“I got a hickey to prove otherwise. Wanna see?”

“Get out.” She shoved him once more for being as obvious as he always was when it was just the late shift on staff. “Right now. Or I swear, I’m calling your daddy for harassment or disturbing the peace or something else equally illegal.”

“Whose peace am I disturbing?” Wyatt asked innocently as he turned to Terry. “You feeling disturbed?”

Terry shook his head. “Nope.”

“What ’bout you, Sara?” Wyatt called out loud enough to make Tabitha wince. “You disturbed?”

“Heck, no.” Sara let out another high-pitched giggle. “You can come disturb me anytime.”

Tabitha glared at Sara.

“Oh, my girl’s getting jealous.” Wyatt looked entirely too pleased. “Say it again.”

“You’re crazy to keep turning him down,” Sara said without hesitation. “He is one fine piece of man.”

“That ain’t a lie,” Terry agreed under his breath.

Wyatt waggled his eyebrows at Terry, who blushed. Which would have been funny if Tabitha wasn’t quite so irritated.

“I’ll sell you what’s on that counter if she don’t,” Sara went on because she hadn’t heard Terry’s admission.

“You do it then.” Tabitha tossed the ribbed-for-her-pleasure package toward her.

All three of them just stared as it slid across the floor. It was an uncharacteristic show of annoyance for Tabitha, but Wyatt did that to her. He made her blood pressure go up whenever they shared the same air for more reasons than one.

She hopped off the stool.

“What ’bout my stuff?” Wyatt asked as if he hadn’t just been irritating her on purpose.

“Sara’s dying to ring you up. Let her do it.”

“But I want you to ring me up.” Wyatt picked up another package on the counter and held it up to Tabitha. “I think these are more appropriate, don’t you?”

She yanked the box of Extra Large condoms out of his hand and went to the small door that separated the counter from the customers. She unlatched it and walked over to Sara without meeting Wyatt’s gaze. She tossed it on the checkout counter. “Wyatt wants to buy these.”

Sara studied the box and then lifted her startled gaze to Tabitha. “Is that true?”

Tabitha turned to leave without answering her. “I’m taking a break, Terry.”

“I’ll walk you out.” Wyatt came up next to her and draped a heavy arm over Tabitha’s shoulders.

She shoved him, but he didn’t let go. He just pulled her tighter into the crook of his arm.

“You’re forgetting your groceries.”

“Shoot, I can’t eat that shit.” Wyatt laughed. “I got a boxing match next week.”

Tabitha’s shoulders slumped in defeat. “Don’t you ever get tired of pestering me?”

“Nope.” Wyatt leaned down and whispered in her ear in a warm, seductive voice that made her shiver, “Pestering you is one of my favorite things.”

“Been doing it long enough.” Tabitha let out a pained moan, because the feel of his breath against her neck had made all the fine hairs on her arms stand on end. “I’ve been tripping over you since ninth grade.”

“Longer than that if we’re being honest.” Wyatt’s voice became warm and affectionate. “I’ve loved you since kindergarten. I saw that bright red hair across the room and I thought, ’someday I’m gonna marry that girl.’”

Tabitha rolled her eyes as they walked out the front of the store. “You’re delusional.”

“You wanna go make out in my truck for ten minutes?”

“Not if it’s gonna encourage you to come in here tomorrow and do the exact same thing,” Tabitha said in annoyance. “You can’t come into my place of work and cause trouble just for a date to the prom. I need this job.”

Wyatt laughed. “What’s Terry gonna do? Just ’cause Hal’s in the military now don’t mean anything. I’ve got leverage for life.”

Tabitha turned around and hit him. “You can’t keep holding that over his head. It upsets him. Four years is the point where you stop.”

“He doesn’t seem upset. I think he likes me,” Wyatt countered, completely unapologetic. “I could give Hal a run for his money if I had a mind to.”

“Why are you so crazy?” Tabitha stopped in the parking lot and frowned at him. “Have you told anyone ’bout him and Hal?”

“Just Jules and Clay, but they don’t count.”

“The heck they don’t,” Tabitha argued passionately. “Jules has got a mouth on her worse than yours, and that’s saying something. Why do you have to go blabbing things like that? This is his life we’re talking ’bout. The people in this town ain’t exactly accepting of things like that.”

“I told them like three years ago, and they ain’t said a word. They aren’t gonna tell anyone, I promise.” Wyatt pushed her against his pickup truck when they got to it, trapping her against the metal. His gaze darkened. “Let’s talk ’bout you and me instead. Are you going to prom with me?”

“No.”

“Maybe I need to convince you.” Wyatt leaned down and buried his face in the curve of her neck. His breath was warm, his voice husky. “’Cause I wanna take my girl to one dance before school’s done forever.”

He licked at the tender skin behind her ear. The rush had Tabitha closing her eyes. She sagged against the door, but he held her there, his strong arms wrapping around her as he pressed soft reverent kisses against her neck.

“Oh God.” She moaned, knowing he heard the defeat in her voice, because he pushed in closer, forcing his powerful body tighter against hers. She threaded her fingers into his hair and held his head there. “Wy.”

“Tell me you’ll go to prom.”

She used her hold on his hair to tug him back instead; then she stood on her toes and tilted her head back in an offer he took. She gasped against his lips when he kissed her, hard and possessive, forcing her to part to him when his tongue pushed into her mouth. The pleasure felt like liquid fire that slipped into her veins like a drug.

She never understood her mother’s constant need for the next drink until Wyatt kissed her for the first time on the side of the road at the start of ninth grade. Since then she’d been chasing the white dragon every chance she had, regardless of common sense that told her she was falling further down a black hole that would ruin both of them when they hit bottom.

Her mother had Jack Daniel’s.

Her brother had drugs.

Tabitha had Wyatt Conner.

“I really should buy a pack of those things.” Wyatt panted when they finally parted for air.

Tabitha bit her lip rather than admit she’d gone to Dr. Philips three days after she’d turned eighteen and gotten herself on birth control pills. She stopped thinking when she was with him, and she was practical enough to recognize the day might come when they’d end up doing more than making out in the parking lot.

Heck, that day had come. The hickey he was bragging about earlier wasn’t on his neck.

“Wyatt,” she whispered when she saw he was waiting for an answer to a not so subtle question. “You should get a real girlfriend.”

“I couldn’t do that to some poor girl when I love you like I do. I couldn’t even think ’bout doing something like that. It was different with you and Terry. It was just pretend. He needed you to cover for him as much you needed him, but with me it’d just be mean.” A frown marred his handsome face as he studied her quietly for one long moment. “You are my real girlfriend. Even if you won’t go to the prom with me.”

Tabitha reached up and ran a hand through his hair that she’d messed up in the heat of the moment. She savored the way the silky stands ran through her fingers as her heart hurt over the idea that Wyatt hadn’t once gone to a dance through four years of high school. It seemed so incredibly unfair to him.

“I think Terry will give me fifteen minutes.”

Wyatt’s smile was wide and pleased and more than worth dealing with him pestering her every shift. He reached around her and grabbed the door handle.

“Let’s get in back,” Tabitha said before he could pull it open.

She told herself it was because the two of them were out in the open in the parking lot of Maple’s, but the truth was it was ten at night, and no one was there. She just wanted to feel all of Wyatt on top of her. He always parked in the darkened corner, because this wasn’t the first time he’d pestered her into the parking lot. He did it nearly every shift.

Who said addictive behavior wasn’t genetic?

Wyatt grabbed her wrist with one hand and used the other to tug at the neckline of his shirt. He pulled it over his head right there in the parking lot and then tossed it into the back of his truck before he undid the latch.

Tabitha experienced that drowning feeling again as she stared at his cut, muscular body. He was constantly fighting with his weight, but not for the reasons most did. He had to keep himself below weight class to fight in the boxing circuit he loved so much, and he was always five pounds or less away from heavyweight, but he ran ten miles a day and lived off pure protein because he refused to step into the ring professionally against Clay. It could’ve gone the other way. The two best friends were built the same, with massive shoulders and imposing height, but Wyatt had opted to struggle with keeping himself thinner because he said Clay had gone hungry enough for one lifetime.

And she wondered why she couldn’t stop herself from falling head over heels for the man?

She crawled into the truck without hesitation. There were blankets to help with the hardness of it. They were dusty and smelled distinctly of the outdoors, which, Tabitha was fairly sure, was a scent she’d associate with making out for the rest of her days.

“Come here.” Wyatt left the tailgate open and crawled to her on his hands and knees like a panther, making her breathless with anticipation. “Tabby cats on top.”

Tabitha screeched when he pulled her to him and rolled onto his back. He didn’t give her a chance to catch her breath before he was fisting her long hair with both hands and pulling her lips back to his. She opened to him a second time, loving the way he took her mouth like it belonged to him. She swallowed his low groan. Her fingers dug into his bare shoulders. She straddled his hips, the material of her long, loose skirt pushing up to her thighs.

“I wanna get you off,” he groaned when he broke the kiss only to attack her neck. “I need to hear you before I spend all night sitting in front of that dispatch board.”

“Wy, no,” she moaned in complaint even if her body protested the argument. “I get all red and flushed when you do that.”

“I like you flushed.”

“Yeah, but I got to go back to work.”

“Leverage,” he reminded her, but her hazed mind barely heard it because his lips were drifting down to her collarbone. He sneaked his hand between their straining bodies and started tugging down her shirt. “Seems like you got an unfair advantage here.”

“Forget it. I ain’t taking off my shirt in the parking lot. You’ll have to arrest me for indecent exposure.”

“I got my shirt off.”

“You’ve always got your shirt off. Anyone with the ten bucks to see a circuit boxing match has seen what you have to offer.”

“Jealous?”

Considering the number of rabid groupies who went to those fights, yes, she was jealous as hell, but she wasn’t going to admit it. She kissed him instead, letting him slip a hand under her shirt as their mouths met over and over again in heated desperation. He shoved her bra aside. His thumb found her oversensitive nipple. She gasped against his lips and pushed her hips against his on instinct.

Wyatt dropped his head back and studied her as she moved against him. She leaned in and parted her lips, silently begging for the next breathless kiss.

“You’re already flushed.” Wyatt’s voice was low and gravelly with lust. She tried to capture his lips, but he turned his head away, denying her. “Let me do it.”

He didn’t wait for her to argue. He grabbed her ass with his free hand, forcing their bodies tightly together. The long, hard outline of his dick was straining against his jeans, and the way it felt pressed between her spread legs had her choking back a gasp of pleasure. He arched up, creating a wonderful friction that caused sparks of need to blossom and grow amazingly fast.

She kissed his neck as an outlet, forgetting to be careful as she bit and licked his warm, tawny skin. He turned his head to the side, giving her better access. Without realizing it she was moving over him, and he was moving with her as if their bodies had failed to notice they were still clothed. He was making those low grunting sounds he did whenever he started to get too turned on to talk.