Фиона Бранд – His Not-So-Blushing Bride: Marriage with Benefits / Improperly Wed / A Breathless Bride (страница 10)
But therein lay the problem. It was impossible not to notice Lucas. He lit up the room—a golden searchlight stabbing the black sky, drawing her eye and piquing her curiosity.
“What about bourbon?” he asked. “You drink that.”
“Three things in common, then.
His nose wrinkled. “Because. That’s not important. Marriages aren’t built on what you have in common. It’s about not being able to live without each other.”
First clothes. Then declarations à la Romeo and Juliet. “Are you sure you’re not gay?”
“Would you like to come over here and test me? Now, darlin’, that’s the kind of exam I can get on board with.” His electric gaze traveled over her body sprawled out on the bed, and she resisted the intense urge to dive under the covers. To hide from that sexy grin.
“Save it for tonight, Wheeler. Go away so I can get dressed.”
“No can do. You’ve maligned my orientation, and I’m not having it.” He advanced on her, and a dangerous edge sprang into his expression. “There must be a suitable way to convince you. Shall I make your ears bleed with a range of baseball statistics? Rattle off a bunch of technical specs for the home theater system in the media room down the hall? Hmm. No, none of that stuff is specific to straight men. Only one way to go on this one.”
In an effortless move, he tumbled onto the bed, wrapped her up in his arms and rolled, tangling their legs and binding her to his hard body. Heat engulfed her, and that unique, woodsy Lucas scent swirled through her head in a drugging vortex.
When his lips grazed the hollow beneath her ear, she gasped for air as the world ignited around her.
Lucas’s fingers threaded through her hair, and his mouth burned down her throat. The impressive evidence of his orientation pressed against her thigh, and she went liquid.
The plan to ignore her feminine parts for the next six months melted faster than ice in the blazing sun.
This wasn’t supposed to be happening, this flood of need for a man who did this for sport. She was smarter than that.
He hadn’t even kissed her yet.
“Stop,” she choked out before surrender became inevitable.
No doubt he could make her body sing like a soprano with little effort. But intimacy at that level was never going to happen for her. Not with anybody. She’d learned her lesson the hard way in college, and it still stung.
He took one look at her face and swore, then rolled away to stare at the ceiling. “I’m sorry. That was juvenile, even for me. Please, let’s pretend I’m not such a jerk.”
She jumped off the bed and backed away from the slightly rumpled and wholly inviting male lying in it. “It’s not a big deal. I know you were only messing around.”
“It is a big deal. You’re skittish enough already.” He glanced up at her, and darkness dawned in his eyes. “Oh, man, I’m slow, I’ll admit, but I shouldn’t be
“What? No way. I teach self-defense. Any creep who laid a hand on me would find his balls in his back pocket. If I was in a good enough mood to return them.”
“Then why are you so scared of men touching you?”
“I’m not scared of men touching me.”
She shrugged and prayed her expression conveyed boredom or nonchalance or anything other than what she was feeling. “I’m just not interested in you that way. And that little interlude was four exits past practicing. We’ll never have a public occasion to be lying in bed together.”
Her tone could have frosted glass, and he didn’t overlook it. In his typical fashion, he grinned and said, “I might have missed the exit for practicing, but the one I took had some great scenery. Meet me downstairs at six?”
She tried to be irritated but couldn’t. He’d apologized and put them back on even ground effortlessly. No point in sulking about it. “I’ll be downstairs at six. I’ll expect you about ten after.”
Chuckling, he left and shut the door behind him, sucking all the vibrancy out of the room. She took a not-so-hot shower and washed her hair twice but couldn’t erase the feeling of Lucas’s fingers laced through it. The towel scraped across her still-sensitized flesh, and she cursed. She couldn’t give him any more openings. It was too hard to fake a nonreaction.
In deference to Lucas’s parents, she spent an extra couple of minutes on her hair and makeup. Lucas would likely complain about her lack of style regardless, so it certainly wasn’t for his sake. The less she encouraged the trigger on his libido, the better.
With a small sigh, she twisted Lucas’s diamond ring onto her finger, the only jewelry a man had ever bought her, and pretended she hated it.
After firing off at least half a dozen emails and scheduling a couple of walk-throughs for early Monday afternoon, Lucas descended the hardwood and wrought-iron stairs at six sharp. Dinner was important to Mama, which meant being on time, plus he’d already done enough to provoke Cia today. Though she should be apologizing to him for the solid fifteen minutes it had taken to scrub the coconut and lime from his skin.
Why did that combination linger, like a big, fruity, tropical tattoo etched into his brain? Couldn’t she wear plain old Chanel like normal women? Then the slight hard-on he’d endured since being in Cia’s bed, her luscious little body twisted around his, would be easy to dismiss. Easy, because a blatant, calculated turn-on he understood.
This, he didn’t.
He shouldn’t be attracted to her. Keeping his hands to himself should be easy. Besides, he scared the mess out of her every time he touched her. That was reason enough to back off, and there were plenty more reasons where that one came from. He’d have to try harder to remember them.
Cia had beaten him to the living room, where she paced around the sofa in a busy circle. The demons drove her relentlessly tonight. There must be a way to still them for a little while.
“Ready?” he asked, and caught her hand to slow her down. It was shaking. “Hey. It’s just dinner with some old people. It’s not like barging into a birthday party and proposing to a man you’ve never met.”
“My hands were shaking then, too.” She actually cracked a tiny smile. “It’s not just dinner. It’s a performance. Our first one, and we have to get it right. There’s no backup parachute on this ride.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, darlin’. I always have a backup parachute in my wallet.”
“Only you could twist an innocent comment into an innuendo.” Her eyes flashed deep blue with an unexpected hint of humor. How had he ever thought they were brown?
“If you don’t like it, stop giving me ammo.”
Her bottom lip poked out in mock annoyance, but he could see she was fighting a laugh. “You really are juvenile half the time, aren’t you?”
And there she was, back in the fray.
“Half the time? Nah. I give it my all 24/7.” He winked and kissed her now-steady hand. A hand heavy with her engagement ring. Why did that flash on her finger please him so much? “But you’re not nervous about dinner anymore, so mission accomplished. Before we go, can we find you some matching earrings?”
Fingers flew to her ears. “What? How did that happen?”
“Slow down once in a while maybe. Unless of course you want my parents to think we rolled straight out of bed and got dressed in a big hurry.”
She made a face and went back upstairs. The plain black dress she wore, the same one from the other night, did her figure no favors. Of course, only someone who had recently pressed up against every inch of those hidden curves would know they were there.
He groaned. All night long he’d be thinking about peeling off that dress. Which, on second thought, might not be bad. If she was his real fiancée, he’d be anticipating getting her undressed
Imagining Cia naked was definitely not a chore.
When she returned, he tucked her against his side and herded her toward the garage before she could bolt. Once he’d settled her into the passenger seat of his car, he slid into the driver’s seat and backed out.
Spring had fully sprung, stretching out the daylight, and the Bradford pears burst with white blooms, turning the trees into giant Q-tips. Likely Cia had no interest in discussing the weather, the Texas Rangers or the Dow, and he refused to sit in silence.
“You know, I’ve been curious.” He glanced at the tight clamp of her jaw. Nerves. She needed a big-time distraction. “So you’re not personally a victim of abuse, but something had to light that fire under you. What was it?”
“My aunt.” She shut her eyes for a blink and bounced her knee. Repeatedly. “The time she showed up at our house with a two-inch-long split down her cheek is burned into my brain. I was six and the ghastly sight of raw flesh …”