He shook his head and kept advancing.

I kept retreating. “Really, it’s late, I’m tired.” I wasn’t, I was going out that night and I needed him to get gone.

“You have two choices,” Vance said.

I stopped in the doorway to the hall and put my hands on my hips. “And those would be?” I asked.

“We can talk or we can f**k.”

My eyes rounded. Then they narrowed.

I didn’t answer.

“Though,” he went on, “I should tell you even if you pick talking, after we’re done, we’re still gonna f**k.”

I frowned at him and leaned in. “You are too much,” I snapped.

He ignored my threatening posture. “You don’t chose, I will and I’ll pick f**king. We can talk after.”

I was right, he was too much. “I’m not going to sleep with you,” I told him.

He just smiled at me.

“Excuse me but didn’t we just meet yesterday? I’m not that kind of girl.”

At that, he threw his head back and laughed.

“What’s so damned funny?” I asked, frowning and just stopping myself from giving him a big, old girlie shove.

He looked at me. “You were that kind of girl this morning.”

He was right, I was. Another ten minutes and I’d have been screwed, literally. I wasn’t sure that was a good thing for a number of reasons. At the moment, most especially, I didn’t want him to know I was a virgin. That might have an adverse effect on my street cred.

“Temporary insanity,” I retorted.

“Jules, choose.”

“No.”

His hands shot out and grabbed me, yanking me forward. Then his arms wrapped around me, pulling me into his body. I should have been smart enough to learn after seeing it enough times how quickly he could move.

“How about this?” he suggested looking down at me. “We talk but we save the f**king until later, maybe after our second date when I actually take you out somewhere.”

There wasn’t going to be a second date so I took this as a boon. “Agreed,” I said.

He smiled at me in a way that made me think he knew my thoughts.

He let me go. I walked down the hall but he grabbed my hand when we were walking by the bed platform and stopped me.

I turned to him. “What?” I asked.

His eyes shifted to the bed. “Climb up,” he said.

My mouth dropped open. “I thought we were going to talk.”

“Yeah, we’re gonna do it up there.”

Was he crazy?

“We’re not going to talk on the bed!”

“Climb up, Jules.”

“We can talk in the living room.”

“Climb up.”

“No one talks on a bed.”

“Jules, climb, the f**k, up.”

I whirled to make my way into the living room. I didn’t get even a step. Lightin’ Crowe grabbed my hand again, spun me around then bent, twisting his body and lifting me so he was carrying me around his shoulders, one hand on my arm, his other arm around my thighs.

“Holy shit! Crowe put me down!” I yelled.

I figured he was going to hurt me; no way was he going to climb up steps and get me into my bed without slamming me into the ceiling. The hallway ceiling was low, the bed area was an elevated alcove, the ceiling high, there was only a small gap to get in and a lot of that was taken by the bed. Even I, after living there five years, still conked my head on the hallway ceiling at least once a month.

I shouldn’t have worried. This was Vance Crowe we were talking about. He climbed, bent nearly double, shoved his torso through with me around his shoulders, not even scraping the ceiling. He released me, rolled me in and came up behind me, snagging me under my armpits and hauling me up the bed. He lay down on his back and pulled me up over his body.

I was too shocked to move and staring at him in disbelief.

God, he was good.

“Now we can talk,” he said, his arms wrapped around my waist.

“Why do you want to talk up here?” I asked.

“I like it up here.”

I rolled my eyes.

Whatever.

Time to get this over with so I could go out and annoy bad guys.

“How do you know my alarm code?” I asked.

He didn’t answer, just smiled.

“Crowe! I want to know.”

“You wanna know, I’ll show you. Later, not tonight.”

I blinked at him. “Seriously?” I asked, so wanting to learn that I completely forgot that tonight was our only night and tomorrow I was going to figure out a way to get Vance Crowe out of my life for good.

“You wanna know, I’ll show you,” he repeated.

“Wow. Thanks,” I was still forgetting.

“I like Nick,” he said conversationally.

I couldn’t help myself, I smiled. “I do too.”

“What do you call him?” he asked what I thought was a strange question.

“I call him Nick.” I replied.

“No, he isn’t your Dad, but he is, so what do you call him?”

I stared at him. “How do you know that?”

“He and I talked.”

I went still. “About what?”

“About him raisin’ you, about your family dyin’, your granddad dyin’, your aunt dyin’.”

I gasped. I did this partly because Nick had apparently shared a great deal of information about me but mainly because Nick never talked about Auntie Reba, not to anyone, but me.

“He told you about Auntie Reba?”

“Yeah.”

I didn’t know what to do with that because I felt it said something about Vance that Nick would trust him enough upon first meeting him to mention it. It freaked me way, the hell, out.

I shirked off my freak out and forged ahead. “What else did he tell you?” I asked, feeling uncomfortable with the knowledge that he knew way too much about me.

“He told me I was your first date in five years.”

“Oh my God,” I whispered, horrified. I was going to kill Nick.

“And he told me your birthday is Thursday.”

I decided to be quiet and hoped that our talk wasn’t going to be a long one. After two minutes I was over it and wanted to shut down, move on, fill my mind with something else, anything else, but Vance.

Vance watched me. I kept silent.

“Tell me about Park,” he demanded softly.

“No,” I said instantly and pushed away. The conversation was officially over.

His arms tightened, he came up, twisting me to my back and his body rolled into me so he was half on me, his thigh thrown over both of mine, pinning me to the bed.