand away, his touch on my skin giving me just the wake-up call I need. “I have rules of my own, you know….” I mean to sound like a petulant child, but the words come out in a breathy exhale.
    That knowing smirk of his grows even wider. Irks me more than it should, because I shouldn’t care. I don’t care. But my libido sure as hell does.
    “You do, do you?”
    Mr. I-always-talk-a-lot is now being stingy with words? I can beat him at this game, no problem. “Yep.”
    “
Yep?
That’s all you’re