Smoking Holt (2 page)

T
he heat rolling off him in waves was probably pure imagination on her part. Nobody could be that hot and not just burst into flames.

“Bella.” His voice was a low rumble, which
she found provoking. Probably because of the hint of rebuke threaded through the word. Still, the sound of her name on those lips made her restless. Itchy.

“Holt.” This, she blew out in a puff of smoke. The breeze caught it, danced it away. Would that she could dance away as well.

The thought of spending the next two days alone with him was torture. Absolute torture. Every time she so much as glanced at him a ping of pain hummed through her soul.

He leaned back in his chair, stretched his long legs out under the glass table and threaded his fingers over his belly. Her gaze fixated on his boots. Why did he have to be wearing boots? And leathers?

The fact that he rode his Harley almost everywhere was just one more thing that annoyed the shit out of her. Surely it wasn’t because he was a much more authentic rebel than she.

“No one’s supposed to be here until Friday.” Okay. She probably didn’t need to snap like that, but goddamn it anyway. Why was he here?

He picked up the whiskey bottle, checked the level and then took a swig. “I finished my project early. Decided to take the rest of the week off.”

Yeah. Someone else with a thriving business.
Someone else with an enormously successful career. She grunted and muttered under her breath, “Must be nice.”

“And why are you here on a Wednesday?”

As if it was any of his business. She glared at him. “Slow week.” Fuck. Every week was a slow week. Abel and Marianne had agreed to cover the store. With so few customers, merchandise was gathering dust on the shelves. Why not come here and lick her wounds in private?

But it wasn’t private.

Not now.

If she wasn’t so drunk—and if the last ferry hadn’t already sailed—she would just go home now.
She tipped back her glass and drained it, though it was still half full. Then she attempted to wrestle the bottle from him. He didn’t seem to want to release it.

“Haven’t you had enough?” he asked.

The idiot.

She snarled at him. No words. Just a snarl. He let the bottle go with a shrug, raising his hands in the air
and she filled her glass. To the fucking brim.

“I didn’t know you still smoked.”

Yeah. There it was. Finally. She’d been waiting for that bomb to drop.

She lit another cigarette
—although there was one already burning—and glared at him through the billow of smoke. He was so annoying with that chiseled jaw, those full, lush lips and slumberous, heavy-lidded eyes. That goddamned five-o’clock shadow drove her fucking crazy.

“Does Kristi know?”

Fury and frustration and
hunger
roiled in her chest. Why couldn’t he ever, like once, think about
her
? Why was it always about Kristi? “Fuck you, Holt. I don’t answer to anyone.”

He laughed, which
pissed her off even more. “No. You don’t. Do you?”

What the fuck was that supposed to mean?

She opened her mouth to ask, but before she could, he added, “You always did march to the beat of another drummer.”

Something in his tone—something that definitely wasn’t scorn—snagged her attention. Was she just drunk, or had that been a tinge of…admiration? She narrowed her eyes and studied him. “What is that supposed to mean?” Though she voiced her thought, the question lacked her trademark bitterness. The prospect of Holt having even a smidgen of respect for her was tantalizing. Dangerous, perhaps, but tantalizing.

He took another drink from the bottle and shrugged. “You just live your life the way you want.
Say what needs to be said. You don’t give a shit what other people think.”

“I give a shit.” But this, she mumbled.
There was a distinct difference between not giving a shit and letting people think you didn’t give a shit. She’d made an art of the latter. The scary truth was, she probably cared too much. Sometimes it hurt, how much she cared.

She
turned away, away from his too-observant, simmering gaze, away from his heat, and stared out into the night. A shiver took her. The evening was cold and damp. She should probably go inside.

Instead, she lit another cigarette.

He snorted a laugh.

“What?” she snapped.

“You already have two going.” She flicked a glance at her impromptu ashtray. Yup, sure enough, there were two cigarettes already burning.

She shrugged and forced a devil-may-care tone.
“What can I say? I have an oral fixation.”

He went still at her side, prompting her to
look in his direction. The fire in his eyes seared her.

“What?” Again, a snap. God, he was
irritating.

He licked his lips as though he wanted to say something, but the words were stuck in his throat.

“What?”

A
tiny smile quirked on his handsome face. “If you didn’t hate my guts so much, I’d be tempted to give you something else to fixate on.”

Her heart thudded painfully. And not just at the sudden,
scalding image of her lips wrapped around Holt’s cock. She fiddled with her lighter. “I-I don’t hate your guts.”

“Really?” He took another swig of whiskey. And then another. “You could have fooled me.
You called me a—what was it again?—a douche nozzle?”

“You were acting like a douche nozzle. I mean, really. What decent man dates five women at once?”

“They all knew the score. There was no agreement of monogamy. And what else am I? A peckerwood. A horndog.” His voice dropped an octave. “A degenerate.”

A red tide c
rawled up her neck. Yeah. She’d said all those things. But she hadn’t meant them. Not really.

“
If the shoe fits…”

“But it wasn’t what you said
…it was how you said it. As though it tasted bad.”

She didn’t like the wounded
expression on his face, or the throb in this tone. Had her careless words really cut that deep? She didn’t like the way that made her feel at all.

So she went on the defensive.

“You’re the one who can’t stand me.” She didn’t know why she said that out loud. Or why the words seemed to wrench from the very depths of her soul.

Oh. Wait. She did know why she said it.

The whiskey.

But, it was the truth. W
henever he glanced at her, the tiny lines around his mouth would tighten and his attention would slide away—toward Kristi, or some other female. Whenever he wandered into a room and saw her there alone he would just veer off in another direction. And when he spoke to her—whenever he deigned to address her directly—his words were curt and clipped.

No. He couldn’t stand her.
It was hardly a secret.

And it pissed her of
f.

She shot a glower at him and something froze in her chest. Probably her heart. Or her anger. Or her heart. Because he wasn’t
looking at her with apathy or revulsion or some fake contrition.

He
looked stunned. “Where did you get the idea I can’t stand you?”

“Gee, I don’t know, Holt.” She stubbed out her cigarette. And then the other two.
“Maybe the way you treat me like I have a disease?”

“I do not.”

“All right. Warts then.” She rubbed the annoying prickle at the corner of her lids. She wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t.

“Bella—”

“It’s okay, Holt. I get it. I’m hardly your type. But could you at least—”

“You’re exactly my type.” He said it softly enough, but she heard it. The words percolat
ed through her booze-pickled brain.

“What did you say?”

He sat back, eyes glowing. “You heard me.”

They stared at each other in silence as the rain pattered on the big umbrella and then dripped onto the deck in fat splats.
Tension and desire crackled between them. It became almost too intense to bear.

Bella fumbled for her pack of cigarettes, but Holt covered her hand with his.
“No. No more,” he said. “Not tonight. Fixate on this instead.” And he leaned forward and lowered his head.

Holt couldn’t believe it. She was holding still as he came in for a kiss—a kiss he’d been fantasizing about for months. 

And who wouldn’t fantasize about kissing Bella? She was
drop-dead gorgeous. Just looking at her made his mouth water. His cock hard. He could barely contemplate more. Much less make an attempt.

Maybe it was the whiskey he’d
guzzled on an empty stomach or maybe it was the desolation surrounding her like a cloak. Or maybe it was the burn of repressed need rising up within him. But somewhere during their awkward, confrontational exchange—and they were always awkward and confrontational—a sudden resolve had washed over him. A determination to change things between them.

It had been like this for far too long. And
he had no idea why.

Holt threaded his fingers in Bella’s silky hair and cupped her nape, pulled her closer. Her lips parted and her tongue peeped out
as he approached. Desire raged through him.

He’d wanted her, ached for a taste of her for so long, he could barely breathe, now that he’d finally dredged up the courage.

But breathing was overrated.

His lips touched hers. Her scent, her essence, filled his mouth and he groaned. She tasted like ambrosia.

Okay. There was a hint of whiskey and a trace of menthol, but he could overlook that. For the moment. Because—shit—her lips moved beneath his. And not a murmur of protest or outrage or fury or any of the other responses he might have expected in the unlikely event he might grab her and suddenly kiss her with no warning.

No
. She was exploring, tasting, sipping him like a woman long denied.

He tipped his head to the side and deepened the kiss
. His gut clenched when she opened for him, gave him better access. And then—yeah, his cock sprang to attention—she sank her claws into his shoulder and tugged him closer.

S
he nipped him. Just a gentle nip to his lower lip. And his vision went red.

He didn’t mean to growl.

He didn’t mean to go all feral and wrench her chair around in a metallic squeal of protest.

He didn’t mean to scoop her up into his arms and hold her luscious form hard against his body while he consumed her. Bracing her on the table, using the umbrella pole for leverage, he
grasped her buttocks and positioned her over his crotch and rubbed, dry humping her like a lust-crazed beast. The ashtray and the whiskey bottle fell onto the deck as he jostled the table in his frenzy to feel her fully against him. He ignored them. Ignored them and rubbed his cock against the damp heat of her core.

Sure, it was through two layers of jeans, but it was closer than he’d ever been to heaven in his life.

He had to revise that thought a moment later when Bella, who was—unbelievably—undulating against his cock and grunting and moaning, tossed back her hair and stared at him. The fire in her eyes stole his breath.

“Holt,” she whispered through clenched teeth. “God, yes, Holt.”

Now
that
was the closest he’d ever been to heaven.

That look, those words—Jesus. A dream come true.

Why the hell hadn’t he grabbed her and kissed her with no warning before?

Because he’d thought—deep in his heart—she’d push him away. Maybe slap him. Certainly dress him down. Never in his wildest imagination had he expected this. Well, maybe in his wildest fantasies. Maybe in all his fantasies.

But he’d never thought it would really happen.

He held her close
, cupping the small of her back, and nibbled his way over her cheek and along her jaw to suck on her earlobe. She went crazy, huffing and moaning and fisting—
fucking fisting
—his hair.

He’d never been into hair pulling—at least having his hair pulled—but something about her rough
and riotous response to his nips and laves made the fire in his belly flare. He responded in kind, twining his fingers in the skeins of her hair, holding her still at just the right angle as he explored the exquisite column of her neck.

H
e cradled her breast. Squeezed. He couldn’t resist. God. She was soft. Full. Delicious. He longed to yank off her shirt, rip off her bra, expose those tremendous globes to his hungry sight.

He wanted her naked. He wanted
in
her. Now.

A
fury of passion enflamed him. A passion that could not be quenched—

He stilled as a cold finger traced its way down his back and, unerringly, found its way to the crease of his ass. And another. And another. And then the finger became an icy rivulet.