Taking Him (Lies We Tell) (3 page)

Outside, the street was full of its usual quota of late-night drunks, obnoxious club-goers and out-of-control teenagers. A crowd of young men—a stag party from the looks of things—catcalled Ellie as she went past. One of them reached out and hooked an arm around her waist. “How much, darling?” the man slurred drunkenly in her ear.

Ellie, already annoyed, pushed him away with rather more force than strictly necessary. The man got a little annoyed himself, cursing and trying to make another grab at her.

“Hey,” Hunter said mildly, coming up beside her. “Hands off the lady, buddy.” His tone was good-natured, but the drunken idiot clearly saw something else in his eyes because the guy held up his hands in a “hey, she’s all yours” gesture before walking on down the road with his mates.

The moment did not do anything for Ellie’s mood. “Don’t say a word,” she said shortly. “Especially not ‘I told you so’.”

Hunter shrugged. “Wouldn’t dream of it, sweetness. Come on, the truck’s over here.”

Not far away, parked under a streetlight, was his truck,
Fox Chase Construction
on the side of it. He unlocked it, pulled open the door for her. Ellie slid in and sat there silently seething as he got in the driver’s side.

“All right,” he said as he closed the door. “Why the hell are you being such a pain in the ass?”

Ellie leaned back in her seat, put her boots up on the dash and folded her arms. “I’m sick of you and Vin treating me like a kid all the time. Or some stupid damsel in distress needing to be rescued. Like just now for example.”

Sodium glow from the streetlights flooded through the truck’s windows, highlighting the perfect bone structure of Hunter’s face, casting his eyes into deep shadow. His temper wasn’t easily roused but when it was, it tended to burn hot. And she could tell it was on the point of burning hot right now.

“So you wanted to be pawed by some drunken dickhead? In that case get out. There’s a whole fucking city full of them outside.”

“Like you’d let me get out in the first place.” She shouldn’t be pushing him like this, but the alcohol had loosened things inside her. Opened up the box of everything she’d kept locked away for years, and now it was all out, she’d be damned if she’d put it all back again. Besides, in another few weeks she wouldn’t be here anyway so perhaps it could stay out.

Hunter was silent a moment, but the tension in his powerful shoulders was obvious. He let out an audible breath. “Look, I’ve had a hell of a day and I don’t want to argue with you while you’re drunk. So how about you drop the attitude and we discuss it some other time?”

“No, why should I?” She stared at him, at the dark spaces where his eyes were. “You’re doing it again, you know. Shutting me down like I’m a kid with nothing important to say. I’m sick of it.”

He put one hand on the steering wheel, half turning to face her. “I’m not shutting you down. I heard you damn well. You don’t want to be treated like a child. I get it. Fine. Is that it? Can we go now?”

Ellie stuck her chin out. “No, that’s not bloody it.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake.” His hand moved, turning the key, and the engine started. “Tell me while we drive. And get your feet off the dashboard before I move them myself.”

Ellie kept her boots right where they were. “Say please.”

Hunter didn’t say anything, merely reaching out, grabbing her ankles and pulling them off the dash. “Thank you,” he said with exaggerated politeness. Then he twisted the wheel and pulled the truck out into the traffic.

A small, hot ball of anger began to boil in Ellie’s gut. He didn’t speak as he drove, but she could feel the irritation radiating off him like heat from the sun. The kind of irritation adults projected with kids who didn’t do what they were told.

God, she was so over it. So over being ignored. Being patronised. That’s all anyone ever did to her. Even at Green Frog, the game studio she’d been working at for the past few years and the place she’d felt most at home, a lot of the guys had been condescending. Mainly because she was the only female designer on staff. She’d put up with it because she’d had to, because she’d wanted to fit in and hated confronting people.

No more.

“I’m twenty-five, Hunter,” she said into the silence. “You do know that, right?”

He kept his gaze on the road in front of him. “Of course I know that.”

“And I’m a woman.”

“I know that too.”

“With actual tits and everything.”

There was a small silence. Ellie set her jaw, refusing to be embarrassed.

Eventually he said, “Any particular reason you’re telling me about your tits?” A thread of amusement wound through his voice. Amusement that set her teeth on edge.

He drove with his usual careless ease, one hand on the wheel, the other resting on one muscular thigh. His attention was directed straight out the front window, and fair enough, he was driving after all. Still. Maybe it was the alcohol talking. Maybe it was the years of being ignored by all the important people in her life crashing down on her. But suddenly his lack of attention and his amusement made her feel angrier than she’d ever felt.

How many more people in her life were going to ignore her? Put her second?

She’d played second fiddle to her mother’s illness for years now, her brother too busy managing her to bother with Ellie. Hunter had been the only one in her childhood who’d paid her any attention. Who’d ever actually listened to her. Back then he’d been the older brother she’d always longed for. But then things had changed and she’d ceased to see him in brotherly terms.

Hearing them come in that night, she’d stolen down the stairs, watching them from the hallway. Fifteen and fascinated by where they’d been, evidence of an adult life she was on the cusp of. They were talking, Vin laughing while Hunter gripped the bottom of his T-shirt and pulled it up and over his head, hissing as if in pain. Vin whistled and Hunter turned, and then she’d seen it. His tattoo. Angel wings that covered his whole back.

Her heart had gone still that night, breath freezing in her throat. The light had fallen across Hunter’s spine, the powerful lines of his shoulders clear, the graceful interplay of muscles in no way obscured by the feathers tattooed into his skin. In some old, primitive part of her mind, something had fallen into place. A recognition. When she’d been small, this man had always been her guardian angel and now the tattoo proved it. A beautiful angel. So beautiful. She’d wanted to get up and run her fingers over his skin. Trace the tattoo. The exquisite curve of each muscle. The line of his shoulders, his spine, his hips.

From then on she’d been fascinated by him in a completely new way. A physical way. Wanting him. The untouchable Hunter Chase, who never had girlfriends and was notoriously picky with his choice of lovers. Who was reputed to like older, more experienced women. Which was fan-freaking-tastic because she was neither and never would be.

Well, to hell with that. To hell with all the wasted years she’d spent loving him from afar. It was time to stop being such a pathetic nerd and take action. Be Dark Shadow, her kick-ass, take-charge heroine. Make him see her as she truly was. Not a little girl but a woman.

“What’s so bloody funny?” Her voice sounded harsh in the close confines of the truck cab. “The fact that I have breasts or that I’m talking about them?”

Hunter shot her a dark look. “Ellie, I don’t know what—”

“They’re real, you know. If you stop the truck I’ll even show them to you. Or would that embarrass you too much seeing as how I’m still only a kid to you?”

No, she wouldn’t cringe at the ridiculousness of the words. Or the raw edge of vulnerability that had somehow bled through. She didn’t care if he heard. If he knew. She’d given Hunter far too much power over her and her emotions, and it was time to take some of it back.

He didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then, “I’m not laughing at you, sweetness. You know I would never do that to you.”

But the words were like steel wool rubbed against an open wound. God, he always sounded like this whenever she was hurt or upset or angry. He’d go all gentle, soothing her like a child with a skinned knee. He never fought back. Most of the time he’d go silent. And the times he wasn’t silent, he was merely impatient and irritated.

“You can laugh at me if you want. I’m bloody hilarious. Ellie Fox with the amusing breasts.” She gripped the end of the zip on her jumpsuit. The zip that held the whole thing together. “Go on, take a look. I dare you to.”

He didn’t, of course. He kept staring at the road. “Exactly how many cocktails did you have again, sweetheart?”

Ah yes, of course. Blame it on the alcohol. Because there couldn’t be any other reason for her to act this way, right?

Ellie stared at him for a second longer. Then she pulled down the zip of her jumpsuit.

Hunter heard the sound of a zip being undone, but although Ellie’s drunken attitude problem was getting a little out of hand, surely she’d never go that far.

“Ellie,” he began, “I don’t know what the hell—” Then the words died in his throat as he turned to look at her. She’d sat back in her seat, the halves of the ridiculous jumpsuit she wore hanging open, right the way down to…

He jerked his gaze back to the road, a prickling heat washing over him. Shit. She was bare to the waist.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he demanded through gritted teeth.

White skin. Small, pale breasts. Little pink nipples. Perfect. All utterly perfect.

“Giving you something to laugh about.” She sounded defiant, challenging. “Because obviously the thought of me as a woman is somehow amusing to you.”

His hands gripped the steering wheel tightly, trying to forget the sight burned forever into his brain. A sight he wanted to look at again. And again. Which was wrong on so many levels he could barely even begin to think about it.

“Do you see me laughing?” he bit out. “For God’s sake, put your clothes on.”

“Why? You’re embarrassed? You don’t have to be. It’s just me. I’m like a kid sister to you, right?”

The scent of her perfume seemed to fill the confined space of the truck. A sweet, homey smell, flowers of some kind. He’d never noticed it all that much before, but now it was like he couldn’t get it out of his head. A heady, very female kind of scent.

White skin…the pink tips of her breasts…

He took a slow breath, his pulse racing. “I don’t know what point you’re trying to make, sweetness,” he said, struggling to sound normal, “but taking your clothes off isn’t the way to go about it.”

“Isn’t it obvious what point I’m trying to make? I’m trying to get you to stop seeing me as a bloody child.”

“By stripping in my truck?”

“How else am I supposed to do it? You don’t listen to me, Hunter!”

With a sharp movement, he jerked the wheel and pulled the truck over to the side of the road, a weird heat burning in his veins. A heat that was part anger and part arousal. An arousal he had no idea how to deal with or want anything to do with.

“Do your zip up,” he ordered, staring out the window. “Then I’ll listen.”

A small silence.

“No,” Ellie said.

Ah, fuck, she was pushing him. Such a bad move tonight when all he’d wanted to do was get drunk and forget about the necessity of having to attend Justin’s wedding. Of having to see his family. His father, his brother, and…Elizabeth.

A sick feeling turned over in his gut, his patience slipping inexorably through his fingers. “Do it.”

“Or what?”

He turned, looked into her eyes. “Or I’ll do it for you.”

She stared back at him, unflinching. Lounging in her seat with her dyed black hair over one shoulder, black-painted mouth pouting, her jumpsuit spread open, she looked vampish and—
go on, admit it—s
exy. His brain didn’t want to acknowledge it, not about her, but his body had no such qualms. Christ. Now he was getting hard.

“Maybe I want you to do it for me.” She threw the words at him like a gauntlet being thrown down. “Maybe I’d like it.” No escaping the look in her eyes. The look of a woman who knew what she wanted. Him.

Hunter kept himself very still. He’d always known she’d had a crush on him as a young teenager, but as the years had gone by, he’d thought she’d put that aside. Then again, this didn’t look like a crush. There was too much hunger in her eyes. A hunger that called to an answering heat in himself. A heat he didn’t want. A heat he couldn’t stop.

Shit, no. He did not want that heat associated in any way with Ellie Fox. The kid who used to look at him like he was her own personal hero. The one bright spot in his dark, teenage years. Anyone but her.

She made a small sound, as if he’d somehow let slip his response, as if she knew, and she sat forward suddenly. The bright metal of the zip pressed against her soft, white skin, along her stomach, the curves of her breasts. Digging in. Leaving a mark.

His breath caught. “Stop,” he said hoarsely.

She blinked. “What?”

“Don’t move.”

“But…” Her eyes widened and he knew what she saw in his gaze. Oh Jesus, this was getting so messed up. “Hunter…”

He leaned forward, reached for the end of her zip. Getting her covered was imperative, hiding all that white skin away. Turning her back into Ellie, the girl he knew, not some sexual fantasy he hadn’t even known he’d wanted.