His answering sigh formed into the most beautiful words she’d ever heard. “Candace. Come home with me right now and I’ll give you everything you need, sugar. Everything you want. If it takes all night.” His fingers plunged deep, as if to show her exactly what he meant, and she cried out.

But Samantha’s earlier words were somehow filtering through her frenzied thoughts, making her want to scream. Make him sweat. Then Macy’s, telling her how insane she was. Her mother’s haughty, disapproving face.

Michelle’s expression softening with yearning and traveling a million miles away at the memories of him.

All at once, she was barraged with all the voices of reason in her life, every one in direct opposition to what her body was begging her to do right now.

“I can’t,” she whispered, pulling away from his lips to cram her face into his neck. Praying he would understand, but that he wouldn’t stop. Selfishly trying to claim what she couldn’t have.

“I feel how wet you are,” he murmured sinfully in her ear. “How much you need this. To hell with everyone else. Let me give you what you need.” His tongue flickered against the soft shell, and she moaned as his talented fingers continued to work their magic. But he was slowing his pace, touching her too shallowly, holding her teetering on the edge of a devastating orgasm. Trying to make her give in. And she couldn’t. “No one has to know,” he cajoled.

“Please don’t do this to me,” she cried, fearing the dam stopping up her emotions was about to burst. She couldn’t let it, couldn’t do this. And Brian froze, pulling his hands away from her as if she’d seared him.

Chapter Eleven

Though it killed her soul, she jerked herself away from him and back to her original position crammed against the passenger door, frantically trying to right her disarrayed clothing. Humiliation burned almost as hot as her unsated arousal.

“Hey,” he said, his voice gentle but with a rough edge, as if it was a struggle for him to contain his anger. She was a riddle to him, huh? What an understatement. She was outright insane. “Don’t do what? What is it you want, Candace? Because I’m trying here, but I really don’t get it.”

“I…”

“Are you scared?”

Yes. Of everything. She shrugged. “I thought you didn’t want this,” she said a little more nastily than she’d meant. “I begged you this morning, Brian.”

“I know you did, and I’m sorry. I haven’t been able to think about anything else all day.”

She pressed her fingertips to the center of her forehead, where she could feel a headache beginning to blossom, and refused to let herself look at him. “I came out here thinking I need to tell you goodbye,” she said, hearing the flat exhaustion in her own voice. “And then I was terrified you were about to do the same to me. That’s how screwed up I am right now. That’s why it’s best if we not see each other again. It’s not what I want, but I’m a mess. I have enough pressing in on me from all sides. I can’t be like this.”

He was silent except for his breathing, slow and steady where hers was still thin and shaky.

“Is that what you’re really prepared to do?” he said after several uncomfortable minutes ticked past and she steadily swiped at her insistent tears. “After everything that’s happened since you walked into my parlor, after last night, after you followed me here tonight, you want to tell me to forget it, it was a mistake? Because you’re feeling something wild and crazy you can’t explain?”

“It can’t happen, okay. You said no one has to know. I understand that, and you’re right, but I don’t ever want to have to hide the fact that I’m with you. No one would ever accept us.”

“What the f**k does that matter?” He did sound angry now, his words a crack of thunder. She realized she’d essentially insulted him. Again.

Oh, she needed to get out of here. Not because he scared her, but because she couldn’t take seeing him in any kind of pain, especially if she was the one inflicting it. “It matters to me,” she whispered.

“What did your mother say to you? She knows about us because she’s already called my brother freaking out.”

“What?” She’d called Evan? Already? Disbelief choked her. Oh, dear God, it didn’t stop. Humiliation burned even deeper into her chest, as if she’d swallowed sulfuric acid. She dropped her face into her hands. Calm down, don’t lose it…

“Did you tell her?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Tell me what she said, baby.”

His gentle command didn’t register through the chaos. “Don’t you see?” she asked, hearing the high-pitched edge of panic in her voice. “It’s hopeless. I can’t do this. I’m sorry.”

Before he had a chance to reply, she yanked the handle and flung herself out of the truck, slamming the door on his protest. Instead of heading back inside where her friends were waiting, she ran to her car, sending up a prayer that she wouldn’t hear the sound of his footsteps pursuing her. She didn’t.

He would be a fool to do that, anyway. Or to ever speak to her again at all.

Once in the quiet safety of her car, she dialed Sam from her cell phone, trying to catch her breath, trying to ignore the fact that Brian’s truck was still sitting across the lot, dark and still. Was he going to sit there all night? Or go back inside and get Starla to finish what he and Candace had started?

The thought forced out more hot, helpless tears just as Sam answered.

“You’re leaving with him, aren’t you?”

“No,” Candace sobbed, despite all resolutions to keep it together.

“Oh, sweetie. What happened?”

“I don’t want to talk about it now. I just wanted to tell you guys you can take off. I’m not in any shape to come back in.”

“Sounds like you’re in perfect shape. Come in, let us buy you margaritas all night, we’ll chauffeur you around and you can crash at my place.”

“Sammy, I really appreciate it, but I need to be by myself. Okay?”

“Are you sure you’re all right? You sound so awful, I’m worried about you driving.”

“I’m fine, honest. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Well, call before then if you need me. I mean it. We love ya.”

“Love you too.”

Even her friends thought she was a basket case. She chucked her phone back into her purse, sniffling. Well, that might all change if she could quit acting like one.

Wretched. She felt absolutely wretched. And embarrassed. And confused. And…she shifted in her seat, remembering his touch tunneling deep inside her. Um, yeah. She was unbelievably horny on top of everything else. Every inch of her skin was so sensitized even the graze of her clothing was almost too much to bear. She knew the reason. She wanted to be naked and pressed against every hot inch of him. It’s where she could be tonight, if she could only stop freaking out. She wanted sex, dammit. Raw, scorching, amazing, merciless sex.

The irony wasn’t lost on her. She’d just made one guy go from zero to sixty in two-point-five seconds. A bar full of guys who would probably be more than willing stood a few dozen feet away from where she sat. She should take one home and get the whole thing over with already. Lose it to an anonymous stranger, no strings attached, and come away from it with her heart still fully intact and worth giving to somebody, someday. Brian would only take a piece of her with him, and right now she didn’t own enough of herself to share.