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An Excerpt From: Against
the Wall
© Copyright Rhyannon Byrd, 2004.
All Rights Reserved,
Ellora's Cave, Inc.
The
first words to pop into her head were strange ones—a resurrection from the
warmth of childhood in an instinctual attempt to find comfort in the
decidedly uncomfortable.
I
don’t think we’re in Kansas
anymore…
How
wonderfully mad to be quoting The Wizard of Oz, she mused—but standing in
the doorway of Red’s Bar, Shea Dresden felt a
strange affinity with the displaced Dorothy and her little dog. Red’s was
definitely a far cry from her usual haunts. Places like the university’s
lecture hall and library.
Yeah,
okay, so she was a geek. No one knew that better than she. But she was a
determined geek, damn it, and no Wicked Witch of the West or burly looking
bully was going to send her running before she got what she’d come here
for!
Yeah,
you go girl, her woman’s pride cheered, and Shea
put everything she had into focusing on the rallying war cry, rather than
the flurry of nervous energy pumping through her over-excited system. Her
body quaked with it, and the smoke filled air only made the nauseating
exhilaration that much worse.
It
wasn’t that she couldn’t stand a little smoke. Heck, she smoked sometimes
herself, when she got too restless or tense—or just needed an excuse to sit
on her balcony listening for her next-door neighbor Ryan. But this wasn’t
just a little smoke. The inside of Red’s was dingy gray with the thickness
of it, and Shea knew when she left she’d still be
able to smell it on her clothes and in her hair.
Not
that I’m wearing all that many clothes, she thought with a
wry twist of her lips, but then she was here to meet a man.
And
not just any man, honey, her incessantly complaining libido
chimed in, but Ryan McCall, the sexiest damn thing we’ve ever set eyes
on!
Ryan
was everything Shea thought a man should be, and
gorgeous to boot. Tall, tawny-headed, and ruggedly, insanely, made you
want to wrestle him to the nearest bed handsome.
Without
a doubt, the quintessential stud.
Shea
wanted him unlike anything she’d ever wanted before. Wanted him enough to swallow
her stupid pride and do whatever—whatever—it took to get him. She
was done accepting his casual brush-offs. Done tiptoeing around that
infuriating distance he insisted on maintaining between them.
Tonight,
she was ready to get as up close and personal as two people could get.
Ready to slip under his guard and batter down his defenses until she’d
gotten as far into him as he’d worked his way into her. She wanted it all,
every single intoxicating detail that made him so irresistible. Wanted
absolute access to every breathtaking inch of skin, muscle, and bone.
Wanted to know first hand how it felt to be at the mercy of all that
overwhelmingly raw, masculine power.
That’s
why she was here.
“When
he wants a woman,” her best friend Hannah had told her, “Ry likes to hang out at Red’s. It’s not that it’s
really dangerous or anything, but it definitely caters to a rough and tumble
kind of crowd. Let’s just say it’s not the kind of place where you and I
would hang out, but Ry does just fine there.”
Shea had
wanted to know why someone as gorgeous as Ryan McCall didn’t have a steady
girlfriend, when he could so obviously have his choice of any woman he
wanted.
And
that had been Hannah’s answer.
Red
Mackey’s Bar.
Ryan,
it seemed, preferred a no-strings-attached brand of sex—and he found it at
Red’s.
It
was hard to believe the sexy ATF agent resorted to this place for his
pleasure, but Hannah had known Ryan forever. If she said he went to Red’s
to get laid, then Shea knew it was true. Why he
would come here to look for a woman was beyond her, but here she was, ready
to do her best to finally get the stud right where she wanted him.
Sure,
she didn’t know a whole heck of a lot about playing the part of a hot,
willing, available woman, but no way in hell was she letting that hold her back. Tonight, Shea
intended to be that woman—the one—the woman, which was why her palms
were damp and her stomach was flip-flopping with sexual tension, winding
her up tight enough to snap.
It
wasn’t that she was afraid. Not of Ryan—not of how she felt about him—and
she sure as hell wasn’t afraid of what she wanted from him.
The
only thing she feared now was failure—but tonight it wasn’t going to be an
option.
She
worried about going through life never craving another human being the way
she craved him. But she had it now, that heady, beautiful burn of need
spearing through her system, and all she wanted to do was embrace it.
Celebrate it. Satisfy it. She wanted to surrender and succumb to it,
drowning her senses…drenching them in the ravenous, insatiable, consuming
feelings of heart-pounding lust and sexual hunger that this man inspired in
her. Wanted to fill up on the dizzying rush of energy that just looking at
him pumped through her veins, filling her cells, until she felt packed full
of life.
And
more than anything in the world, she wanted to be packed full of that
beautiful bad boy.
All
she had to do was find him. Of course, beneath the eerie, flickering glow
of the fluorescent beer signs, that was probably going to be harder than
she’d expected.
Damn,
and here she’d thought this would be the easy part. It was Friday night,
and despite its nitty-gritty interior, Red’s was packed with people. Men
and women obviously looking for a place where they could drown their
sorrows and hook up with a warm body for the night.
And
Shea knew Ryan wasn’t much of a drinker.
She
also knew he wasn’t much on relationships either, but she hoped to change
that. At least that was the plan. The first part of the plan, though, was
to get sex. Lots and lots of hard, heavy, mind-shattering sex—with Ryan.
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