Page 8 of The Prize

I ducked my head and climbed out as gracefully as possible. My high heels sunk into the soil but I didn’t care about ruining these Louboutins. I was too focused on breathing in a deep sigh of relief. Tobias offered me his hand and I waved it off.

“You have to admit that was fun.” He smirked.

I leaped toward him and struck his chest with my fists, forcing him backward against a tree trunk, my heart soaring in confusion. I scrunched his hair to bring his mouth to mine, biting his bottom lip in anger and kissing him fiercely in retaliation, punishingly so, and he reciprocated by bringing a hand up to capture the back of my neck to hold me to him. His scratchy three-day beard brushed my cheeks and it felt annoyingly arousing and sparked a delicious throbbing between my thighs. My fingers released his hair and trailed down to his shoulders, and the erotic tension rose further with the sound of rippling leather and kissing and my gruff annoyance. I’d wanted to be this close again more than air itself, this connected, to be his again—

I broke away and slapped him.

On unsteady heels I wobbled and my back hit the tree behind me. He came at me fast and pinned me between the trunk and his rock-hard body, crushing his chest to mine as he continued to devour my mouth with an unmatched passion.

I struggled to shove him away but he didn’t budge. “You were wearing a parachute?” And then I realized it was why he’d stopped me from touching his chest in the car. “I hate you.” I fisted my fingers to grab his hair and pulled him in for a kiss.

He thrust his pelvis against mine, sending a pang of arousal into me. “Leighton, I told you we’re going to have to be smarter,” he said darkly, “faster, more inventive then we’ve ever been.”

“You should have told me.”

“I didn’t actually think I’d be parachuting off a high-rise tonight. I prefer elevators.” He tilted his head as though to say,Unlike you.

“Can you imagine what it was like to watch you fall?”

“Did you really believe I’d leave you like that? I waited until you were safely out of harm’s way. I made every concession to protect you.”

“You’re reckless.”

“You have a wild imagination, Zara.”

“Have you not read Shakespeare? This kind of stuff goes bad fast.”

“I can see why Romeo drank the poison.”

I pointed to the drone. “I could have been trapped in that thing forever.”

“If only we were that lucky.” He shrugged off his leather jacket, revealing a black polo sweater and jeans he now wore.

His change of clothes and that motorbike meant he’d planned for this.

Stepping forward, he wrapped his jacket around my shoulders. “Did you even think about talking to Jade? I returned your access.”

“I screamed at her to take me back to you.”

“Well, she’s not going to stray from her objective, now is she?”

I closed my eyes in frustration.

“That’s going to hurt her feelings.”

“Tobias.” I shoved him. “You will never kiss me again. Do you understand?” I sucked in a sharp breath and stormed away, climbing the grassy bank unsteadily on pointed heels.

“Technically, you kissed me,” he called out and turned to the drone. “You’re good to go, Jade.”

Jade’s door closed and she rose off the ground and headed into the park.

It grew chilly as I waited for Tobias beside his bike. “I’m not getting on this thing.”

“It’s a Harley. And yes, you are.” He came closer and grabbed the bottom of his jacket I was wearing and zipped it up to seal me inside.

An annoying whiff of heady cologne wafted up from his jacket, and I stomped my foot in rebellion to the way it made my sex throb for him.

Tobias lifted the bike’s backseat and brought out a red helmet and handed it to me. He fiddled with my collar to make sure I was snug. “Are you going to play nice?”