“Who the hell,” she panted, lungs laboring from exertion and mounting anger, “do you think you are?”
He stared at her as if she’d suddenly become something to be wary of, the way a hiker might eye a coiled rattlesnake blocking his path. “What the fuck are you doing, Melanie?”
She thumped the ungiving surface of his chest with her palms, emotions tangling inside her until she didn’t know what to think, what to feel. All she knew was that she wasn’t going to let him treat her like crap and then walk away, blaming her for it.
“I just wanted to make sure that you understood one thing, since you sure as hell don’t seem to understand anything else that’s going on here.”
He held his arms bent, hands up by his head in a look of surrender, staring at her curiously along the sharp line of his nose. “And what’s that?”
“I won’t let you treat me like dirt.” With a hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach, she asked, “Was what I wanted really so wrong, Mark?”
“I told you I don’t care for feeling used. Especially for my dick.”
“How the hell could you feel used?” she all but shouted in his face, filled with confusion. Was this all some kind of sick game to him? She wanted to understand, but felt like he was deliberately screwing with her. “I don’t get it. Was it so bad for me to want sex with the man I’ve wanted for freaking ever? The man I’ve fa—”
At the last moment that pride she’d been so certain could take a bruising surged to its defense, and she choked back the words as quickly as they’d broken free. His eyes narrowed, his expression coldly remote even though his gaze fixed on her with a predatory alertness. Beneath her, his body went hard with tension, as if every muscle had been strung to its maximum limit.
“The man you’ve what?” he demanded in a rough rasp, his voice all gravel and command.
“Nothing,” she whispered, shaking her head.
“Damn it, Melanie,” he thundered beneath her, shaking her. “What were you going to say?”
“You’re an idiot and an asshole,” she said huskily, climbing off him, then backing away across the sand as he sat up and watched her retreat, the brutal intensity of his gaze making the green of his eyes burn in the pale moonlight. She shook her head again with quiet regret, and absolutely refused to allow the hot, stinging wash of tears burning at the backs of her eyes the freedom to fall. Not here. Not in front of him. No, she’d die before giving him that kind of sick satisfaction.
“Please don’t ever come near me again,” she said, surprised by the even, level tone of her voice, when everything inside seemed to be tumbling within, crashing into the empty void that churned in the pit of her stomach, as if she’d simply cave in on herself. Then she turned and ran…never once looking back.
* * * * *
Mark stood outside the entrance to his bar with his body hard and battle-ready, feeling a need for violence clawing at his back, savage and tauntingly intense. He wanted to fight—wanted to plow his fist through something until the pain blotted out the ugly scene he’d just enacted with Melanie. But more than that, he wanted to rewind the clock and start this entire damn day over again. Wanted to obliterate the bittersweet memory of the last few hours.
He stood unmoving, his lungs hurting and hands clenching at his sides. There was a warm, lingering dampness on the fingers of his right hand, and it made him groan, the rumbling sound snarled in the back of his throat, full of vicious frustration and raw, aching hunger. Knowing he was seven kinds of a fool, Mark closed his eyes and relived the intense moments that he’d had his face pressed to the moist folds of Melanie’s sex, her salty-sweet flavor spilling into his mouth as she’d quivered beneath his lips.
Christ, he needed
more
of that sweet perfection. He wanted to go back and drag her little ass home to his bed, force those silky thighs as wide as they’d go, and eat his way to some sort of peace right there in the drenched heat of her pussy. He wanted it open and helpless, his to explore and lick and look at for as long as he liked. For as long as he could take it, before he had to get his cock in her. And he didn’t want it just once. He wanted it
forever
, just like he’d known he would—and after this bizarre night, he knew this was a hell he’d be carrying with him for the rest of his life.
Cursing long and viciously under his breath, he finally walked through the door, shoving his Melanie-flavored hands deep into his front pockets.
“How’d it go?” Cain called out from behind the bar, a cigarette dangling precariously between his lips as he cleared off the closing rounds, only a few customers lingering as the last members of the band finished collecting their gear. The room fell strangely silent, as if everyone sensed the tension riding thick and heavy on the air. “Are there wedding bells in the air, bro?” Cain teased, picking up an empty Foster’s bottle.
Mark looked at his brother’s expectant face, and wanted to shove his fist into the smiling bastard’s jaw with such angry intent that it almost scared him.
“Do me a favor and shove that damn thing up your ass.”
“Hey, what’d you do to blow it, man?” Cain demanded, narrowing his eyes with cool speculation. “Things were looking pretty damn tight between you two when you strolled by here. They couldn’t have gone sour that fast. Not even you are that much of a fuck-up.”
“No, things were just peachy,” he sneered sarcastically, curling his lip with self-disgust, “until she made it clear that she was only out looking for a fast fuck.” She might not have come right out and said it, but then, she sure as hell hadn’t denied it.
“Huh?” Cain muttered, sending him a dubious look, the dark slash of his brows arched with disbelief. “Melanie?”
“Yeah, Melanie.” He ground his jaw at the infuriating disappointment he could hear in his voice. “Sweet, shy, innocent little Melanie Green.”
His brother jerked his dark, stubble-covered chin at him. “Then what’s the problem, Mark? I thought you
wanted
to fuck her.”
“I do want to fuck her, you blind shit.” Cold fury tremored through the tight tension of his muscles, and he fisted his hands in his pockets, a cold sweat breaking out across the hot surface of his skin. “But I wanted a hell of a lot more from her than just some raunchy sex up against some goddamn wall!”
“I’m not buying it,” Cain muttered, flicking the glowing tip of his cigarette against the mouth of the beer bottle. “Are you sure you read her right?”
“I may not have your vast, ageless experience,” he sneered, cutting a sharp glare at his frowning brother from the corner of his eye, “but I know my way around women.”
“No, you know your way around those brainless breasts with heads who we normally play ‘fondle, fuck, and forget ‘em’ with. You don’t understand jack shit about a classy babe like Melanie Green.”
“And you do?” he snorted, the strange twist not lost on him, considering they’d been having this similar conversation from opposite sides of the bar only hours before.
“More than you, apparently,” Cain snorted, wiping down the cleared surface of the counter, then tossing the damp white towel over his left shoulder. “And I’m telling you, you need to rip your head out of your ass before you blow it with this woman.”
It wasn’t so much the words, as it was the cruel knowledge that he’d
already
blown it with Melanie that had Mark picking up the nearest empty beer bottle, then hurling the tempered green glass into the wide mirror behind Cain’s shoulder with a violent, raging shout of fury—all the while wishing he could do the same destruction to his dumb-ass heart.
Chapter Six
It had been a bitch of a morning. Not surprising, considering what the past seven days had been like. As far as weeks went, this had been the shittiest. Seven long days and nights since she’d told Mark Logan to go to hell…and the craving for him had failed to lessen in all that time.
She was beginning to worry that maybe he really
was
addictive, because if anything, she only wanted him more, and the brief glimpses she’d managed to steal during the week through the front window of his bar had been nothing short of torture. True, she wanted to smack him for behaving like such an ass there at the end, but the moments leading up to that point had been too good to ignore—or forget. They had…connected, and in a way Melanie had never thought to connect with another person—especially a man.
God, she was going out of her mind thinking about him.
A thousand times she’d thought of going over to his bar and trying to talk to him—to put to use all those stellar communication skills she supposedly possessed, but her pride had refused to budge on the issue that he had jerked her around, and not vice versa. Whatever had been going through his head, all that talk of being used and whatever, still wasn’t clicking. No matter how she tried to get her brain around it, the pieces didn’t fit.
“Give it up, Mel. Maybe he just didn’t want you. Maybe he’s just conflicted, off his rocker, and a brick shy of a building up in his head.”
Damn it, something had to be the problem. Because she’d added the figures up again and again, and she still wasn’t getting a balance.
“And now look at you,” she muttered with disgust focused entirely on herself. “A week later and you’re still twisted up about him. So much so that all you really want to do is go slipping into work on a Saturday, just so you can try to catch another glimpse of him. Pathetic, woman, with a capital P.”
Oh yeah, the week had sucked, and her morning wasn’t feeling any better. She’d tried a steady stream of coffee, but it hadn’t helped to relieve the heavy weight of unhappiness that seemed to have curled around her, trapping her within its vising grip. Not even her early morning talk with Kyra had lifted it, though her friend had continued to be full of support and furious scorn for the man who’d all but ground her heart beneath the heel of his boots.
Knowing she couldn’t just sit on her sofa, staring off into space all day, Mel decided to at least drag her miserable body down to the beach and spend her day baking beneath the California sun, maybe even lose herself in a good book. God, anything would be better than sitting here replaying that night through her tired brain, over and over, watching the individual frames of memory unfold like some kind of warped romantic comedy. Only, Mel knew this was real life, and there wasn’t going to be any clever ending for her and Mark. The guy obviously thought she was—hell, who knew what he thought of her—and she thought he was a jerk. Hardly a good beginning for a romance, even one that centered on sex.
She was just reaching for the handle of her front door, when a loud knock rattled the thin structure within its frame, making her jump. Shaking her head at her jittery nerves, wondering if she’d gone past her legal caffeine limit, Mel flipped the lock, turned the handle and came face-to-face with a stern-looking Cain Logan.
“I need to talk to you,” he muttered as he pushed his way past her, stepping into her apartment with just enough arrogance to irritate her, bringing the rich scents of coffee, tobacco and warm male animal with him. Wild and untamed.
“Sure, come on in,” she drawled, her voice dripping with sarcasm while her mind wondered what on Earth he was doing there. “Really, just make yourself at home.”
He turned in the middle of the room, making it seem significantly smaller, and shot her a questioning look, as if he didn’t get what had peeved her. Bracing his dark, utterly male hands on his hips, his deep blue eyes pinned her in place. “I came to talk to you about Mark,” he muttered, his sexy mouth hardened into a grim line of determination.
“Why do I get the feeling this is really something you’d rather not be doing?” she asked suspiciously. “Did he send you here?”
“Hell, no. He’d probably try to kick my ass if he knew what I was doing, but there’ll be no living with him if this thing between the two of you goes to shit.”
“How poetic,” she softly snorted, crossing her arms.
“Look, Mark isn’t like other men,” he said, ignoring her comment. “Hell, he isn’t even like me. When he decides on something, he sticks. The only reason he hasn’t been grounded into a solid relationship before now is because he hadn’t met a woman he really wanted. I mean, one that he wanted for…uh,” he broke off, jerking his wide shoulders, and she almost smiled at the sudden look of unease on his handsome face as he muttered, “you know, for more than sex. But you—there’s no doubt that he wants
you
, Mel. I’ve never seen him like this. These past seven days have been like a war zone around him. He’s gotten into three fights at the bar, fired Miller because the guy told him he was being an asshole, and insulted one woman who was coming on to him so rudely that she threw her martini in his face. And it’s all over you, honey. So you had better decide just what it is you want from him, because he’s fallen hard. I’m talking seriously nose-dived.”
She swallowed a sudden, brilliant burst of surprise, shocked clear down to her toes at the sight of this gorgeous, intimidatingly sexy man coming to plead a case for his baby brother. “As…uh, sweet as this is of you, Cain, I don’t think you really understand what your brother wants. Things really didn’t go all that well last weekend,” she murmured, knowing her words were the understatement of the year. Not that the mind-numbing orgasms hadn’t been incredible. No, it was everything else that had claimed top prize as the crappiest moment of her life.
“Yeah,” he replied with a wry smile, “I know.” One black brow arched in arrogant humor. “Who do you think cleaned up the beer bottle he smashed against one of those framed mirrors he has all over the place when he finally made it back to the bar that night?”