“He was trying to get in your pants,” he snapped back, his words firing through the quiet night air like a gunshot.
I threw my arms out wide and cried, “So what? It’s none of your business what I do or who I do it with!”
He took a step closer and clenched his teeth. “Everything having to do with you is my business.”
I drilled my finger into the solid wall of his chest. “And that! What the hell is that, huh? You claimed me in front of them? What bullshit! You acted like I actually meant something to you, and we both know that’s a lie.”
“It’s not a lie,” he insisted, and something about the way he said those four words gave me pause and sent a ripple across my skin. “You’re my friend, mouse. I do care about you whether you believe it or not.”
Grab life by the balls and live it.
The words my sister wrote on that card suddenly meant more in that very moment than they had when I first read them. I wanted to be more than this man’s friend. I wanted what my parents had. I didn’t know what the future would hold, but I did know that I at least wanted a shot to see if I could have that with him.
But I’d never know if that was possible unless I acted.
Unless I grabbed life by the balls and started living.
So I did just that. Closing the space between us, I fisted the front of his shirt and jerked him down at the same time I lifted up on the balls of my feet.
Then I crashed my lips against his.
Chapter Sixteen
Stone
The past three weeks had been my own personal version of hell. I’d been doing everything in my power to avoid Willow while still thinking about her more than was healthy.
It hadn’t helped that I’d been pushing shit aside at the garage so I could work on her damn car, either. The problems that had kept it from running had been fixed weeks ago, but I hadn’t been able to bring myself to call her and give it back. I hated that fucking car, and I hated the thought of her driving it. It was a deathtrap on four wheels.
Cannon had been having a field day, giving me shit for paying out of my own pocket to fix everything wrong with that car so Willow could at least get enough of a trade-in for a hefty down payment on a new one. But even his constant ragging hadn’t been enough to make me stop.
On top of that, there was also the inconvenient fact that at least once a day, I’d been fucking my own fist to the image of her in my mind. I pictured her each and every way I wanted to fuck her, and it never failed that, within only a few minutes, I’d come so damn hard I’d see stars. It had gotten to the point I was actually worried about chafing.
I’d come to the bar tonight looking for any available pussy to sink my dick into in the hopes it would clear my head of images of Willow fucking Thorne. I thought I’d found the solution to my little—okay, not so little—problem when a blonde I’d seen around the bars here and in the neighboring towns came up and started hitting on me.
All it had taken was a bit of innuendo before she was practically falling into my lap, and in no time flat, she was running her tongue up my neck and whispering in my ear all the things she wanted me to do to her.
And. It. Did. Nothing.
My traitorous dick didn’t so much as twitch. The chick’s tits were right up in my face and she was basically dry humping me right there in the middle of the bar. If anything, the erection I’d been sporting for the past few weeks thanks to Willow had deflated like a popped balloon.
She was wearing too much makeup. Her powdery perfume was suffocating me and didn’t smell anything like sunshine. Her clothes left too little to the imagination. Her hair was too . . . blonde.
A million and one reasons why I couldn’t get it up for this woman ran through my head at lightning speed, but the main thought that I kept shoving to the very back of my brain, stuffing it down until a steel trap door slammed over it and locked shut, was Willow.
I’d been just about ready to tell the chick it wasn’t going to happen, when I looked toward the bar and lost every bit of air in my lungs.
I hadn’t thought about it; I just reacted. I’d shot to my feet so damn fast that the girl in my lap nearly tumbled to the floor. Before I could blink, I was across the bar, going toe-to-toe with the asshole sitting next to Willow.
It was as if my brain had temporarily malfunctioned. All I could see was red. All I could think was that this fucker had just had his hands on her, that he was sitting way too goddamn close.
It was a true wonder that things hadn’t escalated to an unpleasant point, but the next thing I knew, I was dragging Willow out of the bar, wanting—no, needing—to get her as far away from that asshole as humanly possible.
How the two of us had started fighting was beyond me, but when tears started to spill from her sky-blue eyes, every ounce of anger I’d been feeling disappeared. Those protective tendencies I’d tried to bury so deep, the ones I found myself fighting every time she was around, came roaring to the surface at the sight of those goddamn tears.
I’d been wracking my brain, desperately trying to come up with a way to make her feel better when, between one breath and the next, she was fisting my shirt and her lips were on mine.
It took my brain too long to catch up to what was happening, but once it registered Willow’s soft lips and the gentle, almost timid sweep of her tongue along the seam of my mouth, all rational thought flew out the window.
Acting solely on my baser instincts, I tangled my fingers in her hair, jerking her head back so I could get better access. Her lips parted and I drove my tongue inside, letting out a groan as the citrusy sweet flavor of her drink and something else distinctively Willow exploded on my tongue.
Christ, she tasted better than I ever could have imagined, and as I fed from her mouth like a starving man, that erection that had been MIA earlier with Lacey came back with a vengeance.
Her needy little whimpers fueled me on. The way she dragged her nails across my chest and latched onto my shoulders, like she was trying to fuse herself to me, made my balls tighten.
I was completely lost in all things Willow when, seemingly out of nowhere, the door to the bar opened, and a group of drunk assholes came staggering out. Just like that, the spell was broken.
I ripped my mouth and hands away and stepped back like touching her had just burned me. She staggered forward a little bit, slowly blinking her glassy eyes, and looked up at me.
“Stone—” she started, taking a step closer, but now that the haze of lust had worn off a sense of panic took its place.
I had this terrible habit when I felt like I’d been backed into a corner of lashing out at the person nearest, and before I could stop myself my mouth opened and the words came spewing out.
“What the fuck was that?” I asked in a tone a whole hell of a lot harsher than I’d intended.
She blinked away the desire and looked up at me in confusion. “I thought—”
“Thought what?” I barked. “That I wanted you to shove your tongue down my throat in the middle of a goddamn parking lot?”
That’s exactly what you wanted, asshole, my brain screamed. But I was beyond thinking with that. Right that second, I was functioning on pure adrenaline.
Her delicate features fell into a frown. “You kissed me back,” she said in a voice so soft and quiet I had to strain to hear her.