Thursday morning,I woke to an empty bed and the smell of bacon frying.
I padded out to the kitchen to find Kick at the stove, shirtless, wearing only his sweats. His back was to me, and I could see his muscles shift as he worked the spatula.
I stopped in the doorway and stared.
This was unfair. Completely, utterly unfair. How was I supposed to maintain any kind of emotional distance when he looked like that? When he moved like that? When he was standing in my kitchen, making me breakfast but looking sexy as fuck?
“Morning,” he said without turning around. “Coffee’s ready.”
“How did you know I was here?”
“Heard you.” He glanced over his shoulder, caught me staring, and smiled. “Like what you see?”
“Put a shirt on.”
“Why?” He turned back to the stove. “You’ve seen me in less.”
My face went hot. “That was different.”
“How so?”
“We were—that was—” I gave up and poured myself a cup of coffee. “You’re impossible.”
“You like it.”
I did. That was the problem.
After breakfast,he went to shower and I stayed on the sofa, with my laptop, trying to focus on the membership analysis and not to think about him naked in the other room.
The water turned off, the bathroom door opened, and he walked out with a towel around his waist and nothing else.
Water droplets clung to his shoulders and his chest. His hair was dark and wet, pushed back from his face. The towel sat low on his hips, revealing the cut of muscle that disappeared beneath the white cotton.
I couldn’t breathe.
“Forgot my clothes,” he said, not sounding sorry at all. His eyes held mine as he passed, slow, deliberate.
He knew exactly what he was doing.
But two could play this game.
That afternoon,I changed into a tank top and shorts. Nothing I wouldn’t normally wear around the cottage. But I made sure to stretch and lean over my laptop in a way that gave him a view.
His jaw tightened, his eyes darkened, and his pen stopped moving across his notepad.
“Problem?” I asked innocently.
“You’re playing with fire, Van Orr.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
He set his pen down, stood up, and crossed the room in three long strides.
“I mean,” he said, standing over me, “that I’m trying very hard to be a gentleman here. But you’re making it extremely difficult.”
I looked up at him. “Maybe I don’t want you to be a gentleman.”
Something shifted in his expression. Want. Need. Restraint straining at the edges.
