“Never gonna let her live that down,” he interrupted with what he hoped was an easy smile.

“That’s a story…” Joanie started.

“For another day,” Lily said. “I’m so, so sorry, but I have to get going. I’m just…exhausted.”

“I was just going to open a bottle of port. Care for a glass?” Joanie asked.

“No,” they answered at the same time.

“We’ll, uh… We’ll get out of your way.” Marcus steered Lily in front of him and out of the pantry.

“Yeah.” Oh, hell. Joanie knew something was up. And unless Felicia was stone deaf and blind to boot, so did she. Joanie covered smoothly, showing off the pantry and the wine shelves as Felicia commented on the vintages. But as Marcus navigated Lily through the kitchen, they encountered Clive and Reginald close behind him.

“Hey, guys,” Clive said, the words strung out into a series of long vowels. “What’s up?”

“Clive was telling me what a great poker player you are, Mr. Black,” Reginald said, evidently clueless as to why Lily’s hair was crushed and Marcus looked like a deer in headlights. “Cigars and poker.”

“Can’t.” Marcus kept Lily in front of him so as not to expose what was really between them. All eight-and-a-half inches of it. “Just got a text from my brother. He needs a lift. Car broke down.”

“Well, we—er, I should go, too,” Lily said. “My fish needs food and…” She didn’t even finish her sentence. Clive looked bemused.

Marcus clasped onto Lily’s hips like they were doing the conga and chased her out of the room. “See you Monday, Clive. Enjoy the poker game, Reginald. Another time, I’ll go all in.” Another time when he wasn’t so close to going all in with Lily.

“Drive safe, you two,” Clive called after him.

Out in the dining room, Lily beelined for the closet and tore her coat off a hanger, then slung her purse over one shoulder. “See you at my place,” she said as he opened the door.

“Your place?” Marcus felt his eyebrows lift.

She grinned as she slipped past him. “Mine’s closer.”

Chapter Fifteen

So, this wasn’t like her. Usually.

She’d tried to be practical, tried to resist him. As she’d watched Marcus from across the room, Lily decided, To hell with it.

She wasn’t drunk, but the champagne she’d sipped had made her feel loose and carefree, and the idea of stealing a kiss from Marcus to tide her over—if they ever got to leave the Camerons’ house—had cemented in her mind.

Then in the dark of the pantry, things had gotten a little out of hand. It was the dark. The perceived danger, the adrenaline spike…

It was Willow Mansion. Only without the cockroaches and smashing sounds.

She flicked a glance at her rearview mirror. It wasn’t just the mansion, but the man following behind her. Something about Marcus sent her brain packing. Clearly, since she’d taken him into her mouth in the pantry of her best friend’s house.

“God. I’m a hussy,” she said to herself.

Unfortunately, or fortunately—too soon to tell—she didn’t have any more time to think, since she only lived seven minutes from Joanie and Clive’s house. Marcus pulled his sparkling white car to the curb behind hers.

Lily. Finally. Out of my dreams.

She watched him get out, took in his easy swagger as he approached her car. Something told her she’d gotten in way too deep way too fast.

“If you think I followed you here,” he said as she swung her car door open, “to get you to finish what you started…”

“Marcus,” she hissed. Her neighbors were too elderly to hear much, but still.

“You’re right.” He grinned and her eyes went to the dimple denting his face.

He was so hot.

“Eventually. I have plans for you first,” he said, taking her hand and lacing their fingers. Such an intimate move without being intimate. It was something she’d done with her boyfriends since junior high. So why, when Marcus took her hand, did she melt into his side?

Because he’s warm and big and strong… And because she liked him way too much.

“Why do I think you’re turning something over in your head you aren’t sharing?”

Because I am.

“Joanie and Clive…”

“We’ll smooth it over,” he said.

She let him end the conversation. She didn’t want to talk or think about it. She wedged the key into her door. Her townhouse was a double, two-story brick and old like the house they’d just come from, with a red-orange brick porch and square concrete pillars holding the overhang. Her right-next-door neighbor, Phyllis, had been in bed since eight o’clock, no doubt, but her large, scrappy yellow tomcat, Harvey, leaped to the dividing wall between their porches and let out a sickly Meower!

“Good Lord,” Marcus said, hitching an eyebrow.

“Harvey, meet Marcus. Marcus, my neighbor’s cat, Harvey.”

“Meower!”

“Is he…sick?” He scratched the cat’s head and Harvey leaned into his palm and made the sickly noise again, followed by a sputtering purr.

“He’s not. He just has a speech impediment.”

She pushed her front door open, aware of Marcus following her inside, very closely, then shutting the door behind him. “Well, this is my place.”

But any nickel tour or offer of a nightcap was cut off when he turned her with his hands and laid his lips on hers. And oh, he tasted good. He’d tasted good down there, too, all manly and clean, and his tongue tasted…wow. Incredible.

He explored her mouth as he slipped her purse off her shoulder and dropped it on the floor. She reached out and tossed her keys onto the entertainment stand, which held a modest television, a fish bowl—where she saw Bubbles flicking around animatedly—and her stereo system.

“One second.” She tore her mouth from Marcus’s, tapped a few flakes into the bowl, and then came back to her date, looping her arms around his neck.

“You really have a fish,” he said, running those wide palms down over her shoulders and ribs, and then back up, where he swept them over her breasts. “I thought you were just saying that.”

“Nope. I am with fish.”

He lit her up with another kiss, squeezing her breasts gently and then lowering his palms to her backside and squeezing there, too. His eyes were closed, those long, dark lashes brushing the tops of his cheeks. Stubble scraped her sensitive skin as he slanted his mouth and deepened their kiss. She allowed her eyes to sink closed, too, gradually losing sense of time and space, and the ability to stand. When her knees went gooey, and she moaned against his lips, she felt him smile.

“Bedroom,” he said, low and growly.

“Upstairs.” Her voice was not growly. It was breathy and quiet and sounded more like a wheeze. What had this man done to her?

He took her hand again and dragged—yes, dragged—her up the stairs, his long legs taking two at a time while she raced to keep up. The closer they drew to her room, the heavier her feet became. He pointed at one of the two bedroom doors, both closed. “This one?”

“That one,” she said, pointing to the end of the hall.

His eyebrows lowered. “You okay?”

She nodded. “I guess. Just…a little nervous.”

“Don’t be.” He hugged her close, kissing her as he subtly moved closer to her bedroom. “We’ve done this before.”

She smiled. They had. “We were pretty good at it…I think. Unless it was just the mansion.”

“Told you we could go back, and I’d prove to you it wasn’t just the mansion.” He popped open her door. “Though I think we can prove it just as well in here.”

He lowered his lips to hers, his fingers gripping the tab of the plastic zipper at the back of her skirt, sliding it down and reaching beneath the material. “Lace,” he commented, squeezing her butt. “Tell me they’re red.”

She smiled against his mouth, fear receding into something much more welcome: lust. “They’re black.”