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

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.”

       Chapter 8

       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.”