Julie Walker - Hell for Leather

“Zoelner needs a lesson in keepin’ his mouth shut,” Mac grumbled, his jaw sawing back and forth and making his adorable dimple twitch.

Delilah gaped at him. “Seriously? I just dropped the L-bomb, and you’re talking about Zoelner ?”

“I—” He opened his mouth, but she waved him off with an impatient hand. Zoelner said she needed to be tough, to not take no for an answer if she had any hope of breaking through all Mac’s barriers. Well, Zoelner’s definition of tough and her definition of tough might be two different things. Because she had a whole lot more than talking and not taking no for an answer in mind…

Skirting the conference table, she grabbed Mac’s wrist—oh, how she’d missed the heat of him, the crinkly prickle of his hairs against her skin. Hauling him to his feet, she dragged him toward the stairs leading to the third floor. When he saw their destination, he began backpedaling like a kid on his way to the dentist. “Whoa, wha—”

She turned and placed his hand on her boob, trying not to smile when all the blood drained from his face a second before he adjusted his stance like his pants were suddenly too tight. Seemingly of its own accord, his thumb trailed over her nipple, bringing the peak to instantaneous life. She felt a tug in her womb but ignored it. She had to play this smart if she wanted to reach her goal.

“Delilah,” he gulped, shaking his head. She went up on her tiptoes, threading her arms around his neck and sealing their lips.

At first, he kept his mouth closed. But one swipe of her tongue and he growled, his arms coming around her waist, his lips parting. She moaned. She couldn’t help herself. He was so big, so warm, so… Mac .

It took everything she had to pull back, to break the wet, hot suction of their lips, but she managed it. Then she whispered in his ear, “Come upstairs with me. I want to make love to you.”

She heard him swallow. Heard his throat click dryly. “Delilah, I—”

“I’m not asking you for promises or pledges or vows right now,” she assured him. “I’m not asking you for anything more than what you’re willing to give me.” She pulled back so she could see his face, his electric blue eyes. “Are you willing to give me this?”

Her lungs waited to draw breath, her heart waited to pump blood, every cell inside her body waited for his answer. And when he shook his head, she nearly lost faith. “I can’t—”

“Forget I asked for permission,” she cut him off. Don’t take no for an answer, Zoelner said. Well, by God, she wasn’t. “Let me put it to you this way…you’re taking me upstairs and you’re going to make love to me.”

“But—”

“No buts ,” she growled, stepping from his embrace, once again yanking him toward the stairs. He trailed her slowly, grudgingly. She could almost hear the thoughts and arguments spinning through his head over the clink-clink of Fido’s nails on the metal staircase. He followed them happily, panting and smiling and thinking it was all a great adventure. When they reached the landing, Delilah saw a long row of gray doors. “Which is yours?” she demanded.

“The second one, but—”

“What did I just say about no buts ?”

“Delilah—”

She ignored whatever he was about to say, instead marching over to the second door and pushing it open. The room inside screamed Mac. A queen-sized bed in a big mahogany frame sat center-stage, the fall-colored linens atop it in disarray. Two comfy armchairs in burgundy leather were pushed against the far brick wall, flanking a small occasional table where a stack of files sat. An old-fashioned Tiffany floor lamp sat next to a massive armoire. It cast warm, dappled light around the small space. And above the bed was a framed black and white panoramic picture of a long, lonely fence line and a big, arching iron gate. At the top of the gate, a faded wooden sign read Lazy M .

So, that’s Mac’s home… And, yeah, she could see the allure. The beauty in the vastness of the land. The windswept wonder of it all.

Fido walked around the room, sniffing furniture and shoving his snout into a wastepaper basket. Then he climbed atop one of the leather chairs, curling himself into what she’d come to term the doggy-doughnut—where his nose met his furry butt—and immediately closed his eyes. She turned to Mac. He was hovering on the threshold, looking ready to bolt. “You coming?”

He shook his head. “No, I—”

Rolling her eyes, she grabbed his arm and hauled him inside the room. When she kicked the door closed, the look on Mac’s face went from merely startled to flat-out terrified. Her heart clenched for him. But she couldn’t give in to the desire to comfort him or confront him. He wasn’t ready for either. That would come later, when he was softened up, during the warm afterglow of hot, sweaty sex. For now, she needed to focus entirely on seduction.

Lucky for her—and all women, really—seducing a man didn’t take much.

Bending to yank off her biker boots and socks, she instructed Mac to do the same. Her shirt and bra went next, followed by her jeans and panties. When she was standing buck naked in front of him, the cool air in the room raising goose bumps over her skin, she looked up to find him still completely clothed. Not that she was surprised. He was going to fight this. She’d known on the ride over that he was going to fight this every step of the way.

Fortunately, she was a stubborn woman. And once she set her mind on task, woe to any man, woman, child, fruit, vegetable, mineral, or other that stood in her way…

She strolled over to him, making sure to give her hips an extra little swing, delighted that his eyes were superglued to the bounce of her boobs. When she reached for the hem of his T-shirt, he grabbed her wrist, his Adam’s apple bobbing in the tan column of his throat. “W-we had a deal. A one-night stand only. No strings. No hurt—”

“I’m reneging on that deal,” she said, feeling not one ounce of regret even when his wonderfully dimpled chin jerked back. “We’re going to make a new deal,” she said, reveling in the feel of his hot skin along the backs of her fingers where she was still gripping his shirt. “A new deal where we take this thing one day at a time. Every day, I’ll wake up and remind you that I’m not your mother and that you are not your father.”

The muscle in his jaw ticked frantically as his nostrils flared wide. She saw she’d distracted him enough to whip his T-shirt over his head. The sight of him, of all that tanned, toned flesh made her throat constrict and her nipples furl.

“Every day I’m going to wake up and tell you I love you.”

His eyes became overly bright. His big chest began to quake. It caused tears to prick behind her nose—seeing big, bad Mac McMillan so scared and vulnerable—but she swallowed them. She had to remain strong, resolute. It was the only way she was going to win this game. Win against years of hurt and confusion. Win against plain ol’ wrong-headedness.

“And every day I’m going to wake up and tell you that I’m not leaving you.”

She could see him struggling. Struggling against his past. Against the desire to believe her words. Against the tears that filled his eyes. She knew he was hovering on the precipice, and she knew this could go one of two ways. Either he’d admit his love for her and agree to her terms, or he’d fall back on his old patterns and kick her out of his bedroom…

In such a volatile state, she didn’t trust him to make the right decision. So, she put it off for a bit longer by reaching for his belt buckle and saying, “So, what’ll it be? The dresser again?”