Taking Him (Lies We Tell) Read Free Page B

until they were somewhere private so she could let him have it properly.
    “Suit yourself.” Hunter stepped away. “You sure you can walk?”
    Ellie gritted her teeth, willing the floor to stop moving. “Yes.”
    “And have you finished acting like a sulky teenager?”
    Asshole. “Goes both ways, Chase. If you treat me like a child, I’ll continue to act like one.”
    Hunter eyed her for a moment. “I wouldn’t go around making stupid statements like that, sweetness. You might find your behind getting spanked.”
    For a second a vision popped into her startled brain of herself over his knee with her jumpsuit down around her ankles and her bare buttocks reddened from his hand. Adrenaline spiked, her breath catching.
    Hunter raised an eyebrow and she felt her blush deepen. “Don’t be a prick,” she said, feeling even madder with him and hoping to God he couldn’t read her mind. Then again, maybe he should. That’d teach him. “I’m not two years old, you know.”
    “Apparently. Though I’ve seen no evidence of it. Come on, the truck’s in the street.” Without waiting for her, he turned and began threading his way through the crowd to the bar entrance.
    Ellie took a short breath, trying to calm her racing pulse, confused and angry and still stupidly turned on by the unexpected spanking fantasy. Crap, she was so out of control, and that wasn’t a good thing tonight. Not with him around.
    Why not? Perhaps that’s what you need. Perhaps being out of control and less inhibited is a good thing…
    Oh man, she didn’t need that thought in her head. It was too tempting. Made her think of doing things that were completely out of character. Things such as going down on him in his truck, tasting him while he put his hands in her hair. While he moaned her name. Yeah, that would be one way of making sure he knew he wasn’t her babysitter any longer.
    Outside, the street was full of its usual quota of late-night drunks, obnoxious club-goers and out-of-control teenagers. A crowd of young men—a stag party from the looks of things—catcalled Ellie as she went past. One of them reached out and hooked an arm around her waist. “How much, darling?” the man slurred drunkenly in her ear.
    Ellie, already annoyed, pushed him away with rather more force than strictly necessary. The man got a little annoyed himself, cursing and trying to make another grab at her.
    “Hey,” Hunter said mildly, coming up beside her. “Hands off the lady, buddy.” His tone was good-natured, but the drunken idiot clearly saw something else in his eyes because the guy held up his hands in a “hey, she’s all yours” gesture before walking on down the road with his mates.
    The moment did not do anything for Ellie’s mood. “Don’t say a word,” she said shortly. “Especially not ‘I told you so’.”
    Hunter shrugged. “Wouldn’t dream of it, sweetness. Come on, the truck’s over here.”
    Not far away, parked under a streetlight, was his truck, Fox Chase Construction on the side of it. He unlocked it, pulled open the door for her. Ellie slid in and sat there silently seething as he got in the driver’s side.
    “All right,” he said as he closed the door. “Why the hell are you being such a pain in the ass?”
    Ellie leaned back in her seat, put her boots up on the dash and folded her arms. “I’m sick of you and Vin treating me like a kid all the time. Or some stupid damsel in distress needing to be rescued. Like just now for example.”
    Sodium glow from the streetlights flooded through the truck’s windows, highlighting the perfect bone structure of Hunter’s face, casting his eyes into deep shadow. His temper wasn’t easily roused but when it was, it tended to burn hot. And she could tell it was on the point of burning hot right now.
    “So you wanted to be pawed by some drunken dickhead? In that case get out. There’s a whole fucking city full of them outside.”
    “Like you’d let me get out in the first