Dark Bites

“You’d let me?” she asked in disbelief.

“Sure, just so long as you don’t paint my fingernails pale pink.”

She frowned at that. “What?”

“Heather did that to me in high school as a joke. One night while I was sleeping, she sneaked into my room and painted my fingernails. I didn’t notice until I got to school the next day and people started laughing.”

“Why is your sister so mean to you?”

He shrugged. “She doesn’t mean any real harm. She’s just impulsive, and never seems to think before she acts.”

Shaking her head, Sam searched through a rack of black button-down shirts as she thought about what he said. “She really painted your fingernails?”

“Yup.”

“My brothers would have killed me.”

“Yeah, well, she’s my kid sister. My mom always said my one job was to protect her, not pulverize her.”

Affected by his protectiveness, she reached out without thinking and touched his arm.

Her heart stopped.

Holy cow!

Up until now, she’d thought he was on the skinny side like his sister, but there was nothing thin about that arm. His biceps were harder than a brick even while relaxed.

“Okay,” she said, trying to distract herself from that delectable muscle. “Makeover with no nail polish.”

Sam picked out several shirts and more jeans, then sent Adrian to try them on. She was busy looking through another rack when she felt someone behind her.

Turning around, she froze. Adrian was standing at the mirror outside the dressing room with his sweater lifted while he tugged at the back of his jeans. “I don’t know about this,” he said.

She only vaguely registered his words. Because she was captivated by him. The faded denim cupped a rear so tight and well formed that it made her ache to touch it.

He was wearing a thin, black V-neck sweater that clung to his broad shoulders, biceps, and pecs. And worse, the hem of the sweater was lifted up to where she could see his hard, flat stomach and dark brown hairs curling becomingly around his navel.

Oh… My… God. The man had the body of a well-toned gymnast. Why he had kept that yummy body hidden was beyond her.

“Buddy, you got abs!” she said before she could stop herself.

Adrian met her gaze in the mirror. “What?”

She closed the distance between them and lifted the shirt hem a tad higher as she stared in awe at that body. “You got abs! A whole six-pack of them.” She looked up at him. “You didn’t get those on the computer.”

“Well, no. I do other things on occasion.”

No kidding.

And right then, there was a whole series of other things she wanted to do to him. Starting with those hard abs and working her way up and down that luscious, tanned body. “If I were you, I’d burn all those baggy jeans and oversized shirts as soon as I got home.”

“You like these jeans?”

Biting her lip, she nodded.

Suddenly, Adrian liked them, too. But what he liked most was the hunger he saw in her eyes, the feel of her hand against his stomach. It sent chills all over him.

It was all he could do not to kiss her.

Worse, an image of her lying naked beneath him tore through him. He shuttered his eyes as his breathing faltered. He wanted her so badly, he could already taste the moistness of her lips. Feel the softness of those full breasts in his hands.

It was a such a raw, aching need that it sliced through him.

Sam looked up and caught the heated look in his eyes. He had his lips slightly parted. And she became all too aware of the fact she was still holding his shirt in her hand, and was so close to his hard belly that she could feel his body heat.

Her breasts tightened as a wave of lust singed her.

Please kiss me… .

But he didn’t. He swallowed and took a step back.

Sam sighed. What was she thinking? Smart, gorgeous guys like Adrian didn’t date short, fat co-workers. They were friends, plain and simple. There could never be anything between them.

By the time they finished, Adrian was almost a thousand dollars poorer, but he had an entire new wardrobe. And if it would keep Sam staring at him like she was doing, he decided it was worth every penny.

He changed into a new T-shirt, sweater, and jeans before they left.

Their next stop was MasterCuts. “What’s wrong with my hair?” he asked as he sat down in the chair.

“Nothing, Shaggy-Doo,” Sam said playfully as she brushed her hand through his hair. His entire body erupted into fire as he savored her light touch against his scalp. “I love the tawny color and curls. With the right cut, you would stop traffic.”

Sam watched from the side of his chair as the beautician trimmed his silken curls into a shorter cut that looked incredibly sexy and stylish.

Oh, yeah, now he was cooking. She stared in awe as the woman moussed his hair.

“Now that is a great look,” Sam told Adrian. “You get rid of that goatee and watch out.”

“Now you hate my goatee?” he asked, aghast.

“For the record,” Sam said as she met his gaze in the mirror, “all women hate goatees.”

The beautician concurred. “She’s right. They’re nasty.”

Adrian stroked his goatee with his thumb. “Really? You don’t think it’s manly?”

“Do you think a billy goat is manly?”

“Oh, thanks, Heather.”

Sam’s eyes twinkled.

Adrian paid for the cut and for the bottle of mousse Sam insisted he’d better use, but personally, he’d rather stick a pair of tweezers in an electrical outlet.

All too soon, the night was over and he had to drive her back to her car.

“Thanks,” he said as she got into her Honda. “I really appreciate your taking pity on my clothes tonight.”

“It was my pleasure.”

God, he wanted to kiss her. He stared at her lips, trying to imagine what they would taste like. He’d give anything to have a single night with her. To sink himself deep between her soft thighs as she held him close and moaned in his ear.

Then again, one night with her would never be enough.

“You be careful,” he said, his voice hoarse. “How far is Spring Hill from here?”

“A good fifty minutes.”

“Jeez, I shouldn’t have kept you out so long. Do me a favor and call my cell phone and let me know when you get home, okay?”

“Okay.”

Adrian forced himself to close her car door. He stepped away from her car as she started it. The light from the control panel lit her face as she buckled herself in.

In that moment, he ached for something he knew he could never have.

Her.

She looked up and waved. He returned the gesture, then watched as she drove off.

His heart heavy, and feeling twice as lonely as he had before, he got into his car.

Adrian froze as he reached for the ignition. He could still smell her floral scent in the air. Taking a deep breath, he relished it and dreamed of being able to bury his face in her neck where he could just breathe her in all night.

And in that moment, he made a decision.

Right or wrong, company policy be damned, he was going to find some way to make her his.

2

“Hey, Sam, could you come here for a minute?”

Sam cringed as Tiffany waylaid her outside of the breakroom at ten a.m. “What do you need?”

Tiffany huffed in agitation. “Adrian isn’t here yet – ”

“That’s because he was here from eleven-thirty last night until three o’clock this morning. I imagine he’s sleeping in.”

“Whatever. I have to respond to the Waverley Valley customer, and he has yet to send me his e-mail.”

Sam pursed her lips to keep from laughing. Oh, he’d written the e-mail all right. He’d answered the customer’s complaints, point by point, with the most hilarious sarcasm she’d ever read. The last line of it had said, “All hail the goddess Discordia the day we let Lord Bone-Head’s twenty-two teenage employees have unrestricted ordering capacity on our system.”

Adrian was a riot.

And at the bottom of the e-mail, he’d pasted in the much more professional response that he had sent to their customer.

“I know he wrote it,” Sam said seriously. “I’m sure he’ll forward a copy as soon as he gets in.”

“Well, he better, or I’m telling Randy about it.” Tiffany glanced down the hallway, did a double-take, then gaped.

Sam turned her head to see what was going on.

She froze at the sight.

Oh, my.

Like all the other women in the hallway, Sam was transfixed by Adrian and that sexy, loose-limbed swagger of his as he came toward her. Dressed all in black, except for the hint of his white T-shirt peeking out of the V of his tailored black button-down shirt, he was dazzling.

The black leather jacket she had talked him into looked even better on him than she had imagined it would.

His goatee was gone and the new haircut gave a deeply poetic look to his chiseled features. He wore a pair of Wayfarer sunglasses, and when he smiled, she saw deep dimples that had been masked all this time by his thick whiskers.

The man was seriously hot.

Regina, the receptionist, was headed to her desk when she passed him. Turning her head to watch him, she stared so intently at his rear that she walked straight into the wall.

Oblivious to the gaping women around him, Adrian made straight for Sam.

“Good morning,” he said, flashing those dimples as he took his sunglasses off.

“Morning,” Sam said, amazed at how normal her voice sounded given the amount of havoc his new look had on her senses. Now that he was this close, she could smell the leather and his Old Spice aftershave. Yum. Her entire body burned.

“Oh, Adrian!” Tiffany gushed as she twirled a strand of blond hair around her index finger. “We were just talking about you.”

Adrian arched a brow at her. “What did I do now?”

“Oh, it was nothing bad. I was just asking about that silly old e-mail, but I know you’re busy. So, you take your time and when you’re ready, I’ll take care of it for you.”