She looked so youthful with her face scrubbed clean of makeup and her usually tidy hair spread across the pillow in disarray. But her eyes were those of a woman when she whispered. “Come lay next to me.”
She pulled an arm from beneath the covers to pat the empty space beside her.
His heart made a flying leap into his throat at the same time his stomach tried to exit his ass.
“Not gonna happen.” He shook his head, although the urge to strip naked and cannonball into bed as quickly as humanly possible was intense.
“Why not? I don’t have cooties. It’s okay if you accidently touch me.”
“It should be obvious by now, Eliza, that when I touch ya, it’s never by accident.”
She frowned. “Guess that explains why you do it so rarely. Especially lately.”
Now his lungs had joined his heart in their attempt to fly out of his mouth. “Are ya sayin’ ya wish I did it more?”
Despite the bruising and swelling, he could see the petulance on her face. “Well not if you don’twantto.”
She crossed her arms and the move made the tops of her breasts swell above the neckline of her pajama top.
He shifted into a more comfortable position in the chair. Then shifted again when that didn’t bring him any relief. Then gave up when he realized the only comfortable position to be found when sporting a giant hard-on would require he get naked.
“Doll face, I’ve wanted to touch you since the moment I saw you.” He watched her swallow convulsively. “Ya made it clear ya weren’t interested.”
“I wasn’t interested in being another notch on your bedpost,” she said with a flick of her wrist.
Hellfire and damnation!
What was she saying? That if he’d tried to court her instead of simply trying to bed her then she might have been interested?
Nah, that can’t be right. Rich girl and boy from the wrong side of the tracks, remember?
He must have misunderstood.
“Right. You didn’t want to be a notch on my bedpost because you are you”—he waved around the room to indicate its sophistication—“and I am me.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’re smart and rich and refined. And I’m…not. You’re not into slummin’ it. I get it. No harm, no foul.”
She narrowed her eyes. “We’ve already established that education does not equal intelligence. As for the money, I can assure you it doesn’t buy a person happiness. Andrefined? Pfft. I sneak your Unscrustables when you’re not looking.”
“Thief!” He pointed to her nose. “I kept blamin’ Ozzie!”
She shrugged and then sighed. “Look, I haven’t been turning you down for four years for any other reason than it’d set me back years in therapy.”
Thatmade his chin jerk back. “How so, doll face?”
“It’d reactivate my abandonment issues,” she answered easily. Before he could question her further, she plowed ahead. “And anyway, we weren’t talking about you coming over here to plow me into a sex coma. We were talking about you coming over here and lying next to meas a friend. You do realize sex isn’t the only way two people can be physical. There’s such a thing as platonic affection.”
He snorted. “What I feel for ya isnevergoin’ to be platonic. There. Is that better, darlin’?”
Her bedroom eyes looked particularly dark and inviting in the golden lamplight. But her tone was as prickly as a porcupine. “Which part? The part where you’re incapable of having a relationship with a woman that doesn’t involve sex? Or the part where you changed your pet name for me from doll face to darlin’?”
“I’m capable of havin’ relationships with women. I love Becky, Michelle, Penni, Samantha.” He ticked off the wives of the OG Black Knights on his fingers. “And I can guaran-damn-tee ya I’m not havin’ sex with any of them.”
Her expression flattened Kermit the Frog-style. “Only because Boss, Snake, Dan, and Ozzie would beat you to a sticky pulp if you tried.”
“True.” He shrugged and bit the inside of his cheek when her expression showed sheer exasperation. “Look,” he told her, “I’m stayin’ over herebecauseI want to be a good friend. If I came over there.” He hitched his chin in her direction. “My hormones are likely to overcome my good intentions.”
