After all, I never claimed to be an angel and even the devil could only play with fire for so long before he gave in to unholy temptation and danced in the flames.

I backed her into the open doorway of the car. I tunneled my fingers into her hair where it was tight against her head and I inserted a leg between hers so that our pelvises were flush against each other. I wasn’t nice. I kissed her like she had been after me to kiss her from the beginning of this game. I used my tongue. I used my teeth. I didn’t let her breathe and I didn’t give her any kind of space to move away from me as I crowded in on her. I reached around her and grabbed her very spectacular ass in one hand in a really classless move and made sure to manhandle it and her in a very obvious way.

If she wanted me how I really was, then she was going to get it. I had no problem letting the pretense fall away, especially when she was writhing and whimpering against me. I twisted my tongue around hers. I sucked hard on her lower lip until she gasped. I pressed my chest into hers until I could feel the rigid points of her nipples even through all the layers of clothes that separated the two of us.

I felt her fingernails dig harder into my skin where her hands were still trapped under my shirt. I thought maybe she was getting the point, that this was bound to be a train wreck and that her common sense was finally waking back up. But just as I was about to let her go, to pull back and get some much-needed breathing room so I could get my whirling thoughts back in line, one of those dangerous hands suddenly detoured drastically south and the next thing I knew she had her palm wrapped fully around the rock-hard erection that was straining the front of my jeans.

The contact was enough of a shock that I automatically reared back and moved to grab her wrist. She just grinned devilishly up at me and fluttered her eyelashes with false innocence.

“We’re in a parking lot, out in the open. You really want to go there with me, Red?”

Not to mention this little fiasco was being recorded for all of eternity and it wasn’t exactly a show I wanted prying eyes to see. I don’t think Royal was an exhibitionist either, but whatever was working in her complicated mind had her acting out in all kinds of hazardous and surprising ways. I growled her name when she slid her palm up and down, making my dick jump like a well-trained animal at her touch. One of her auburn eyebrows shot straight up and she stuck just the tip of her tongue out to taste her still-damp bottom lip. Goddamn if every single thing she did didn’t make me think of darkened rooms and lots and lots of naked skin.

“Why not? It’s the closest you’ve ever let me get.” She gave the turgid shaft a hearty squeeze, and that made my eyes roll back in my head. I was on the verge, right on the cusp of picking her up and throwing her into the SUV and just giving her what she had been asking for, when my phone rang.

Considering it was well past the middle of the night and the ring tone was the specific one assigned to my little sister, I had a mild panic attack and pried Royal loose from my junk and finally stumbled a few steps away from her.

“Ayd?” I couldn’t help the harshness of tone as I barked out her name.

“Oh my God, Asa, Shaw just went into labor!” My sister was screaming, so I had to hold the phone away from my ear.

“Okay … and …?” Shaw was Ayden’s best friend. The two of them were beyond tight and I knew it had been really rough for Ayden to move to Austin so that she could be closer to her husband when her best friend was expecting her first child. I calmed down when I realized Shaw was okay and there was no crazy emergency.

“You better get your ass to that hospital and be there in my place until I can get to Denver. Jet is booking a flight for us right now, but I still won’t be there until the morning. You need to be there for me, Asa.”

Jet was Ayden’s husband and also a really good friend of the baby’s dad. He would move mountains to make sure Ayden didn’t miss this major moment in Rule and Shaw’s life. I rubbed my hands through my hair and blew out a breath that fogged up in front of me.

“Shaw isn’t going to want me there, Ayd. She’ll want you.”

“I know that, but I might not make it in time, so you’re going to go to the hospital and substitute for me!” She was screaming and almost hysterical, so I knew there would be no reasoning with her. “You need to keep me updated on everything that’s happening while I’m on my way there. You have to do this for me, Asa.”

Rule was Rome’s younger brother. The entire Archer clan was bound to be on hand, not to mention all the other various members of the gang that worked with Rule at the tattoo shop he owned with Nash. The maternity-ward waiting room was going to be full of the Marked family and they really didn’t need me in the way, but I had promised myself I was never going to let Ayden down again, so I grumbled my agreement to go and hung up on her before she could keep screaming at me.