She picked at a fingernail—a sure sign she wasn’t herself, because the Brynn Dalton he knew would never settle for a less-than-perfect manicure. “Sure, the day you moved in. I brought homemade cookies.”

“They weren’t homemade, and you know it. You also know that’s not the kitchen encounter I was talking about.” He pushed away from the counter and began moving carefully toward her. Decisively enough to let her know he wasn’t fooling around, but not so quickly as to scare her off.

“Well, you said the last one,” she said primly.

He resisted the urge to grind his teeth as he oh-so-slowly backed her against the counter. “Sorry. I should have said the last one that mattered. You know, three years ago…a different kitchen…a certain surprise drop by…”

Will slowly moved his arms until his hands were on either side of her hips on the counter. Watching her closely, he was ready for anything. Ready for her to scamper away. Ready for a scathing cut-down. He was even ready for the potential slap, because maybe this new Brynn wouldn’t tolerate being backed into a counter. God knows the old Brynn hadn’t.

But of all the things Will was prepared for, it wasn’t for her to stand on her toes and kiss him. Hard.

Before he could register her soft body against his, she was on him, her fingers sliding around his neck at the exact moment her tongue slid against his.

And if maybe there was a tiny voice warning not like this, he didn’t pay it the least bit of attention. Instead he took what she was offering, because Goddammit, it had been too long.

Will slid one hand up along her side, letting his palm brush the outside of her breast before clamping a hand around the back of her head and jerking her mouth closer so he could take control of the kiss. He heard her little gasp of surprise as his tongue pushed into her mouth and slid hotly along hers before he drew back and raked his teeth along her bottom lip. His other hand remained planted on her hips, his fingers digging into her tight little butt as he let himself rub against her once, twice. Three times. Refusing to kiss her again until she moaned in acquiescence. And when she let out a low frustrated moan, he gave her what she was looking for, taking her mouth again and again in hot, drugging kisses.

Distantly he became aware of her doing a little claiming of her own. The woman who was tugging at his hair and writhing against him was not the refined, cautious Brynn he knew.

He’d seen only glimpses of this Brynn once before on a night all too similar to this one. A night that had ended with her treating him like a tawdry one-night stand to be ashamed of.

The memory had him pulling back. Hell, it was the only thing that could have him pulling back.

It took her a second to realize that his mouth was no longer on hers, although he couldn’t bring himself to take his hands off her. Not yet. His fingers slid around the back of her neck, tipping her head up and forcing her to meet his eyes.

“Brynn.”

She touched the tip of her tongue to her swollen upper lip, and her eyes held a beguiling combination of confusion and want, and he almost dove in again.

But first he had to know. “What are you doing here?”

He waited for her to tell him that they’d made a mistake. Another one. Waited for her to tell him that she wanted another one-night stand with no strings attached. Waited for her to break his heart. Again.

But Brynn wasn’t done with the surprises tonight.

Her blue eyes lifted to his, made slightly edgy with a dark smudge of makeup. “I was kind of thinking you might be part of my midlife crisis. You know, as a fling.”

Will forced himself not to respond. It wasn’t as much as he hoped and yet was more than he feared.

He didn’t want to be her rebound. Or at least not just her rebound.

And yet, God help him…

He was going to say yes.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

A woman’s body is a temple.

It should be treated as such.

—Brynn Dalton’s Rules for an

Exemplary Life, #55

You can’t be serious about this.”

“I’m always serious,” Brynn said, shooting Will a death glare. Honestly, for a guy who’d sworn to be her personal tour guide through the land of rebellion, he was turning out to be a total stiff.

Starting with the night he’d verbally agreed to her frenemy-with-benefits suggestion before dumping her on his front porch and telling her he was tired. She’d assumed he’d come around the next day to collect. He hadn’t. Nor the day after that.

Then he’d dropped by with pizza, and then left without so much as a kiss.

Hell, she half expected him to show up with flowers, and that scared the crap out of her, because it would mean he was up to something.

So Brynn had done what she needed in order to regain control of the situation.

She’d taken him to a tattoo parlor.

“What do you think about this one?” she asked, pointing toward a tiny purple butterfly. “Maybe on my butt or something?” Where nobody will ever see it.

Will glanced over her shoulder at the binder. “Don’t embarrass yourself.”

Brynn turned the page and planted her finger on a skull with pink roses for eyes. “Okay, then, how about this one?”

“Not unless you’re a cross-dressing trucker.”

“If you’re not going to help, you might as well go home.”

“Really? Because if that’s an option…”

Brynn clamped her fingers around his wrist, enjoying the way the dark blue of her new manicure looked against his forearm. “You said you’d have a fling with me.”

Will let out a long-suffering sigh. “Which I thought meant no-strings-attached sex, not hanging out in a dirty tattoo parlor on a random Friday morning.”

“It’s not dirty! I did a lot of research for one that was clean and respectable.” And you turned down the sex.

“There!” he said, jabbing a finger at her. “That right there is proof that you shouldn’t get a tattoo. You researched first? Tattoos are supposed to be spontaneous. Or at the very least, about the ink itself, not how often the place dusts.”

“I don’t care how often they dust so long as the needles are clean,” she said with a lot more confidence than she felt. Actually, she did care about how often they dusted, but there weren’t exactly a whole lot of high-class tattoo parlors out there.

“We are not having this conversation,” Will muttered. But he reluctantly lowered himself into the seat next to her. She’d been sitting in the small waiting area for nearly twenty minutes under the guise of deciding on her “ink.” But she was pretty sure both Will and the kid behind the desk knew what she was up to.

Stalling.

As if on cue, an irritable-looking woman came out of the back room where the pain happened, and Brynn did her best not to gape. Save for her face, the woman was literally covered in tattoos, most of them resembling animals you’d find on a safari.

Brynn mentally crossed predatory animals off her list of choices. Too many teeth.

“Where’s, um, the guy that was here earlier?” Brynn asked, gesturing helplessly in the vicinity of the grungy welcome desk. He’d been clean-cut and sweet-looking. Nothing like this woman.

Safari Woman snorted. “Christian? He’s on his lunch break. He doesn’t do much other than phones and cleanup anyway.”

Cleanup? Clean up what?

“I’m Jody. I’ll be doing the art.”

Brynn worked up a smile. “Almost ready, just debating a few options.”

Jody raised a skeptical pierced brow. “Uh-huh. You sure about this? Because don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t look like my normal clientele.”

She didn’t? Because she’d tried, she really had. Brynn resisted the urge to glance down at her outfit. She’d wanted to go with the new black leather pants that made her ass look surprisingly fantastic, but it was too hot, so she’d gone for the shortest skirt in her wardrobe. One that seemed to have matriculated from her college closet, paired with a red tank top that was just a little too low to be respectable.

And red shoes. The shoes were key to this whole thing.

But apparently she didn’t look tat-ready. Should have gone with the leather.