Reinstated Bond by Holley Trent Page B

when I called you that."
    She grabbed a hand full of wing nuts and tossed them, too. They
fell short.
    He didn't move other than to feign a yawn.
    "It was high school. That lovey-dovey shit was tolerable
back then."
    A dangerously sexy grin that reminded her of one time under the
bleachers crept across his face as he took a step into the garage. "So you
do still love me?"
    She rolled her eyes. "You always did hear what you wanted
to."
    Another step. "When you were sixteen you said you loved me
all the time."
    She folded her arms over her chest and stuck out her chin.
"Yeah? Well, I'm pretty sure you said it back. Didn't stop things from
going all pear-shaped, did it?"
    Another step. "Aw, baby, don't be like that. It was high
school. Guys do stupid shit in high school…"
    "And girls let them. Not anymore. You step back, Carter,
or so help me I'll…" Her hands slapped the workstation behind her and felt
around until one fist tightened around the handle of a hammer. "I'll knock
you into Thursday."
    His laugh was deep and his smile even wider. He took another
step, regardless of her new weapon of choice. "You wouldn't hurt me. It'd
break your heart."
    "Too bad the feeling isn't mutual."
    "I don't want to hurt you, Mar. I'm just doing my
job."
    "You proud of that job?" She took a horizontal swing
in the vicinity of his chest.
    He leaned back to dodge it on one beat and grabbed her wrist with
his free hand on the next. He tossed the padlock key onto the table and pinned
her other arm behind her back.
    "You're hurting me."
    "I know how to do my job, baby. You're lying. You want to
hold real still while I grab my cuffs, or do you wanna wrassle?"
    She growled and tried to wretch herself away from him, but his
grip was too strong, his stance too steady. She sighed. He had always been an
unmovable force. He'd actually weighed more back in high school when he was
playing football, but had slimmed down to around one hundred seventy-five
pounds after graduation. He was all muscle. Delightful, lean muscle that she
could see flexed inside the sleeves his dark tee shirt. Nice, firm muscles that
cinched nicely inside the waist of his belted jeans. She swallowed hard.
    "Like what you see, Mar?"
    Her gaze trailed up to his face, ruggedly handsome with square
chin and cornflower blue eyes that she knew would look gray when it was dark.
He'd grown his hair out since high school. The high and tight conservative shear
of his younger days was replaced with hair down to his shoulders. She wanted to
rake her hands through it, ask him if he brushed it a hundred times before
going to bed each night, it was that silky. She didn't remember it being silky.
She didn't remember a lot of things, maybe.
    He gave her a gentle nudge. "Do you?"
    She swallowed again and blinked. "I'm sorry, what was the
question?"
    "I asked you if you like what you see." He loosened
his grip on the hand he held behind her back and instead pinned both her arms
between their two bodies as he crushed her front against his.
    She let out a little whimper at the feeling of an unsated cock
against her belly.
    He twined his fingers in her curls and pulled her head back,
tipping his face up to his. "Do you?"
    "Yes," she whispered.
    "God, I missed you, baby."
    His lips crushed hers, and she stood there in the dim garage,
eyes wide, frozen in place while this near-God nipped at her lips and circled
her tongue with his. She moaned and closed her eyes. Damn, the man could still
kiss her boneless just like he did when he was eighteen. And just like she did
when she was sixteen, standing under the bleachers at the middle school where
they regularly met to neck, she hooked a leg around his, and ground her crotch
against his thigh.
    Now it was his turn to moan, and he freed his vise-like grip
and let his fingers trail down her back to grab her ass, drawing her even
closer in that same way he always had--that same way that made her wonder if
what they were doing was sex or not.
    Shit.
    Her eyelids