Tawny Weber - Hot-Wired / Coming on Strong - Hot-Wired

“Look, Mom, I hate to cut this short but I see my appointment parking their car up front and I don’t want to be on the phone when they walk in.” The next part came out in a rush. “I’ll see you next week. Love you.”

She ended the call and shot Beau a look where he stood propped against the staircase. “Don’t say anything,” she dared. “I know it was a lie, but you don’t know my mother. Once she starts…”

Beau grinned. “You’ve met my mother? I totally understand.” For a moment they both shared a laugh, her expression unguarded. The laughter died and he found himself looking into her motor oil-brown eyes and wanting…more. More than a kiss, more than her naked beneath him—although that would be damn nice. He had a hankering to know Natalie Bridges. What did she do when she wasn’t busy aiding and abetting the attachment of ball and chain? And who the hell was Miguel?

“Who’s Miguel?”

She went back to scraping, following his directive with a slow, smooth rhythm that put him in mind of her hand on his…Hell, who was he kidding? Her simply breathing seemed to put him in mind of her hand—or some equally stimulating body part—on his cock.

“My newest ‘brother.’ My parents foster kids. Miguel arrived last week and I haven’t gotten out to meet him yet. I know. My parents are great, but they’re…different.”

Yeah, he’d be in much better shape to think about her parents than the slide of her smooth, soft hand against his hard…“Where do they live?”

“West of Nashville. They’ve got a farm with a big garden, chickens, ponies, a rambling farm house, and it’s just crazy there.” She shook her head, a sweet smile lifting the corners of her delicious mouth. “Always crazy. I can’t tell you how many times I’d go to bed at night only to wake up and find a new sister in my room the next morning.”

“It sounds—”

She rocked back on her heels, scraper in hand. “Chaotic. Total chaos. I lived for the times I could go to my grandparents’ house. Memaw and I would sit on the porch swing at night and she’d tell me stories.” She radiated a sweetly vulnerable nostalgia that tugged at him. He had an instant image of her as a pigtailed little girl curled up beside her grandmother. “The other kids would go over in twos or threes, but Memaw always insisted that when it was my turn, I was the only one allowed over. She knew I needed that alone time. And it made me feel special.”

He nodded, sharing an understanding from his own childhood. “Nana, my dad’s mother, and my mother got along about like oil and water, but Nana always made banana pudding when I came over. It’s my favorite. She’d make a separate dish just for me and add extra bananas and vanilla wafers to it.” He hadn’t thought about Nana’s pudding in years. He shook his head. “So is Shelby your biological sister or your foster sister?”

She set about scraping again, her hair falling forward in a wavy curtain of brown and red. “Foster.” She pushed her hair aside and slanted a glance his way. “And the answer to the next question that inevitably comes is, I don’t have any biological siblings but I have twenty, well, twenty-one now with Miguel, siblings. And, no, they didn’t all live there at once. The house is usually at full capacity with ten. But most of us come back for holidays and special occasions.” She looked back down. “And they are all great, and I do feel guilty that I haven’t met Miguel yet. You can’t imagine Thanksgiving and Christmas. You’d have to see it to believe it.” Both tenderness and exasperation marked her tone.

Paint flecks peppered her hair. “Are you trying to take me home to meet your mother already?”

Teasing her was too much fun. He couldn’t pass up the opportunity.

She made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a snort. “My mother would like you.” Beau preened. “She likes anyone and everyone…regardless of how annoying they are.”

Beau guffawed, his laughter coming from deep in his belly. “Smart-ass.”

She grinned and he felt the same knock-you-on-your-ass sensation he did when he kicked it off the starting line in a race. “I was just saying…”

He wanted her with an intensity that was foreign to him, given he was always the one in control. The mood between them shifted, intensified, thickened. Her eyes widened.

Beau moved toward her, slowly, deliberately. “Do you always mean what you say?”

Had she really meant no more kissing? They both knew what he was asking.

She steadied herself with one hand on the floor and ran the tip of her tongue along the bow of her upper lip. There was no mistaking the flicker of heat in her eyes. “Not…always.”

Green light. He reached down and dragged her up his body and into his arms. Her scent, the feel of her soft curves against his hard angles, the almost imperceptible hitch of her breath…Yes, he’d wanted this all last night, all day today. “Speak now, baby girl, or forever hold your peace if you meant what you said earlier.”

The scraper clattered to the floor and she placed her open palms against his chest, tilting her head back to gaze up at him. “What if Tilson shows up? He did last night.”

He slid his hand up her arm to trace the fine line of her jaw. Her skin felt like velvet against his fingertips. “Tilson won’t show up. Trust me.”

Her eyes darkened and her fingers curled against his chest, sending his inner temperature spiking off the charts. “How do you know?”

The fall of her hair teased against the back of his hand. “Tilson won’t show up because I told him you were off-limits.”

She went rigid. “You what?”

“Off-limits. I told him you were mine.” He plied his thumb along the fullness of her lower lip and pulled her closer still with his other arm. “Natalie, baby girl, consider my claim staked.”

I TOLD HIM you were mine. Natalie, baby girl, consider my claim staked.

He’d told Tilson she was his?

That was so…arrogant.

So heavy-handed.

So hot.

“Staking claims goes both ways.” She looped her arms around his neck, bringing them into intimate full-body contact. God, this was such a very, very bad idea, but he felt so very, very good against her. “We have something in common because I don’t like to share, either.” She’d seen the women at the racetrack swarm him.

“Done.” One step forward and he pinned her to the wall. He bent his head. His cheek nearly touched hers, his hair tickled against her skin as he commanded softly in her ear, his breath warm against her skin, “Now, say it.”

She could barely think with the hard wall behind her and the hard wall of man in front of her. “Say what?”

Beau sifted one hand through her hair. “I told you you’d ask me to kiss you.” He traced the line from her ear to her jaw with the bridge of his nose, his breath deliciously hot against her neck. He was slowly, well, maybe not so slowly, driving her out of her mind. “So, ask for it.”

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