“Yeah. School first, then all the physical workouts, plus shop—learning more about cars and bikes than I had ever known before. Stripping them down to the chassis and building them back up again. I learned a lot.” At first he’d hated every second of being flattened under Grange’s thumb, but then he started to respect General Lee. The man ruled with an iron fist, took no shit from the smartassed kids he’d taken under his wing. Eventually, Diaz came to appreciate three meals a day, no abuse, and being taught that if you wanted to be respected, you had to earn it and show respect in turn. He’d learned how to be a man from Grange Lee, something his own father had never taught him.
“I’d fall into bed at night—nine p.m., no less—completely exhausted,” Jessie said.
“He’d drag us out of bed at dawn. No wonder we had no problem going to bed at nine.” Diaz hadn’t gone to bed that early since he was five years old. But working under Grange’s laws made it easy.
“I had family,” Jessie said. “A hard taskmaster for a father figure, but for the first time in my life, I finally had a family who cared about me. A father, and brothers who looked after me.”
Brothers. There it was. That chasm he couldn’t cross.
“Yeah. Family is good.” He finished his sandwich, crumpled up the napkin and tossed it in the trash, then turned back to the laptop, hoping Jessie would get the hint and leave his room.
She didn’t say anything for a few minutes, but then he heard her move behind him, her br**sts once again pressed against his back as she studied the laptop screen. He sucked in a quick breath, heat surging through his veins.
Christ. Just being near her sent his nervous system haywire. And she thought of him as a brother. He was such a f**king pervert. He had to get her out of his room.
“I think I can finish this up now.” He shut the lid on the laptop and pushed the chair back, forcing her to move away from him.
Jessie backed up a couple of steps, a confused frown on her face. “That’s it? You’re done with your research?”
“Yeah.” He moved to the door, hoping she’d follow.
She didn’t.
“Diaz.”
He hovered near the door. Come on, Jess. Get the hint.
“What?”
She walked toward him. He watched the way she moved. So graceful, so slow, so seductive. She stopped in front of him, tilting her head back to look him in the eyes. Her lips were parted a fraction of an inch, revealing just the tip of her tongue as she studied him.
He was beginning to sweat. His c**k twitched. His heart pounded.
Fuck. He wasn’t seventeen. He was thirty-one goddamn years old, too old to let a young woman affect him this way.
She inched closer, so close that the tips of her br**sts nearly brushed his shirt. His knees almost buckled.
“Why are you so afraid of me?”
He tilted his chin down and stared at her. “What?”
“You’re afraid of me. It’s obvious. You’ve been avoiding me for years. You never talk to me. I enter a room, you leave. I try to talk to you, and you mumble a few unintelligible phrases, but otherwise, you won’t engage and then you make up some excuse to get away from me.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is, too.” Her gaze swept his body, from his feet to the top of his head. “Now you’re, what? Six-two or so?”
“Six-four.”
“Fine then. I’m five-six, so you’re almost a foot taller than me. And you have to outweigh me by over a hundred pounds, if not more, so I don’t think my mere presence scares the shit out of you.”
Darlin’, you have no idea.
“I just can’t figure out what it is about me that makes you keep your distance.”
“You don’t scare me, Jessie.”
“Yeah, I do.”
She moved in on him, and he backed up a step.
“Otherwise, you wouldn’t be backing away from me. So, see, I’m right. You are scared of me.”
“I’m not afraid of anything, or anyone.”
A small smile teased the corners of her mouth. “That kind of false bravado could get a guy killed in our line of work. Everyone is afraid of something. With me, it’s cliffs—looking over one and that fear of falling. Gives me a vicious case of vertigo. Oh, and I hate spiders in a major way. A girlie thing, I know, but I can’t help it. And I’m really not too keen about sleeping alone in the dark. I like a light on. So what about you? What scares you?”
“I told you. Nothing.”
He flattened his back against the door, but Jessie kept coming, pressing her palms against his chest and leveling him with a teasing grin. “Nothing except me. Big, bad Jessie scares you.”
She was playing a game. He wasn’t. “Stop.”
She did. She had to—there was nowhere else to go unless she climbed up on him. He smothered a groan at the visual that presented. Naked, her full br**sts pressed against his chest. Her legs wrapped around him, his hands filled with her sweet ass as she bounced up and down on his cock. Her pu**y would be wet, tight, gripping and squeezing him until he shot loads of come inside her.
Shit. “Get out of here, Jess.”
“Why?”
He inhaled. Big mistake. The scent of her filled the air around him. Intoxicating, sensual. He went hard in an instant.
“Because you’re playing with fire, little girl.”
Her eyes went smoky. “I’m not a little girl. And I like a little heat, Diaz.”
Invitation was written all over her face, her body. Tempting. Oh, so tempting.
But that’s not what they were here for. And this was Jessie, not some random woman to f**k. It was Jessie. He had no right. She belonged to all of them, all the Wild Riders. All the guys who counted on him to take care of her. Because they all loved her.
Like a sister.
He grasped her by the shoulders, taking in and memorizing the small surprised gasp she made. He wanted to put his lips on hers, to swallow her gasp, to slide his tongue inside her mouth and taste her.
God, he wanted that bad.
He pushed her back the few inches it took to open the door and set her on the other side of it.
“Go to your room, Jess.”
He shut the door in her face, not hearing as she opened her mouth to speak. He threw the dead bolt, feeling like a coward, which he was. He turned around and leaned his back against the door, blowing out a breath.