Girl Gear 1: All Tied Up Read Online Free PDF Page A

intimacy.
    She managed, instead, to sit very still and avoid disclosing to the rest of the room what was now so impressively, so solidly pressed to the back of her thighs.
    Leo reached for her wrist, removed her motionless fingers from his lips. She blinked slowly and smiled, a smile meant for Leo only, Leo alone. She wanted him to know that, between the two of them, they’d get out of this with no bloodshed, go on to live another day.
    And then the man blew the wind from her sails.
    He smiled.
    Not a humorless grin. Not a slight curl of his lip. Not a sneer or a snarl, but an ear-to-ear, start-my-heart-beating smile. Yet that wasn’t the worst part. The best part. The worst. Because once he’d released her wrist and she’d made ready to hop up from the chair, he cupped the back of her head.
    And he kissed her.
    Oh, hallelujah, the man could kiss. He tasted like beer and smoky barbecue and a man aroused, and she was starving. She couldn’t get enough when he teased her mouth with the tip of his tongue, rubbed his lips softly, then roughly, over hers.
    It was a complicated kiss, meant for show and to prove that he was not relinquishing the win. Mentally, she fought back. Physically, she surrendered.
    Desire took full advantage, reaching between her legs to remind her how long it had been, how good it could be. Oh, this wasn’t supposed to happen.
    She silently grimaced and broke the kiss—to cheers and applause and ear-piercing whistles. She pulled back far enough to meet Leo’s gaze.
    His mouth was slightly reddened and still smiling. But his eyes sparkled with fireworks that were less a celebration and more a signal of an incoming salvo.
    Hey, now. She wasn’t the one who’d done all the kissing, much less the one who’d started it. The seduction she’d admit to, and she was willing to be a big girl and swallow her medicine. But she would not take all of the blame.
    She shoved a hand back through her hair and kept her voice low when she said, “I’d say that makes me the winner.”
    Leo chuckled—a sound deep in his chest that rumbled through his muscles, through his bones and into Macy’s body. “The winner? You’re kidding, right?”
    Hmm. That wasn’t what she’d expected. “Why would you think I’m kidding? I got what I wanted, didn’t I? You did smile.”
    “No. You got what I let you have.” His smile had totally vanished. “I got what I wanted.”
    Is that so, Mr. Hotshot, Esquire? “And what was it that you wanted?”
    “Isn’t it obvious?”
    Macy’s subtle shift of weight prompted a convincing surge of pressure beneath her thighs. “Yes. It is. Quite obvious, as a matter of fact.”
    Holding his gaze, she waited until the gleam in his own turned smug. She would never let this man have the last word—or the upper hand—again. No matter how strong the physical pull heightening every one of her senses.
    With a pat delivered to the center of his chest, Macyhopped off the hot seat. “Unfortunately, Leo, the obvious isn’t…well, much of a challenge, if you know what I mean. Sorry, but I just don’t think I’m interested.”
    Watching Leo’s startled disbelief fade into grudging respect, Macy turned quickly, lest the moment be spoiled.
    No sense wondering if her fleeting triumph was worth the promise of retribution she’d just seen in his eyes.
     
    T HE FAJITAS WERE HISTORY and the conversation had returned to a low drone by the time Leo Redding recovered. He didn’t think he’d given up such an inappropriate hard-on his entire adult life.
    And Macy Webb wasn’t even his type. His reaction had to be rooted, so to speak, in that very contradiction. She wasn’t what he was used to, so in effect, he was responding to the mystery of the unknown.
    She had this mass of unruly hair, a dark caramel-brown color, streaked to vanilla cream on either side of her face. It was short, hitting her neck between the base of her skull and her shoulders and causing a riot around her heart-shaped