Page 71 of Irresistible Rogue

No. He didn’t mean any of it. He wasn’t attracted to me.

He was just fucking with me.

So why was I heating up at that look in his eyes?

I broke eye contact. “I don’t want to talk about this in the street.”

I could feel him looking at me. And maybe I should’ve just walked away, but I didn’t.

I was sure that by not walking away I was giving him all the information he needed.

“Come with me,” he said.

It was the exact same thing he said to me that night. But this time he didn’t take my hand. He just turned and started walking.

And I followed him, wrapping my arms around my waist. By the time we crossed the street we’d fallen into pace with one another, walking side-by-side. When we arrived at his building, I didn’t look at him as he opened the door. He held it open for me and I stepped in first.

I didn’t recognize the guy at the security desk. It wasn’t the same man who was here when I came the other day. But I avoided eye contact with him while I followed Shane to his elevator.

As we rode the elevator up, he looked at me. But when our eyes met, mine skipped away.

He slid open the door and I followed him into his apartment. He flicked on a light and rolled the heavy door closed. We were alone in his dark loft. With just one little light on in the entrance area.

I walked deeper into the apartment, my arms still wrapped around myself, seeking out the safety of the shadows. I heard him dump off his shoes behind me and when I turned, I watched him walk across to the kitchen.

He peeled off his T-shirt along the way, like he was too hot to keep it on. I was a little sweaty myself from that walk. And now, from the sight of his body… as he tossed the shirt aside and my eyes went straight to his bare skin.

Oh God,his body.

He was lean but ripped as fuck, his arms sculpted, his skin a warm tan tone. I wasn’t wrong when I was here the other day and saw him without a shirt on, or this morning, in my mom’s backyard: he was hotter than I remembered. Or maybe my taste in what I found attractive had just matured over time from “member of boy band” to “battered, real life man,” because he was all man and he was goddamn glorious.

Physically. Just physically.

And now there was the possibility, niggling at the back of my mind:You could have that. He offered it to you.

I drifted closer without even realizing I was doing it, joining him in the kitchen, where he flicked on the little pendant lights over the bar. I watched as he poured both of us a glass of something from his fridge. Then he turned to find me watching him. He put a glass on the bar for me. “Water. Do you want something stronger?”

“No.” I set my purse down and took a sip, letting my eyes move over his skin. The faded bruises. The scars. Maybe some of them were from fighting, but most of them were probably from the car accident he was in. The one that ruined his hockey career.

But they didn’t ruin his beauty or anything. They just made him look more like a man. A man who’d been through some shit.

I wanted it to turn me off, but it really didn’t.

“So?” he said. “Talk.”

“Um.” My eyes met his. It felt intimate, here in the near-dark, in the quiet of his apartment… just the two of us, alone at night… “About what?”

“You said you didn’t want to talk in the street. Well, no one here but you and me.”

My face heated at those words. He was right. And no one had to know. Whatever we said here, whatever we did…

Unless one of us told anyone.

“How about this,” he said. “I’ll go first. You came here because you want to fuck me. And that’s okay.”

“That’s… that’s not true.”

His eyebrow rose. He seemed to be waiting for me to go on. But I wasn’t sure what to say.

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