“Thank you.”
“Anything for you.”
I shake my head at his tenacity.Focus, Zoey. “Okay, now we need to make a to-do list.”
“To-do list?” he repeats. His hair has started to dry, and he’s got a piece hanging down close to his eye as he leans on his elbows on the island. I want to reach out and brush it away, but I know if I do I’ll end up running my hand through his hair and gripping the back of his neck and… “Zoey?”
I clear my throat and glance up at his air conditioning duct. Is that on? Why is it so hot in here? “A list of things you should change before the first open house.”
A slow smile spreads across his perfect mouth. My temperature rises with every millimeter the corners of his mouth rise. I slip out of my suit jacket and walk over to his kitchen table and lay it over the back of the chair. I turn back around and catch him staring at my ass. Why does that make me want to smile? I am so bad at this professional thing.
“Eyes up, Braddock,” I throw his line from earlier back at him. “First thing on the list: Put away personal items. Your hockey stuff. You don’t want people to know who owns this place. Also, you should probably paint the guest bedroom. It’s a little too unique compared to the rest of the house.”
“I can start a to-do list,” he says and reaches across the island to take my notebook and pen. I watch him flip to a blank page and start to write. “There. Done.”
I’m drawn to that smile of his like a moth to a flame, and I find myself walking around the island to see what he wrote. I know with every ounce of my soul that he didn’t write a single thing I said on that list, so I’m dying to know what he did write. I try to lean over and glance at the paper, but he pushes it farther away from me, so I end up right next to him, our hips touching. Jude wrote “Jude’s To-Do List” and directly under it he wrote “Zoey Quinlin.”
I burst out laughing, but he doesn’t join me. Instead he uses the moment to move his strong arms, planting them on the island on either side of me. When our eyes meet, the laughter catches in my throat and fades almost instantly. He’s smiling, but it’s gone from mischievous to molten. “It’s funny to you? That I want to finish what we started?”
“No,” I manage to whisper. “It’s insane.”
He tilts his head, confused. “So you don’t feel it?”
“Feel what?” Oh sweet snickerdoodle, he’s so close. All I can smell is the clean, warm scent of his soap, and it’s making me feel light-headed and irrational.
“The connection we still have,” he explains, the warmth from his skin and the heat from his smile making me feverish. “The way I can feel you under my skin the minute our eyes connect. The way I feel youhere.” He moves one handoff the counter and down between us, cupping himself with his palm. “Every time we’re in the same room.”
I’m not pinned between him and the counter anymore. Moving his hand created an opening and I could slip aside, away from him, but the only things that moveare my eyes. They drop down to watch him hold himself and give himself a slow, purposeful rub.
“I feel it,” I confess in a whisper. The corner of the K in his Braddock tattoo licks at his hip bone and that rumored photo dances through my brain. I reach out and hold his side, covering the letter with my palm. His skin is warm and smooth and hard.
He moves his hand from the front of his underwear, and I stare at the long, thick line pressing against the fabric until he places his thumb gently under my chin and forces my eyes up. He’s got a satisfied smile dancing on his gorgeous face. He’s glad I’m staring at his hard-on.
“So why is it insanity to want to act on that kind of attraction?” he questions me. I have absolutely no response. “It’s been a decade, an entire decade, Zoey, and yet you’re still like a bomb that detonates inside me every time our eyes connect.”
I swallow, even though my mouth is dry. “I’m married.”
He sighs, and his eyes leave my face and follow his hand as it moves from my chin down my neck, his fingers tracing a line that sets goose bumps off like falling dominos in their wake. His hand glides along my collarbone, around to the back of my neck and up into my hair.
“I know. And somehow in the last decade you turned into a good girl.” He almost sounds disappointed. “It’s okay. I’ve waited eleven years. I can wait a little bit longer.”
“For what? What are you waiting to do?” I’m needy. I know exactly what for, but I want him to say it. I want to hear the words come out of his sexy mouth, and I want them to be dirty. “Say it. Please.”
His fingers twist and move in my chignon, and then suddenly my hair is free and tumbling over my shoulders, and his fingers move deeper into it and then curl. My hair is gently twisted in his curled hand and he tugs softly, tilting my head gently and leaning closer so his lips are near my ear. “I’m waiting to do all the things I dreamed of doing to you at seventeen. Spreading your legs with my hands and then spreading your pussy with my tongue. I’d never done that to a girl when I was seventeen, but I wanted to do it to you. I fantasized about feeling that part of you on my tongue, of tasting you, of watching from between your legs as you came.”
“Holy fuck.”
He grins at that. I can’t see it, but I can feel his mouth pull open against my ear. He must remember my aversion to cussing and that I only do it when I can’t control myself. He leans in so that his whole body, and I mean hiswholebody, is pressed against mine. The hard edge of the island’s countertop must be digging into my lower back but I don’t feel it. All I can feel is the weight and heat of his skin touching mine and the undeniable press of his erection against my hip. He is rock hard and it makes my stomach flutter wildly.
“And after I check eating you out off my to-do list I’m going to peel you out of your proper little suit and finally push my throbbing dick into your wet little pussy and fuck you long, hard and slow until we both explode.”
I moan. It’s only slightly louder and trembling as much as a hummingbird’s wing, but it’s a shameless moan just the same. He’s moved his face from my ear and now we’re nose-to-nose, and that tongue he’s promised to fuck me with is sliding over his bottom lip, and if he tries to kiss me like he did last night I will not stop him. He can do anything to me right now and I would welcome it.
There’s a noise. The scrape of metal. A click.
“Jude! So Match.com was invented by sadomasochists. I’m one hundred percent certain and would swear to it under oath.” Dixie’s voice echoes down the hall, and it’s like a fire alarm screaming, sending us into panic mode.
Jude jumps back, and I rush to the other end of the kitchen, toward the table, stumbling over my own feet because apparently I can’t walk in heels anymore—or, you know, at all.
