Free Something Has to Give by Maren Smith Page B

blankets and thrusting back at him. She lay on her side too, stubbornly facing the door, knees drawn up in preparation for another night spent in sleep-off battlefield. The urge to give her a smack was barely resistible.
    “You have exactly two seconds to g ive back half of those blankets,” he said instead.
    She snorted. “Or what?”
    “Or I’m coming in there after them.” His belly heated at the thought. Languid need like molten ribbons twined around and around in his guts, stroking at his cock from the inside until all he could feel was the steady throb growing with every second she hesitated. When she rolled over to stab him with that narrow-eyed suspicious glare, he felt such a surge of desire that it could only be described as crazy. He didn’t even like her (but she was growing on him) and she certainly didn’t like him (maybe he was growing on her too). Definitely something was growing between them and it couldn’t just be his cock.
    “What the hell does that—” she started, but he didn’t let her finish.
    Grabbing the blankets, with one strong yank, Quint ripped her out of her swaddling cocoon. She actually flipped over, bounced flat on the mattress, her nightshirt riding up to reveal that sexy strip of white panty rounding the curves of her bottom before flowing down between her legs.  Like a red cape flashed before a red-blooded bull, that tiny scrap of white inflamed him like nothing else could. Like nothing else had. Not in a very, very long time.
    He wanted her. It wasn’t in his best interest. Hell, it could only work against him, but he wanted her.
    And that kinda pissed him off, really. She had to know what she was doing to him. She had to be doing it deliberately, manipulating him every way she could just to keep this damn house. His blood burned; his cock wasn’t listening to reason. It was all he could do right now not to fall on top of her, catch her sassy lips beneath his and just consume her.
    Would she wrap her arms and her legs—those long, soft legs—around him and kiss him back with all the same passion and hunger that was raging inside him now, or would she tell him to go to hell? Oh, the urge to find out.
    “Hey!” she snarled, and sat up so close and so fast she almost cracked her forehead into his. In the pale glow of the moonlight, he could see the anger on her face, but damn if that didn’t make her even more kissable. He wavered, wanting so badly just to taste her.
    “Someone ought to teach you a lesson,” he growled. “Women who crawl into bed with strange men deserve what they get.”
    “ Men who do the same deserve to get neutered,” she shot back, incapable of backing down. Her whole small, soft body was trembling now, just inches away from his. When she breathed in deeply, her breasts rose like a challenge and, in the pale moonlight, his eyes locked on the peak and shadow of her nipples tenting the front of her nightshirt. “You think you can scare me—!”
    She yelped. It was all she had time to do. That and to throw up her fists, bracing them against his shoulders when that last tenuous thread of self-control snapped under the sight of those come-hither peaks and Quint closed the distance between them. He kissed her so fiercely, wanting to scare her (yeah, right), send her running away from him (like hell), out of his bed and maybe even out of the house all together. She tasted so good, just like a spitfire ought to, her hot little mouth all full of sass and squeak and freshly brushed teeth that likely would have sunk into his bottom lip if he hadn’t jerked back then every bit as brusquely as he’d charged in to kiss her.
    “You son of a bitch!” she gasped , staring at him with those huge, shocked eyes. “What the hell do you thi—”
    He kissed her again, noting (in the small part of his brain that was not completely scrambled by her) not how she stiffened up like a length of lumber, but how her tightly-clenched fists flexed against his shoulders,