Free Reborn by Nicole Camden

her bag and handed them to Mary, who snatched them gleefully and danced over to the bar. She leapt up gracefully and used her hands to vault herself over the bar, leaning in for a kiss from Max, who caught her elbows to hold her steady and buzzed her lips.
    He let her down. “Come on, Bambi, girl,” she called, and the big dog hurried to her side, tail wagging. Bambi looked up at Max for confirmation before trotting to catch up with Mary as she walked out the door.
    Max came out from behind the bar and followed them. Lille figured he was making sure Mary made it to her car and—hopefully—locking the door behind him.
    She took a seat on one of the barstools and slowly removed the ponytail from her hair, shaking out the soft blond waves with her fingers. She could feel her body loosening as she thought about the hard muscles that she would have beneath her fingers.
    Turning on the stool so she’d face him when he returned, she propped one of her heels on the top rung of the barstool and waited.
    He came into the light of an overhead lamp and stopped, letting his eyes drift down her body. Pulling a towel from the waistband of his pants, he wiped his hands and threw it off to the side, but he didn’t move any closer.
    Lille tilted her head a little and let her legs fall open, just a touch. “Are you coming over here?”
    Max shook his head. “I don’t know.”
    Lille liked that answer. He was fighting her so hard and he was so gorgeous, his chest moving up and down with unwilling excitement.
    “You should come over here and let me kiss you.”
    “I’ll be the one doing the kissing.”
    “Is that right?” Lille purred, and lifted her left foot onto the stool, untying the bow at the top of her boot. “Wanna know what I’m wearing under these leggings?” she ventured, watching his eyes dip between her legs.
    “I don’t give a fuck,” he confessed, his fingers twitching as if he was imagining touching her. He took a step closer and seemed to force himself to stop.
    Lille licked her lips and dared him with her eyes.
    “Come here, Max. You know you want to.”
    He snarled and stalked forward abruptly, catching a hand in the lush softness of her hair. She let him pull her head back and take her mouth. He kissed her hard, angrily, pressing her lips against her teeth and shoving his tongue deep. She kissed him back, fighting savagely with her own tongue, but after a moment, she yanked hard on his hair.
    He jerked away. “What the fuck?”
    She was breathing hard, her lips swollen and red, and she was so damn beautiful, her disheveled hair floating around her heart-shaped face like the mermaid’s in the statue at the Box.
    “You want me?” she asked, and damn it if he wanted to say anything otherwise. He wanted her too damn fucking much.
    “You want me,” she stated this time, and her gaze was resolute. “We do this my way, darling, or we don’t do it.”
    He wanted to tell her to fuck off, that no pretty piece of ass was worth this shite, but there was something about her, something that made his breath ragged. Lines from a poem kept drifting through his mind, one of his uncle’s favorites—he’d often used them in reference to Mandy: “All that’s best of dark and bright./Meet in her aspect and her eyes.”
    The rational voice in Max’s head told him to get the hell away from her. She was a dangerous woman.
    But then, when had he ever behaved rationally?
    “Fuck it.”

CHAPTER Seven

    “What do ye want?” He resisted—just barely—the urge to wrap his fist around that soft blond hair, grip the waistband of her leggings in his hand and rip them down just far enough to fuck her. Her legs would be close together and she’d be all soft, white curves and wet, pink flesh.
    “Lift me onto the bar,” she ordered, excited that he was playing, that he was going to let her control him.
    Most of the lights had been turned off in the bar, so soft shadows cast her cheekbones into deeper relief, and her eyes