An uncertain smile crept back onto her pretty face. “Okay. Well, then, what do you want to do?”
One beat passed. And then another. And Maverick let the words that described his fantasy fly. “I want to pin you against my truck and kiss the fuck out of you. I want to put my hands on you. Everywhere. I want to push those sexy little pants off your even sexier ass and make you wet with my fingers until you’re crying out my name. While all those eyes behind that dark glass are watching. While Slater’s watching.”
Alexa let out a shaky breath and her mouth dropped open. Heat slid into her gaze, making it harder for him to resist turning his words into actions. “Probably . . . um, probably not a good idea.”
He chuffed out a little laugh. “Probably not.” He reached for the handle and held the door open for her.
With a little nod, she got up into the truck’s cab.
Maverick stepped into the doorway. “You really okay?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice breathy.
“He talk to you?” She nodded. “He touch you?”
“No.” Her eyes flashed to the building, making Mav’s scalp prickle. He peered over his shoulder just to make sure Slater wasn’t standing right behind him. “I told him we were over. He tried to convince me to at least talk it out. And then he gave me back my ring.”
Maverick couldn’t help it. His gaze dropped to her lap, where her hands were fisted against her thighs. No ring.
“I wouldn’t accept it, though, and he finally had to take it back.”
He met her eyes and what he saw there nearly sucker punched him. Pride. Strength. Courage. None of this was easy for her, and he knew that. It made him proud of her, too. And he wouldn’t have been the only one. “Tyler would be proud of you.”
She gave him a smile that was so sweet and so sad that it felt like she’d reached inside his chest and squeezed. “That . . . that means a lot, Maverick.”
“Just calling it like I see it,” he said in a low voice. “He say anything else?”
She rolled her eyes. “Just that it wasn’t over.”
Of course it wasn’t. The fucker. “We’ll see about that.”
The ride home was quiet, and then they were back at his house again.
“Your stuff’s all in your room,” Maverick said. He dropped his keys on the kitchen counter.
“You didn’t have to unload it all. I would’ve helped,” she said, placing her purse next to his keys.
He shouldn’t like the look of that so much. Or the way it felt to have company in here at the end of the day. Or the way the clicking of her heels against the hardwoods echoed through the house.
“No biggie, Al,” he said, grabbing a soda from the fridge. Just to have something to do with his hands that didn’t involve getting them wet with the slickness he could draw out from between her legs. Yeah, they’d fucked this morning. But that didn’t mean she wanted it to happen again. He needed to rein his damn self in.
“Gonna change. Be right back.”
When she was gone, he raked his hand through his hair and mentally ran through his favorite parts of the rebuild he was doing. It had a copper-forged gas tank and copper-coated lower shock arms, rear fender strut, bar risers, and a bunch of other copper accents. When it was done, it was going to have a sweet throwback vibe.
Nope. Didn’t work. He still wanted to follow her back to her bedroom. Especially since his brain knew that she was stripping down and baring all that warm, warm skin.
Goddamnit. He needed to knock his head against a wall somewhere. Because the last thing she needed was him coming on too strong. Or, frankly, coming on at all.
“Hey, Mav?” she called. “Do you see Lucy anywhere?”
He pushed off the counter and made for the living room. “Not in here,” he said. He grinned to himself because he had a few surprises for Alexa where Lucy was concerned. He checked the hall bathroom next. As little as the thing was, she could be hiding just about anywhere. When he’d returned earlier in the day with Alexa’s stuff, the cat had been standoffish at first, but once her mama’s things started coming in, Lucy came closer, poking around and sniffing at Alexa’s clothes and bags, until she finally let Maverick pet her and even pick her up.
And then, naturally, he’d needed to win over the fucking cat all the way. So when he’d gone to the grocery store to make sure he had some of Alexa’s favorites in the house, he’d just happened into the pet aisle. Not seeing much, he’d stopped at the pet store, where a shit-ton of stuff had fallen into his cart. For fuck sake.