Forged of Steele Bundle (Books 1-4) - Brenda Jackson [126]
She crossed her arms beneath her breasts and stared at him. “What were you saying earlier about assuming anything?”
Bas hooked a thumb into his jeans. “That was different.”
She smiled. “Of course you would say that.” She then checked her watch. “Give me a second to grab some clothes and I’ll be ready to go back to town,” she said turning toward her bedroom.
“Take your time. I need privacy to lick my wounds anyway.”
She paused in the archway between the hall and her bedroom. “Too bad you’re a sore loser.”
“I’m not.”
“You are, too. Admit it.”
“Okay, I like to win.”
“So do I.”
“You know I’m going to want a rematch.”
“We’ll see.” And with that said, she disappeared inside her bedroom.
Bas couldn’t stop the chuckle that escaped his lips. Damn, he had spent the last two hours racking up over a billion points and still had lost to a female hotshot. The number of bonus points she’d gotten was downright sickening.
He shook his head, not believing he had actually taken time away from work to play a damn game of pinball. It had been the weirdest thing how his adrenaline had gotten pumped up, practically the same way it did whenever he played basketball against his brothers. He hadn’t even thought about the files he had planned to go over at the office. The only thing he had thought about was whipping Jocelyn’s butt big-time.
And what a butt it was. It didn’t take much to remember her in front of the pinball machine, her stance sexy and stimulating as hell, and her display of excitement each and every time she deployed a ball. Just being able to ogle her undetected had been worth the loss. Once again he couldn’t help but think about the too-serious curves on her body and what they did to a pair of jeans and a top. Each time her butt had moved, he’d found it almost impossible to sit still, stand still or to stop a certain part of him from getting hard.
He had played enough pinball to know it was a mental game and if you weren’t focused there was no chance in hell you could win. Of course he hadn’t been focused. He hadn’t even used a lot of the skilled flipper work he often used when he played against his brothers.
It was difficult to concentrate when you were playing against a woman whose perfume smelled of seduction and whose body made you think of a different kind of scoring. He’d known that whenever her tongue licked her lips she was setting up her shots to score big. And he had wanted to capture that same tongue with his.
“I’m all set.”
He turned at the sound of her voice and crossed the room to relieve her of the load of clothes she carried.
Their hands touched and an electric current quickly flowed through their bodies. Silence hung between them for a long moment until she finally said, “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“We’d better go.”
He sighed deeply. “Yes, I think we’d better.”
By the time Jocelyn had locked up and they had walked back out to her truck, Bas wanted to punch something. The desire to kiss her had been so strong he’d felt his self-control slipping, and for the first time in a long time he hadn’t wanted to do anything to regain it.
He didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that if he didn’t pull himself together he was headed for big trouble.
“So, what’re your plans for dinner?”
The truck had come to a stop at a traffic light and Jocelyn glanced over at Bas. “I don’t have any. Why?”
“After playing that game with you, I’ve worked up an appetite and thought we could stop and grab something to eat.”
Jocelyn laughed. “I couldn’t help noticing how much you got into the game. You’re a good player.”
“Yet you won.”
“Yeah, but to give you credit I have to admit you played well. One of the keys to winning pinball is to concentrate on what shots are going to give you the biggest points.”
He decided not to tell her the real reason he’d lost was because he’d been concentrating on her more than the game. “I was serious when I said I wanted a rematch,” he said.
“I’m sure you were, and I don