Page 36 of Lawless in Leather

“Mr. Coulter,” she replied, letting the last word stretch out just a little. It put a slightly rougher note in her voice that was pure sex. “You developing a taste for burlesque?”

He let his smile go then. “Maybe.” He returned the look she was giving him. “Some of it anyway.” Tonight she wore red. Red satin. A shade lighter than blood. The shade of femme fatale lipstick and expensive racing cars. Designed to stop a man in his tracks.

It was working.

The satin hugged her body more tightly than the fringed dress from the other night had. It shouldn’t have made him feel like he’d been hit in the gut with a two-by-four. After all, he’d seen her in workout gear that revealed more of her than the dress did. He was familiar with the sleek lines of her and the curves.

But apparently red satin changed things. Especially paired with equally red lips and slicked-down hair and sparkling earrings that cascaded halfway down her neck, drawing attention to the curve where her neck met her shoulders with little squares of reflected light dancing over her pale skin. A perfect place to kiss.

His fingers curled into fists, resisting the urge to grab her and pull her up onto the bar so he could do just that.

He was having trouble remembering his name, let alone what his excuse for being here was, but he hadn’t completely lost his reason.

“Nice dress,” he managed.

“I’ll tell Brady you like it,” she said. “He designed it.”

Mal made a note to tell Brady to keep up the good work. He obviously had a fine appreciation for the female form even if he didn’t have any interest in getting up close and personal with it.

“Good job,” he said.

Raina smiled and shifted her weight in a way that somehow made the satin pull even tighter across all sorts of interesting places.

“Was there something you wanted?” she asked.

And there was a leading question if ever he’d heard one. Which made him wonder if it was a test. He fished in his pocket for the keys to her truck, held them up. “I thought you might like these back.”

“My keys?”

“Yup.”

“My tires are fixed already?” She shook her head. “Let me guess, you said jump and the garage said how high?”

“Like I said, I know the guy.” He wasn’t going to explain to her about Tuck and his background. Not right now. “He was happy to do it. But if that’s a problem, I can drive the truck right back out there and you can wait until morning to have it back.”

She blinked at him. “No, I’d rather have it tonight.”

“Then, as my mother would say, say thank you to the nice man.” He grinned at her then.

She shook her head. “Oh no, you’re not the nice man.”

“What do you mean? I fixed your truck.”

“You got someone to fix it, you mean.”

“I delegated. Same difference.”

“Not entirely.”

“Still, it seems like a nice thing to do, to me.”

“I rather think that that depends on your motivations,” she said.

“You really want to talk about my motivations here in the middle of your club?”

Another head shake. “No. Because the show’s about to start again and I have to get backstage. So thank you for getting my tires fixed.” She held out her hand for the keys.

He didn’t hand them over. “How about I just look after these until we have time to discuss my motivations?”

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