Heavy Issues by Elle Aycart Page A

with what he looked like after several men had wandered to their table to ask the birthday girl to dance. She’d turned them all down, but that didn’t seem to placate him and by the time the fourth dentist approached, he was so tense his jaw was going to break. He looked furious enough that not even his usual groupies dared to approach him.
    “Birthday girl is dancing with me,” he said with a growl at the poor guy and, grabbing her by her hand, dragged her to the dance floor.
    “You’re too popular for your own good,” he said as he took her in his arms and started dancing.
    “Nope, I’m not. It’s the stupid crown Holly put on my head. Men can’t resist trying to be a woman’s birthday present. Some kind of porn-flicks-based fantasy, I think.”
    He pressed her against him. As he possessively held on to her, his heat slipped into her body, shooting straight to her core, burning her up from the inside.
    “I thought you weren’t that interested in hiring a gigolo,” he whispered.
    “Changed my mind,” she answered, trying to sound confident. She was walking on thin ice here. Playing games with Cole would get her fucked—literally.
    As the song finished and he began maneuvering them back to the table, some guy struck up a conversation with her.
    Cole got in between them and, with a glare, made the other guy back down.
    “Don’t even think about it,” he said to her once they were alone again. “Forget it.”
    “What? Forget what?” she asked, amused.
    “You were measuring him up, and he was looking at you as if you were dessert. There’s going to be none of that. Unless of course I’m the one sampling the dessert.”
    She snorted. “Really? I wonder what he thinks I am: a double-fudge chocolate cake or a banana split? Should we ask him?” she said, turning in the other guy’s direction.
    Cole growled and, gripping her hand, began dragging her out.
    “Hey, where are we going?”
    “Out of here. You and I are going to have a nice little chat.”
    Uh-uh, she needed an escape route. “I’m tired. I’d rather go home. Let’s talk another day.”
    “I’ll walk you home,” he insisted.
    So much for plan A. Plan B?
    “I live around the corner. There’s no need.”
    Now it was he who snorted.
    As they passed their table, Cole took her purse.
    “Wait, you’re forgetting my present,” she said and extended her hand toward Holly, who was holding the invitation.
    He intercepted the envelope. “We won’t be needing that, will we?” he asked, his eyes ablaze.
    “One never knows…” she mumbled, weirdly compelled to taunt him.
    “Yes, one knows. You girls can decide who goes in Christy’s place. She’s definitely not going.”
    Instead of fighting for her or at least showing some outrage on her behalf, her friends accepted Cole’s statement at face value and began discussing who should attend the event.
    “Traitors,” Christy said accusingly and then turned to Cole with a scowl as he unceremoniously maneuvered them out of the bar and into the street. “You’re behaving like a Neanderthal.”
    “A Neanderthal? We haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of my primitive side, sugar.”
    He fell upon her lips the second they turned the corner into a secluded back alley.
    This kiss had nothing to do with the one he’d given her in the bar. It was full of stark hunger and possession, his lips, his teeth, and his tongue working in turns to possess her, to drive her insane with need. He wasn’t kidding anymore. And she was out of her depth.
    “We need some ground rules here,” she told him in a shaky voice.
    He backed her to the wall, his voice a low rumble that abraded her senses and sent her stomach plummeting.
    “No, we don’t.” There it went. The thin ice under her feet was gone. “No-strings-attached sex in exchange for decoy dates. I agree to those terms, fully, but that’s where your conditions end, sweetheart. I won’t fuck you in accordance with a set of orders.