Full Throttle (4 page)

“I only learned six months ago.” She tilted her head
to the side and watched him with those beautiful eyes, eyes that sparkle. Her
gaze held but wobbled as if she was using restraint to keep from looking away.
Josh was oddly impressed. It showed him that Sammy was more than the shy woman
she seemed to be.

“Really?
You’re
good.” It was true, she was. She rode confidently and with style and Josh was
now impressed that she was so new to it. It usually took years to stop looking
hesitant or timid on a bike. Sammy rode her bike with a kind of natural flow,
she moved with the machine as if she were made to ride a bike.

Her whole face lit up at the compliment. The blush
on her cheeks stole deeper before she dropped her gaze once again. “Thank you,”
she muttered before she dragged her bottom lip between her teeth in an action
he was sure was automatic and honest, and not meant to send a flare of heat
right to his balls as it did.

It bothered him that she looked away. It irked
something inside him when her gaze was lost to him. Something deep within him
wanted her to keep her eyes on him, to focus on him and him alone. When she dropped
her gaze, Josh felt strangely detached from her, as if she were blocking him
from her emotions. He had the oddest urge to reach across the space and tip her
head up so those green eyes looked only at him. It was the most primal urge,
the need to have Sammy’s sole attention.

“Why do you look away?” he asked, although he knew
why. She was attracted to him. Correction, she was
shy
and attracted to him, and for some reason, Josh found this both
infuriating and enticing. He’d never really known a woman who was properly shy
before. Always surrounding himself with confident people, Josh had no real
experience on how to coax Sammy into confidence. He understood that he was
intimidating and probably off-putting to someone as gentle as her. He wondered
if she’d admit to him that she was attracted to
him?
He doubted it, Sammy was not only shy,
she
had class,
too. The woman he had known before Sammy would have looked at him through a
calculating stare, and told him that they wanted him. Sammy wouldn’t do this,
he knew it,
so
he burned to hear her answer. What
would she say? Josh was practically on the edge of his seat, oddly desperate to
know.

She glanced up, the smile dropped from her mouth and
she swallowed. Josh watched as she seemed to flounder. She bit her bottom lip
and shook her head as if her thoughts collided with what she really wanted to
say. Her gaze shifted away, and Josh felt shut out from her thoughts again. “I
don’t know
,
I just have always been shy.” She shrugged
as if were nothing, but the tension in her shoulders and the lines on her
forehead as she twisted her hands together on the table said that it wasn’t
nothing
.

“Look at me. Please.” He expected her to refuse. He
was pushing a little hard, but Josh had no real experience on how to go gently.
And he wanted to see her pretty eyes.

When she lifted her head and stared at him, Josh cleared
his throat as his body heated up suddenly.

She blushed deeply, chewing at her bottom lip, nervousness
in that one innocent gesture. Even though it was clearly hard for her to do, she
did as he asked and held his stare.

He didn’t know what he expected by asking her to
look at him, but he sure as heck didn’t expect this. His body responded immediately,
his heart pounded and his veins sung with adrenaline. The throb that had been
gentle all night between his legs suddenly roared into life and Josh was hard
in record time. And then it was he who broke the contact—the hot, sizzling, make-my-heart-pound,
contact.

Oh,
fuck
.

****

Sammy sipped at her pint and swallowed back the ball
of disappointment lodged in her throat.
She‘d been helpless
against Josh’s order when he’d demanded she look at him.
Her heart had banged
hard in her chest but she’d forced herself to do it, though her entire body quaked
from the effort it took. Then he had just looked away as if she didn’t merit a
second of his attention, his dark gaze dropping to his pint a moment before he picked
it up to take a sip.

Ouch,
that stung.

The calm, cool way he demanded her obedience sent
shivers through her body and chills along her skin. The man was sex-on-legs,
and Sammy was afraid she might throw herself at him—felt as if she already had.
As soon as he’d asked her to look at him, she had. And maybe her desperation shone
in her eyes, because his dark gaze moved away as if he hadn’t even noticed the
effort she put in. As if he didn’t see the way her entire body reacted to his
words.

Why
should he notice? He doesn’t even know you.

He was nothing like any of the men she worked with
at the school, nothing like her sophisticated father, who drank aged whiskey
and held dinner parties. And he was definitely nothing like James, the scholar
she dated for a year. This man, Josh, could probably talk her naked and have
her on her back in seconds, when it took James a whole six months, and even
then it had been…
Meh
.
Sammy doubted that there was anything
‘meh’
about Josh.

“G’night, young ones, we’re off to bed.”

Sammy looked up from her pint and her hurt-filled musings
to see Reg and Bev, hand in hand, smiling down at her and Josh.

Night?

Sammy looked at her
watch,
it read 9:30pm. She wasn’t tired at all and wasn’t ready for the evening to end
just yet. The way her body had reacted to Josh, Sammy doubted she’d sleep all
night. She glanced to Josh where he sat looking up at Bev and Reg, his dark
brows heavy over his eyes as he watched the older pair.

“This early?”
Josh
asked, obviously having the same thoughts as her.

Reg lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper
and leaned down. “Bev’s had a few pints. If I time this right, I might find
myself getting lucky tonight.” Bev bopped him on the arm, but she grinned
happily beside her husband, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with his words.

Sammy barely stopped
herself
from groaning out loud as her chest tightened painfully at the sight of two
people obviously infatuated with each other even after many years of marriage. She
dropped her gaze and stared into her pint. “Good night.”

The pair walked away smiling and Sammy followed
their leaving bodies with her gaze.
Oh,
to have just a slice of that…
Sammy might have grown up watching a marriage
between her parents that was cold and distant, but she always dreamed of
marrying a man that would adore her, play with her and lust after her. She had
no idea where this notion had come
from,
it wasn’t
like she had been brought up to strive for that. Both her parents had been
intellectuals, business people with a mind and a flare for making money. They
never displayed emotions, never acted on desires, except to be successful. But Sammy
wanted something more.
Something special.

“You want another one?” Jerked from her musings by
Josh’s voice, Sammy looked up and found him pointing at her nearly empty glass.
“I don’t know about you, but I am nowhere near tired yet.”

Relief that she wouldn’t be left to drink alone was
awash through her body and Sammy nodded with enthusiasm. “Yes, please. I would
end up pacing my room if I went up now.”

Josh flashed
her another
of
those devastating smiles and spun towards the bar.

And it was then that she realized she was going to
be alone with him. That she was going to have to talk to him solely. She
remembered with a hot flood of fear to her chest the way he had demanded she
look at him and her heart pounded. Would he do that again? She flicked her gaze
to the door that Bev and Reg disappeared through, and her legs twitched to dart
after them.

Just
go for it.
Rachel’s words flittered through her mind, reminding
her that she had, in fact, decided to at least try to flirt. And it’s not often
that she would be in a bar alone with someone as supremely hot as Josh. No
distractions,
and no nagging need to get back to her controlling
father. No papers to mark, nothing.

Just
go for it.
Isn’t that what the last six months had been about? Proving to herself that she
was the type for living—the type who craved excitement—and not the sheltered,
ignored girl her father told her to be.

Sammy watched Josh carry the two pints over to the
table and she grinned at how much he spilled on the way. When he reached the
table, he put the pints down and flicked the spilled beer from his fingers onto
the dark patterned pub carpet.

“I wouldn’t make a good waitress, huh?” He laughed
and Sammy found
herself
agreeing with a nod and a
laugh of her own.

Josh moved around the pitted pine bar table and slid
into the bench seat next to her. Sammy suddenly felt awkward. She desperately
wanted to shift away from him and his intense, skin-tingling aura. But she knew
if she did that, it would seem rude. Besides that fact that another part of her,
the newly awakening part of her—wanted to sidle up to him and nuzzle into his
strong body. As it was, she sat stiffly and folded her fingers together on her
lap.

She stared at his hands, his strong, powerful
looking hands. He was definitely a man who took care of himself, his nails were
clean and clipped, and Sammy found
herself
wondering
just what they would feel like on her skin. No doubt they would feel nothing
like the weak, smooth hands James tried to stroke her with.

So many times, she’d stifled a shudder when James touched
her with his too soft hands and too wet mouth.

Do
you like that, Samantha? Where should I put my hands?
James had been soft in too many ways. There was no passion, no raw lust, and
Sammy had walked away from any interaction with James feeling cold and a little
sad.

Sammy let her stare wander a little higher to the
dark tattoo that disappeared into his sleeve, the one she noticed earlier on in
the evening. The pattern was bold and stood out on his skin and it suited him
almost as much as the jeans and t-shirt he wore. Veins rose under his tanned
skin, and Sammy barely resisted a moan at how strong his hands and forearms
looked.

He
wouldn’t ask me if l I liked what he is doing.
Sammy bit her
bottom lip as wicked ideas filled her
very
starved
mind. She imagined how big his hands would be against her small breasts, how
his calloused fingers would feel on her smooth flesh. Would he talk dirty to
her?

“Uh, yeah.
It’s
a big ink.”

Sammy looked up startled, and saw Josh watching her,
his dark eyes smiling as he ran his hands self-consciously over the tattoo she’d
been looking at.

“It’s probably too big,” he added, his eyes downcast
as he too looked at his ink.

Sammy saw him shrug, and she realized that he seemed
… embarrassed?

“No, not at all.
I
was admiring it,” she admitted, half wondering why it didn’t bother her to say
so. Usually, complimenting someone made her feel silly—stupid, really. For so
long, her opinion hadn’t mattered. Only her father’s opinion was right and
Sammy still struggled to allow her own thoughts out. Her father had been gone
for six months, but his cruel treatment still dictated how she lived her life.

Thanks,
Daddy dear.

“You were?” Josh asked with a smile that lifted one
side of his ridiculously sexy mouth, and the hand he’d brushed over the tattoo
lifted, allowing Sammy to look again. “Do you have any ink?” he asked.

Sammy shook her head. She desperately wanted one. The
moment her father had died, she’d promised herself three things. To live life
to the fullest, to take chances, and to never listen to the voice in her mind—her
father’s voice—telling her that something was
crude and common.
Although she’d taken a few steps in the direction
she wanted to live, she still found a few hurdles a little too daunting to leap
over. Getting a tattoo seemed very final. She still felt as if she were just
dipping her toes into the pool of life, a learner with big fat “L” plates on.
What if living an exciting life wasn’t for her? A bike she could sell, a
tattoo, well, it was forever.

“No, but I really want one.” Sammy twisted a little
in her seat, picked up her pint and leaned back against the comfy bar bench
chair. Josh was already twisted in her direction, and the ease in which he reclined
actually made her relaxed and not so tense, or was that the beer? Sammy didn’t
drink much, and she was starting to wonder if two pints was her limit.

“What would you get?” He asked as he sipped his pint
and pinned her with his dark gaze.

This, she didn’t even have to think about. She’d thought
of her tattoo so many times. Even before she had taken her bike license, she’d
planned her tattoo, and she was sure that she could draw it off by heart.