by Michele Hauf
Ione strangled the urge to laugh at the word “beverage.” “You don’t get out much, do you?”
Dev paused in the act of turning away. “Sorry, do you mean me?”
She threw him a sidelong glance. “I’m pretty sure Gus’s job gives him plenty of opportunities to hit on women. So, yes, I meant you.”
The warm hue of his skin became even warmer. “I really wasn’t hitting on you—”
Ione turned on her stool and leaned back with her elbows propped against the bar. “My God, you’re adorably awkward—Dev, was it? Do they make them all like you across the pond?”
She seemed to have rendered him speechless.
Dev glanced around as if trying to find the actual person she was talking to before laughing at himself and shaking his head, the tension of his stiff posture finally easing. “I don’t think they make any more like me anywhere, thankfully. I am rather dreadful at this, aren’t I?”
Ione gave him a wry smile. “So you admit you were hitting on me.”
Dev looked down at his feet with a smile, rubbing the back of his neck. “I might have done. Just a bit.” That little vibration inside her began to quiver once more, like a tuning fork buzzing with a faint, pleasant note.
Ione swiveled around toward the bar and raised a finger as Gus glanced in her direction from the other end where he was ringing someone up. “One more over here, Gus, when you get the chance.” She looked back at Dev, still standing there regarding her with a quizzical smile. Those eyes were really unfair. No one needed eyes that incredible. “Well? You in?”
Dev eased himself back onto the stool and smoothed back the gray curls at his temples with a grin. “I’m not sure what I’m in for, precisely, but I believe that I am, in fact, ‘in.’”
Ione finished off her Balcones. “The ride, of course.”
Dev paused with his hand on the glass Gus had set in front of him. “I’m not sure it’s the wisest idea to be riding a motorbike after imbibing alcohol.”
She rolled her eyes and Dev’s cheeks went scarlet. He lowered his head over his drink and paid great attention to it as he sipped. With her elbow on the bar and her chin propped in her hand, Ione studied him. It probably wasn’t the wisest idea to be contemplating what she was contemplating, either. He was not what she was here for. But that vibration was only getting stronger.
She couldn’t take him home, though. She’d nursed her drink over the course of an hour and she had a sobriety elixir that allowed her to ride safely regardless, but she couldn’t exactly explain the elixir to this charming, awkward stranger who had her halfway to climaxing without even touching her. Or even knowing he was doing it. Which was what made her want to get to the other half so damn bad. She had a feeling his witting participation in getting to that goal would be toe-curlingly, ass-numbingly incredible.
“Do you have a car?” She’d blurted the words before her non-lizard brain could stop her. And of course he had a car. Did she think he’d walked all the way here?
Dev wiped sweat from his upper lip with a sensual gesture he probably wasn’t even conscious of as he glanced up at her. “I probably shouldn’t be driving at the moment, either.”
“You’re assuming I’d even let you drive.” Ione picked an ice cube out of her emptied glass and sucked on it. It was now or never. She crunched the ice between her teeth and slipped off the stool, pulling out her wallet to leave Gus a generous tip. “It’s kind of loud in here. I thought we could talk outside.”
She headed for the door without waiting to see what his reaction was. If he didn’t follow, she’d just take the sobriety elixir and get the hell out of there. And if he did, well...
Copyright © 2017 by Jane Kindred
ISBN-13: 9781488031137
Taming the Hunter
Copyright © 2017 by Michele Hauf
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