Page 6 of The Mechanic's Virgin

He flashes a wolfish grin. “Oh, no? So this was just a coincidence, Grace?” he asks, his hand brushing against mine, just enough to set a spark to a fire beneath my skin. “Your car breaks down at my shop and then you show up here tonight, looking like a wet dream, and I’m just supposed to believe that’s a coincidence?”

I shrug, feeling frozen in place. I’m tingling all over. “I–I needed to get out of the house.”

That’s not a lie. It’s not the whole truth either. The whole reason I needed to get out of the house was because I couldn’t stop thinking abouthim.

He leans down–closer. Closer. Until his lips nearly brush against my ear. “You wanted out of the house, or you want to come tomyhouse?”

His question nearly breaks me. I suck in a deep breath and fight against how badly I want to tell him he’s right. I want to scream at him to take me. Do whatever he wants with me. Feelings I’ve never felt before are racing through me, threatening to take me over. My brain will just not shut up.

This is crazy. I only just met this man today. We don’t even know each other!

“I shouldn’t be here,” I stammer, turning away.

But Nash grabs my wrist. Not hard enough to hurt but just enough to hold me in place. “No. Don’t run away, Grace.”

My pulse pounds like a drum. “I’m not running–”

“Yes you are,” he growls. “I saw it in your eyes the moment we met, princess. That built-in flight response. I scare you, but not because Iamscary. Because you’re scared of how much you want me.”

I shake my head in a pathetic attempt to deny the truth. But Nash pulls me closer–so close our chests almost touch. If they did, he’d feel how hard my nipples are, which he can probably already see through my shirt.

“Don’t think about it, princess,” he says. “Just give yourself over to me. Let me take care of everything.”

My lips part on their own, and he looks down at them, the muscles in his neck and jaw flexing.

“We just met,” I tell him. “I should not want this…”

“But you do.”

He’s right. And I hate that he’s right. My thighs are soaked, my breathing is erratic, and my mind is fogged over with desperate lust.

“I need to go,” I whisper, unable to look at him any longer. The veins on his biceps pull at me with an unseen force.

“No, you don’t, Grace.”

His rough hand slips around to the small of my back, guiding me around the dark side of a tree, into the shadows. We’re even more alone now. My heart is about to burst. I’m going to faint.

“Nash–”

“Shhh,” he says gently, brushing a strand of my hair behind my ear. “I won’t do anything you don’t want, Grace. But you can’t lie to me. You have to tell me the truth. Don’t stand there quivering like a leaf and tell me you don’t want me to touch you.”

I am shaking as I force myself to look up at him. His eyes are fierce and hungry, and I suddenly feel cold. “You scare me, Nash.”

“Because I’m not a prince fit for you?” he asks, pressing me up against the tree.

I shake my head. If only he knew just how wrong he was. “No, that’s not it–I need to go.”

“You say that one more time, princess,” he growls, “and I’ll throw you over my shoulder and lock you in the garage until you admit the truth. The truth we both know.”

My mouth goes dry.

He’s so close he must know how hard my heart is pounding. If he can’t hear it, he can feel it.

His lips part again like he’s going to kiss me, and that’s when I feel the surge of adrenaline zip through me. I slip out from under his arm and race away through the woods, no idea what I’m doing.

“You’re mine, Grace!” he calls after me. “The sooner you accept that, the easier this will be. For both of us!”

I run. Not to Emily. Not to the bonfire. But into the darkness, away from the one man whose arms I want to throw myself into, while my body screams for his touch.

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