Page 10 of Caught Up In You

But now I’m revved up. I cannot stop. I am horny and have no prospects in this bar beyond this blushing man I cannot have. I’ve had two whole beers after not drinking for three months. Hell, I’m drunk on being out of the house, listening to a jukebox play “Hurts So Good” for the fourth time. I’m just thrilled to pieces to hear a sound other than a baby crying.

If I can’t get laid, making Owen McBride blush is maybe the next best thing.

And so I give him my best devilish grin.

“Howwhatworks? Your moves?” I ask. I level my gaze at his gorgeous baby blues, pinning him to the chair with hoodedeyes. “Owen, are you telling me you have actualmoves? And you won’t show me? How dare you allude to moves and refuse to demonstrate them! Come on, please? Pretty please? I promise never to tell anyone about your moves or use them against you. I’m just asking to see them, Owen. Please?”

I bat my eyelashes and rattle on like a schoolyard bully, desperate to make his cheeks flush again. Instead, his jaw ticks like he’s thinking hard or trying not to smile. Then his beer bottle hits the table with a heavy thud.

He leans forward until I can feel the heat coming off him, his long legs caging mine between his knees. He rests his warm, heavy hands on my thighs. He gives the slightest flex of his fingers, just the barest hint of a squeeze, and it sends an electric shock directly up my legs and into my panties.

But it’s nothing—nothing—compared to the way his ice-blue eyes go dark, practically navy, one heavy brow rising.

“You done being a brat, Wyatt? Or do you really want to play?” His voice is the most delicious deep growl of warning. The sound reverberates through my body, and it’s all I can do not to shiver.

All my words evaporate in my mouth. Only a tiny huff of a sigh escapes, my lips parted in half shock, half arousal. And every one of those reasons why Owen McBride isn’t for me?

They run straight for the hills.

Then he releases me, leans back in his chair like a Roman emperor, and reaches for his beer. Like nothing ever happened. Like he didn’t touch me, didn’t growl at me, didn’t turn me the fuck on with that little stunt.

But when that beer bottle meets his lips again, I don’t miss the quirk of a smile.

“Holy shit, McBride,” I say, and swat at his biceps, trying to erase the heat coursing through my body like an electric current.

He shrugs, the corners of his lips tugging up farther. “You asked to see my moves.”

“It’s always the nice ones,” I say, shaking my head. I turn and rest my elbows on the tabletop before I do something stupid, like climb into his lap and try to taste the beer on his lips.

Owen laughs. “Yeah, I think you’ve said that to me a time or two.”

I reach for my own beer and find the bottle empty. I want to order another, but if I have a third beer on a night like tonight, lord knows what I might do. I set the bottle back down on the table and laugh.

“I don’t even know if I have anything to say back to that.”

“Wyatt Hart at a loss for words? There’s a first.” Owen’s grin spreads wide now, the kind you see in toothpaste commercials. The kind that winds up on the front page of the local newspaper after he rescues a baby from a well or whatever Boy Scouts like Owen McBride get up to in their spare time.

I hate how much I like it.

“Where’d you learn to talk like that, from Archer?”

Owen scoffs. “You seriously think that of all my brothers,Archeris the biggest flirt? Archer has all the finesse of a third grader selling Girl Scout cookies.”

I roll my eyes. “Luckily, much like Archer, Girl Scout cookies sell themselves.”

He laughs. “Got a thing for my big brother, eh?”

I shake my head. “Not my type. But anyone can see you McBride boys are genetically blessed. You’re all built like Paul Bunyan and have that thick wavy hair that should be in shampoo commercials. To say nothing of the blue eyes on you people, my god.”

There’s that damn grin again. “Dang, Wyatt. If you want me so bad, just speak up.”

Maybe it’s the two beers, or maybe it’s that I don’t like feeling like he’s got the upper hand, but either way, I lean in and say loudly and clearly into his ear, “I want you.”

The grin drops from his face, his blue eyes going wide. I’ve got him, and what I said even has the benefit of being true. But then I drop back onto my stool. “Unfortunately, you’re not for me.”

He scoffs. “And why is that?”

“Because I’m here to get laid, and you’re here to have drinks with your ex-girlfriend, who is now your best friend.”

---