Desire Collection: August 2017 Books 1 - 4. Rachel Bailey

asking him whether he had a condom as she pushed her hands down the back of his shorts to thrust her fingers into the hard muscle of his butt. A wave of desperation rose within her. They had to rid themselves of the barriers of clothing, mostly hers, that kept him from sliding inside her, stretching her and filling her.

      Words, she needed them, but she couldn’t bring herself to stop kissing him long enough to get her point across. Tate swirled her tongue around his, pulling on his bottom lip, but, unlike earlier, he didn’t respond. Tate frowned. Taking stock, it occurred to her that his hands had stopped exploring her body, that she was sliding down his big frame, that her toes and then her feet were touching on the cold floor. Shaking her head, she tried to work out why he’d stomped on the brakes.

      Had she done something he didn’t like? Did he think that she was a wild woman? A slut? Oh, God, did he think he was kissing Kari and suddenly realized that it was her?

      Tate shoved her hands into her hair and looked up him, dreading the expression of cool disdain she knew she’d see.

      Linc, however, looked calm and in control and not at all like he’d just tried to inhale her. Where did all that passion go? What had he done with all that hot, unbridled desire? Tate looked down and saw that he was no longer rock hard... That’s an amazing amount of control, Ballantyne.

      It pissed her off.

      Tate opened her mouth to utter a very snarky comment, but he spoke first. “Ellie is crying.”

      Tate blinked, trying to make sense of his words. Who? What? Where?

      “The baby is crying, Tate. You need to go to her.”

      Through the monitor on the dining table Tate heard Ellie’s soft wail, heard the desolation in her muffled cry, and she snapped back to the here and now. Oh, God, the poor thing sounded like her heart was breaking. How long had she been crying? Minutes? An hour? Longer? How long had she and Linc kissed? She couldn’t tell, she’d lost all sense of time, and of reality.

      Oh, my God... She almost lost her freaking mind. She’d been a heartbeat away from asking her sister’s ex to do her on the kitchen counter!

      What must he think?

      And more important, what must Ellie think? Did she think that Tate had abandoned her just like her mother? Not wanting to make the little girl wait another minute, Tate whirled away from Linc and sprinted for the stairs.

      Yes, she was desperate to get to Ellie, but honesty made her admit that she was equally desperate to get away from Linc. She had absolutely no control of herself around him, and she thanked God for Ellie’s interruption. And for his keen ears because she hadn’t heard a damn thing.

      She’d been deaf, dumb, blind with lust for him...

      It was a very good thing, Tate thought as she sprinted up the stairs, that she was leaving tomorrow.

       Four

      Linc, after a night short on sleep and long on aggravation, hustled Shaw through his morning routine, trying not to think about the fact that he’d been so close to taking his ex’s sister on the kitchen counter the night before. He’d been desperate to know if she was as hot and honeyed as he expected, and his hands had been in her pants, about to push the fabric over her hips, when he’d heard Ellie crying. Would he have stopped if she’d slept through?

      Possibly. Maybe. Not a chance in hell.

      In his bedroom, Linc muttered a curse as he pulled on his shoes. What the hell happened last night? Yeah, he was horny; it had been a while since he’d last got lucky, but, crap, he never lost control like that. Even as a teenager and at his craziest with Kari, he’d never felt so desperate for a woman, so utterly and incomprehensibly caught up in pleasure.

      And the fact that he felt this way about his ex’s sister just pissed him off. Bloody Harper women. They had a way of turning his life upside down and inside out. But, he was compelled to admit, he hadn’t, not once, thought of Kari when he’d been kissing Tate. Thank God, because this situation was weird enough without getting them confused.

      And thank God again that Tate was leaving today because he didn’t know if he could spend another night tossing and turning and talking himself out of the urge to go to her room and finish what they’d started.

      The sooner Tate left, the better. The world could then stop trying to spin off its axis.

      She was the exact opposite of the woman he thought that he and Shaw might someday want. On those odd times when he wished that his life had turned out differently, he fantasized about a sexy, funny stay-at-home mother and lover, someone who adored Shaw. Someone who’d put him and his son at the center of her world, someone he’d trust to stay with him, surfing the waves of life with him and never swimming away.

      If he ever got to that place where he felt he could trust again, risk again, Linc knew that he’d want someone who believed in traditions, in order, someone who could fit into his life and who looked the part. He wanted a woman who was easy, and he wanted calm, a lake and not a storm-swept sea.

      Tate was exactly what he didn’t want or need. She’d create waves and whirlpools, the turbulence he tried to avoid at all costs in his personal life. The woman didn’t have a conventional bone in her body; her clothes were bohemian, and, according to Kari, they’d had an unstable upbringing. Tate was a modern-day nomad, a free spirit, innately unconventional.

      But, God, the way she kissed; it was a goddamn miracle they hadn’t set the brownstone and most of the block on fire.

      Linc walked into his closet, yanked a tie from his collection and draped it around his neck, fuming over the fact that he couldn’t think about Tate and her mouth and knot his tie into his customary perfect Windsor.

      He didn’t have enough blood in his brain to do both at the same time.

      “Dad, hurry up, Granny Jo is making pancakes,” Shaw shouted from the doorway to his room.

      Linc frowned. “She’s up?”

      Shaw nodded. “And she’s wearing lipstick. Hurry!”

      Linc followed Shaw downstairs, wondering what was going on. Jo was not a morning person, and he and Shaw rarely saw her before breakfast. He did the morning shift, Jo took the afternoons and, if he was slammed, the evening shift. Then Linc remembered that she wanted him to hire a nanny...

      Crap.

      Linc felt his stomach clench and wondered how he was going to solve that problem. He understood her need to spend more time with Gary, and it wasn’t an unreasonable request. His mother was entitled to a life that didn’t include the responsibility of looking after his son.

      But how was he supposed to trust a stranger with his heart and soul? If something happened to Shaw, he’d crumble. He trusted his mom, his siblings, but anyone else? Hell, no. Nobody would ever love Shaw or look after him like he did, but Jo came damn close.

      Well, thankfully, he didn’t need to figure it out immediately. Better off thinking about it when he didn’t have a came-close-to-having-sex-but-didn’t hangover, a headache from too much frustration and not enough sleep.

      Linc noticed Tate’s bags in the hallway, ready to be loaded in a taxi, and his heart bounced off his rib cage. He tasted panic in the back of his throat and briefly considered whether he was losing his mind. He definitely wanted her to leave; she couldn’t stay. Tate was cut from the same cloth as Kari, and the fabric was damaged, stained, torn. He needed another Harper woman in his life like he needed a hole drilled into his head.

      But, God, she looked good, Linc thought, as he stopped in the doorway to his kitchen. She looked, and Linc spat out a silent swear. Right. Tate sat at the kitchen table, bouncing Ellie on her knee as she listened to Shaw telling her about his favorite teacher at school.

      “She sounds really nice.” Tate ran a hand over Shaw’s head, totally engrossed in what he had to