"You just need something to control," she told him as she eased away from him and moved to her desk. "You need someone to control. Your world has to be under your thumb, following your rules."
He turned and watched her closely as she leaned against the desk.
Her hair was pulled up in a ponytail, her face streaked with oil. There was a smudge on her neck and her jeans were stained with it. And she was the damnedest sight he had ever seen. All woman, confident, almost imposing, and the snap of lust that shot past his control nearly sent a shudder tearing through his body.
"I won't deny wanting you." he told her.
Her eyes widened. "I didn't ask if you wanted me."
"I'm tired of tiptoeing around the subject," he growled. "We're playing a game here and it's starting to irritate me, Sabella."
A mocking smile crossed her lips. "I don't need you, Noah. If you didn't notice several days ago, I have one relationship to keep me busy. I don't need another."
"You don't sleep with him." He moved to her then.
Anger lit the depths of her gray eyes then. "And you know this how?"
"Because your ni**les are hard right now," he bit out, glancing down at the hard little points pressing against her bra. "Because you're doing everything you can to piss me off and get close to me at the same time. Because you feel the heat between us just as much as I do."
Sabella inhaled sharply. She wished she hadn't, because beneath the scent of oil was the scent of the man. Sweat dampened, lustful, determined. It was there in his eyes, in the tension that filled his body, whipped around her, reminded her how damned long it had been since she had been with a man. Since Nathan had touched her, she reminded herself desperately.
"This conversation is over." She pushed herself from the desk and moved for the door, only to find his larger body suddenly in her path.
"Ignoring it doesn't make it go away," he said softly, catching her shoulders, holding her still in front of him as her head snapped back to stare up at him.
"I don't have to ignore what isn't going to happen and what doesn't exist," she retorted desperately.
"It's going to happen."
She stood still. She should be fighting him, running, screaming, or something. Anything but standing here, feeling her knees weaken, as his head lowered, his gaze holding hers, his lips coming closer.
"Don't," she whispered when his lips were but a breath away from hers. "Don't turn this into a war."
"It's already a war," he warned her, his voice grating, so rough. Unnaturally so, she realized as she let herself see the scars beneath the rasp of beard. "Give me your kiss, Sabella. You want to. You know we both need to."
He spoke against her lips, and they parted helplessly. Her hands gripped his wrists, something inside her clenched in longing, in desperation.
"Enough." She jerked away, but he pulled her forward.
Before Sabella could react, before she could escape, pleasure swamped her.
His lips were on hers. They covered hers. Slanted over them, parted them, and she was lost. The kiss rocked her in places she didn't know she could be rocked. It was dark, forceful, dominant.
Within seconds he had her against the door, lifting her against him and pushing his tongue inside her mouth as Sabella heard her own, half-frightened, half-shocked cry of pleasure.
"That's what you want," he accused as his head jerked back, lust flaming in his eyes and burning in her veins. "You want it, Sabella. Just as hot and just as wild as I do. Be careful, sweetheart, very damned careful, or you just might get it before you're ready for it."
Sabella felt pinned before him in shock. Pleasure was coursing through her; the dark, dominant power of that kiss had awakened something she knew she didn't want to face. Something she wasn't ready for.
She pulled back slowly. "Tell Rory I'll see him at closing."
"Running?" he growled as she turned and headed for the entrance to the door that led outside.
Sabella turned back, her gaze flickering over him, seeing the bulge in those pants, the hunger in his eyes.
"Stay away from me, Noah," she told him bleakly. "I don't need you. I don't want you. All I want is for you to be gone."
Lies. All lies and she knew it as she pushed through the door and almost ran the distance between the garage and the house on the hill. The house she had shared with the only man capable of doing what Noah had just done. The only man who had ever awakened a desire she couldn't control, one she couldn't combat. If she didn't get away from him, and get away from him now, then Sabella knew, she was looking at nothing but more pain, more loss. Noah wasn't the staying kind. He wasn't the loving kind. He wasn't her husband.
* * *
CHAPTER SIX
Sabella managed to avoid Noah the next day, and the day after that. She could feel his gaze on her as she worked in the office. When he came into the office, she escaped to the convenience store. If she worked in the garage, she worked far enough away from him that she could almost ignore the rough rasp of his voice.
Something had happened to his voice. It grated too deep, it was too rough, too gravelly. The scars on his face, the fine web of them beneath the hairs on his muscular arms, made her wonder at the hint of them that she had seen peeking beneath the collar on his shirt. What had happened to him? It would take a lot to scar a man that powerful, in such a horrible way.
No matter where she moved, she could feel his gaze on her though, and she could feel that kiss that had burned through her and left her shaking and weak for hours.
She could feel the tension ratcheting up the next evening in the garage. Each time he tried to speak to her, each move he made in her direction, she went the other way. She didn't want to deal with this. Her life was fine without him in it. She was fine alone. A date every now and then was okay. And though Duncan was pushing for more, it hadn't yet reached the point where she was going to have to break the relationship off. She enjoyed the companionship. She enjoyed his laughter. And she feared Noah's intensity.
She almost escaped him one more day, until closing. Rory left and the others followed close on his heels, closing down the garage and leaving Sabella alone in the office as Noah entered.
"We need to talk," he told her as she shoved the money bag in her purse and felt her heart rate accelerate.