Ryan Hunter

time of satisfying a deep need within me. I pulled my Indian’s cap off and tossed it on the bed, never breaking eye contact with her. With one arm around her delicate waist, I pulled her into me and thrust my other hand into her silky hair.
    Liza’s breath came fast against my skin. My gaze dropped from her eyes to her lush lips. I knew I was going to die, if I couldn’t sample them again this minute. Slowly, I leaned down and rendered her mine.
    Pressing a feather-light kiss on her lips, I waited to see if she kept breathing this time. Oh yes, she did. And more. Her soft, little hands moved up and around my neck, her fingers threading through my hair. It made me go crazy and wild about her. Growling, I pulled her tighter against me and invaded her sweet mouth with my tongue. The Coke and lime taste was gone, replaced by the taste of minty toothpaste.
    In slow strokes, I started playing with her tongue. Liza shivered in my arms. She rose on her toes to match my height just a little more, rubbing her boobs in a dangerously seductive way against my chest. If there really could be butterflies in one’s stomach, there was definitively one playing havoc in mine now.
    She didn’t like it when I broke the kiss, but I inched back anyway then leaned my brow against hers, getting a grip on myself or I’d toss her onto that bed and make love to her. As I gazed into her bottomless green eyes, I remembered the diary again, and thought I could make up for it by giving her a little truth about me, too. Something she might like to know.
    “By the way, ” I said softly. “I’ve known your name since the very day that you first came to watch Mitchell’s soccer training in third grade, Liza.”
    A smile tugged hard on the corners of her lips, but apparently she didn’t want to let it come. Instead she teased, “Have you, really?”
    If she wasn’t going to smile, then I wasn’t either, so I pressed my lips together, but I knew it wouldn’t work . I nudged her nose with the tip of mine. “Um-hm.”
    The next instant, I found my lips on hers once more. A low moan escaped her, which I cupped with my mouth, and it took me to the edge of self-control. To hell with gentle . Raking back her hair, I tilted her face farther up and ravished her mouth with a deep, ferocious kiss.
    She stood only at the beginning of learning, but she was quick and took up with the lust I breathed. In sensual moves, her tongue brushed against mine. She suckled and nipped my bottom lip, groaning when I did the same to her. Gone wild with longing, I stroked down her neck and spine, finding an easy way underneath her tank top, and explored every little bit of her.
    All the shyness abandoned, Liza utterly melted into my embrace. I placed my hands on her bottom, ready to lift her up so she would wrap her naked legs around my hips. But a hard pull at my collar made me stumble backward, and Liza slipped away from me.
    It was the shock in her eyes that made me realize who had come even before I heard the sharp bellow behind me.
    “What the fucking hell— Take your bloody hands off her!”
    I was hurled around, and a hard punch to my face broke the skin on my lip.
    “No! Tony!” I heard Liza’s strangled shriek as I staggered back. But I caught myself quickly and stopped her with a scowl from rushing to my aid. Sliding my tongue over my bottom lip, I tasted blood. Fucking brilliant. I was going to kill Mitchell for that.
    In an instant, I had him trapped between me and the wall, pressing my forearm against his throat. There was a lot of hatred in his eyes right now, covered by a layer of hurt. Damn, I knew why he’d come.
    Reconsidering my killer instinct, I eased the pressure on his throat but didn’t take my arm away. “I’ll let you get off with this because you’re my friend , Mitchell,” I growled. “But do this again and you won’t live through the night.”
    “You don’t scare me, Hun ter,” he snarled back, and the next thing I knew was that my nose was broken. He must have head-butted me.
    That was the end of my patience. Mitchell was dog food. With murder on my mind, I started toward him, but Liza was suddenly there, squeezed in between us, and her trembling hand pushed against my chest.
    “No,” she told me, then she turned to Tony and said more fiercely, “ No ! You’re not going to do this. Not in my room. And not over me.”
    There was enough hatred in the room to wipe out Grover Beach, but clearly none of us wanted to