An Inconvenient Affair (The Alpha Brotherhood #1)(17)
Author: Catherine Mann

He didn’t want her pity. Frustration roiled over how she’d managed to slip past his defenses, to pry things out of him that he usually didn’t share. He snapped, “Would you like to tutor me?”

She flinched. “You seemed to have mastered the art of communication just fine.”

Anger was his fatal flaw. Always had been. He leveled his breathing. “I have the brotherhood to thank for the social skills.”

And the anger management.

“The brotherhood?”

He reached for the keyboard again, setting the screen back into motion, losing himself in the technology of manipulating the image. “Military reform school was a sentence, sure, but I found my first friends there. They were people like me in a lot of ways. I learned how to be part of a pack.”

“Military reform school—so they had issues, too?”

“You mean criminal records.”

“I’m not judging.” She leaned back until her hair slithered along his arm. “Just asking.”

Was she flirting? What was her angle? Why was she asking more about him? Regardless, he wouldn’t miss out on the chance to reel her in, and perhaps win back her trust.

“A lot of the guys in the school were there because they wanted a military education prior to going into the service.” He wrapped a lock around his finger, unseen behind her back. “Some of us were sent there to learn to be more self-disciplined.”

Touching her hair, just her hair and nothing more, required all the self-control he’d ever gained. But nothing could will away the blood surging south, the hot pounding urge to undress her.

“And you formed a brotherhood with those people, rebels like yourself?”

“I did.” That much he could say honestly, and without mentioning the whole Salvatore/Interpol connection. “Together, we learned how to play within the rules.”

She nodded toward the image of him on the runway at the bachelor auction, taking the mic and crowing to the audience about how he’d played them. “You don’t look particularly conformist to me.”

“You should have seen me back in the day.” Hair always too long for regs and an attitude he’d worn like his own personal uniform.

“Do you have pictures of yourself from that time stored somewhere on this computer?” She leaned forward and he let go of her hair quickly.

“Sealed under lock and key. Trust me, you’ll never find any old yearbook photos of me.”

“Hmm…”

She went silent again, and he wondered what she was thinking. He clicked the computer keys to freeze on the frame of the ballroom filling the screen. She leaned her head on his shoulder.

His body went harder, if that was even possible. He almost reached to pull her over, kiss her again, tuck her underneath him and—

“Troy, there’s a photo of me sitting on the Easter Bunny’s lap.”

What? She was giving him conversational whiplash. “What’s so bad about that?”

“I was thirteen.”

“Aww…” Now he understood. She’d been trying to make him feel better by sharing her own secret embarrassment. So sweet, he didn’t have the heart to tell her he’d left those concerns behind him a long time ago. “Your mom made you.”

“Hell, no.” She froze the image again and angled sideways to face him full-on. “I was there because I wanted to believe. In the Easter Bunny. In Santa. In the Tooth Fairy. I was teased in school until I learned it was best to keep some things to myself. There wasn’t a Sisterhood of the Tooth Fairy at my junior high.”

God, she was freaking amazing. After all the ways he’d lied to her, quibbled, maneuvered, whatever, she was still worried about him being hurt by some slights back when he was a kid.

He gathered up a fistful of her hair. “You really are too awesome for your own good.”

“Compliments will not get me into your bed,” she said, her lips moving so close to his they were almost touching.

His fingers tangled in her hair, he stared into her blue eyes, which were deepening with awareness. “What if I came to yours?”

Five

The feel of his hand in her hair, his fingers rubbing firm circles against her scalp, offered a sensual mixture of setting her nerves on fire and melting her all at once. Right now, she wanted to be the type of person who could just lean into him for more than a kiss and damn the consequences. She wanted to do something she’d never done before—have a one-night stand with a virtual stranger. He was so close their breath mingled until she couldn’t tell if the coffee scent came from him or from her.

“I told you we were never going to kiss again.”

“I heard you. I was there, remember? While I enjoy the hell out of kissing you, it’s not mandatory for going to bed together. Admit it,” he growled softly, “you’re tempted.”

“I’m tempted to eat all the marshmallows out of a box of Lucky Charms, but that doesn’t mean I intend to do it.”

“Never?” he challenged.

“Okay,” she conceded. “Maybe I did it once. Doesn’t mean that was a smart thing to do.”

“Then how about a kiss just for a kiss’s sake, so you can prove to me whatever we felt downstairs was a fluke.”

A fluke? Oh, she already knew what she’d felt, and it was real. That didn’t mean she intended to jump into bed with a guy just because the kiss rocked her socks. Perhaps that was the lesson Mr. Have It All needed to learn. She could turn the tables, knock him off balance with a mind-numbing kiss and show him she could—and would—still walk away. Excitement pooled low in her belly at the thought. She trailed her fingers along his forehead, over the eyebrow with a slash of a scar through it, then cupped his jaw in her hands.

With slow deliberation, she took his bottom lip between her teeth, tugging before teasing her tongue along his mouth. His eyes glinted emerald sparks of desire, and then she didn’t see anything. Her eyes closed, she sealed herself to him, her mouth, her chest, her hungry hands and hungrier body.

This kiss was different than the reserved connection on the balcony where there’d been the threat of interruption. Here, they were alone. She was free to explore the breadth of his shoulders, the flexing muscles in his arms as he hauled her close.

Her br**sts pressed against the hard wall of his chest. Her ni**les tightened to needy buds against him, hot and achy, yearning for the soothing stroke of his tongue. A tingling spread inside her, so intense it almost hurt. She wriggled to get even closer, shifting to sit on his lap, straddling him. And…