“Yeah. Well, I didn’t have anything going on and Pepper invited me . . .” My voice faded and I felt so lame standing there. Acting like I didn’t want to come. That my being here was just a casual thing. After the other night, my being here felt so very obvious and I wanted to punch myself. Hard.

“Hey, Lo!” Another player walked down the row between cars, his bat bag slung over his shoulder. He came over and clapped Logan on the shoulder. “You headed to the after-party?”

The skinny kid looked like a teenager. An honest-to-God high school kid with angry-looking acne and a bobbing Adam’s apple. And this was one of Logan’s friends? A fellow peer? Mortification ripped through me. In that moment, I never felt the gulf between us so keenly. And I felt stupid . . . foolish standing there pretending I was here for any other reason than that our kiss had consumed my thoughts for days.

Logan nodded. “Yeah. See you there.”

The boy looked at me curiously, the interest keen in his eyes, before he walked away.

“God,” I muttered softly.

Logan must have heard me. His head whipped back around and he stared at me, his eyes alert and sharp like he could read my thoughts.

Thankfully, I spotted Reece and Pepper headed our way. “I gotta go,” I said hurriedly, turning to walk around the Jeep, ready to climb in the backseat, not even caring how obvious I was in trying to put distance between us by unnecessarily circling around the vehicle.

I felt him move behind me before I felt his hands on my arms. “No, you don’t,” he growled. “You don’t get to run away again.”

I squeaked as he hauled me back against his chest. My spine stiffened iron-rod straight against the wall of his broad chest. I felt my eyes go huge in my face. He was touching me. Again. And I was freaking out on the inside. I sucked in a deep breath, determined that my freak-out stayed internal only.

“Let me go. They’re coming.” My heart hammered violently in my chest and I didn’t know if it was because we were about to get busted by my friends or because his body felt so unbelievable against mine. Okay, fine. It was both.

His mouth brushed my ear as he spoke, spiking sensation to every nerve in my body. “Are you embarrassed, Georgia? You don’t want them to see me with you? Don’t want Pepper and Reece to know about us?”

“There is no ‘us.’ ”

“Oh, but there will be. We both know why you came tonight.” His fingers flexed, each digit a burning imprint on my forearms.

“Yeah?” Was that breathy croak my voice? “Why?”

“Because you haven’t been able to forget what it felt like to kiss me, and you want to know if the rest of it will be that good, too.” He bit down on my earlobe and a whimper escaped my lips. “It will be.”

An invisible band squeezed around my chest. I swallowed against my constricting throat. “Arrogant much?”

“It’s okay. I haven’t been able to forget either. I can still remember the way you taste.”

Oh. My. God.

I swallowed a moan and lurched free from him. Swinging around, I faced him and felt my knees go weak at the look in his eyes. Heavy-lidded and deep, his blue eyes looked almost indigo as they stared down at me.

“I know you probably think it’d be some great joke to bang one of your brother’s friends, but I’m not going to be another notch on your bedpost . . . some girl you screw once and forget about the next—”

He moved fast then, closing the space that I had established between us. Oh, yeah. He was a jock with ninja-fast reflexes. I needed to remember that.

I gasped as his hand slid around my neck, fingers burying in the hair at the base of my scalp. He lowered his head, dropping his forehead against mine until our breaths clashed and mingled. His fingers pressed and massaged the back of my head, shooting sensation straight to the core of me. Holy hell. Was that some kind of secret pressure point?

His words gusted over my mouth. “You think we’d fuck just once?”

My stomach plummeted at his blunt words.

He took my hand and dragged it between us, pressing my palm to his crotch—against the outline of his cock in his tight baseball pants. It hardened, growing beneath my touch and I felt an answering ache clench between my thighs. God, it had been so long.

“This doesn’t feel like a joke to me. You don’t,” he growled in a tight voice. “I want to do things to you . . . things a clean, vanilla girl like you never dreamed of. Things that tool boyfriend of yours never came close to doing to you.”

“Ex-boyfriend,” I replied automatically.

At my response, Logan pushed my palm harder against him, rubbing the hard ridge of him. A tiny moan escaped me as the ache squeezed between my legs.

He angled his head. “I think you want me to do dirty things to you, Georgia.”

My mouth sagged. No one had ever talked to me like that. He shocked every part of me—shocked, horrified . . . and turned me on. I’d never known this with Harris. With any guy. Never wanted sex so badly that I felt like I could weep for the lack of it.

That had to make this just a little bit okay. Right?

I sighed. But not enough to erase the wrong factor. I could not have a fling with Logan Mulvaney.

“No,” I said, hating me right then. Hating that even though my lips formed the word no, I was thinking yes in my head. Yes. YES. “I don’t want that.”

“Liar,” he said mildly.

He brushed a strand of hair back off my shoulder and the simple touch rocked a shiver through me.

I pressed my fingers to his chest and gave him a slight push away. “Don’t touch me. In fact, just stay away from me.” God. Was that desperate little rasp really my voice?

He stepped back then, the deep blue of his eyes turning chilly. “Fine. Sure. I won’t touch you again. It’s all on you now.”

All on me? What was that supposed to mean? He was leaving it up to me to ask him to touch me? No worries there. I never initiate sex. I never had. In fact, the only time I had ever taken charge and initiated anything had been the one time I kissed Logan. And that was never happening again.

That crooked grin appeared on his face again, belying the hard intensity of his eyes. “Any time you want me to make you scream, just let me know, Pearls.”

“Oh.” It was barely a word. More like a gasp. A sudden image of him and me together, his powerful body driving into mine, branded itself on my mind and my mouth dried. Heat flushed over my body.