Wild Fling or a Wedding Ring? by Mira Lyn Kelly

beach to find Trish and Matt packing up with the rest of the group. A few minutes later they were settled in the backseat of a cab, riding in strained silence through the downtown city streets. She hadn’t answered him, refused to discuss it, and the irritation evident in the hard set of his jaw had her stomach twisting into knots.
    A few more minutes and they were wordlessly cutting across the near deserted downstairs lobby to the elevators.
    Jake punched the call button and raked his fingers through his hair, his usual smooth, easy motion now jerky with tension. They kept circling one another, trying out different interactions, but it always came back to sex. They couldn’t be near each other without having to fight it, and the fighting was getting harder and harder. It had to stop.
    “Maybe it’s better this way,” she mumbled, not realizing she’d spoken out loud until the snap of Jake’s gaze—hostile, intense—alerted her.
    “What?” he demanded, frustration radiating off him in waves.
    She swallowed past nerves and need to meet his stare. “We can’t keep on like this. I can’t—”
    Jake’s features hardened, his eyes grew darker, and in their depths she saw a warning that left the words dying on her lips.
    But then he dropped her gaze, looked away, and when he turned back whatever threat she’d seen lurking there was gone. It was all easygoing, smooth Jake. Casual, without a care in the world.
    Her heart clenched in her chest. It most definitely wasn’t a simple matter of want.
    Grabbing her hand, he smiled that cocky smile and glanced around, checking out the lobby behind them.
    “Hey, come here a second,” he said, pulling her gently around the corner to a doored-off alcove that led to the back alley of the building. What could he need to tell her that couldn’t wait for the privacy of the elevator car?
    The door closed behind them with a quiet thud and then they were alone. Jake stopped, turned to face her, and seized her with a stare that was neither easy nor casual. The beige walls and worn linoleum of the small hallway crowded in around them, as if the space itself couldn’t hold out against the man in front of her.
    He stood too close, his body too big, his emotions too raw. There in the harsh darkness of his blue-eyed glare she could see everything she wanted to ignore. The urgency, the anger, the heat.
    He caught her wrist, closing his fingers around it like a manacle as he pulled her hand to his chest. His eyes locked with hers, daring her to try and hide her reaction to the hot flesh beneath her fingertips.
    “What are you doing?” she demanded, her heart racing.
    “Making you touch what you can’t stop looking at,” he growled, pressing her palm flat, drawing her touch over the muscular terrain.
    He was so close she couldn’t think, could barely breathe. Need twisted low in her belly as she remembered the taste of him, the feel of his hands cradling her. Everything she wasn’t supposed to have. Everything she wanted.
    This wasn’t fair.
    Jake searched her eyes and slowly withdrew his hand from hers, bracing one arm and then the other at the wall behind her. He’d boxed her in with his body, but it was her own desire that held her captive.
    “It’s up to you, Cali. I’m not going to give you the easy out and take the control from your hands.” His gaze dropped meaningfully to where her fingers still splayed wide over hard muscle and male flesh.
    She swallowed, her mind reaching for justifications and denials just beyond her grasp.
    He leaned closer, his words feathering against the shell of her ear. “You know what I see in that look you can’t stop giving me?”
    Barely a whisper, “What?”
    Jake pulled back, bringing them level. “I see you begging me to finish what we’ve started too many times. But I’m not going to answer to your eyes, sweetheart.”
    Stifling a moan at the hot pulse of desire beating between her legs, she stared at this man she needed so badly