Holy hell! Now, he was really glad he’d given the guy a Heineken bath.
Georgie narrowed her gaze. “How’d you know he was the guy who hurt me?”
“When you’re not referring to me as the Emperor of Asshattery, you’re calling me a Brice Casey. I put two and two together tonight when he introduced himself. Then, when you were working the runway, he came up to me and told me he thought you were hot—like you were just some object to him—and I hated him because he didn’t see all of you.”
Georgie glanced away. “What do you see when you look at me?”
He smoothed a lock of her hair back into place, knowing what he had to say. Done denying what his heart knew for sure.
“I see kindness, intelligence, and determination. I see you, Georgiana. I see all of you. And I want every part. I want you, and I want an us, a real us that goes beyond whatever happens with the contest.”
She turned to him. “You do?”
“I do.”
Georgie was the first woman, besides his mother, to set foot in his childhood bedroom, and he wanted her to be the last. But could it work? They stared at each other as if contemplating the next move in a game of chess, and she read his mind.
“Do you think an eight and a ten can make it?” she asked just as he remembered one salient data point.
“We do have a sixty-nine percent overlap,” he replied, holding back a grin.
Her lips twisted into a sexy smirk. “So, we’ll be fine as long as we’re sixty-nining? Is that what you’re trying to say?”
He was sure as hell ready to sixty-nine her into oblivion, but he wanted more. He wanted her.
He pulled her into his arms and leaned his forehead against hers. “As long as we’re together, nothing can stop us.”
“I agree,” she whispered, her breath tickling his chin.
He wanted to take her, right there, but then he remembered who was waiting at home for her.
“Do you need to get home to take care of Mr. Tuesday?”
She chuckled. “You got his name right.”
“Of course, I know his name. Do you think he’s okay? It’s been several hours.”
She ran her fingertips down his jawline. “I texted Irene while you were with your dad. She brought Mr. Tuesday over to her place. I figured with how late it was, we might crash here.”
“Always planning. That’s a ten quality,” he teased.
“Always conscientious. That’s an eight for you,” she countered.
But he was done caring about numbers, except for maybe sixty-nine.
“Can I kiss you, Georgiana? I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything more in my entire life.”
A mischievous glint sparked in her eyes. “You can kiss me if you meet my Own the Eights list.”
He raised an eyebrow. “So you’re going to tell me?”
She nodded
“All right, I agree to those terms.”
“Number one. He must be kind to animals and like Mr. Tuesday,” she began.
He cupped her cheek and pressed his lips to hers in a slow, sensual kiss. “You know how I feel about goats, and I did save your dog from becoming a runaway and living on the streets.”
She giggled. “Okay, number two. Must read books.”
He nipped at her bottom lip. “I read books and journals and pertinent medical data.”
“Oh wow!” she gasped and tangled her fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck, getting a little sidetracked.
“Keep going. Tens always finish what they start,” he growled.
She let out a breathy moan as he gripped her ass.
“Numbers three, four, five, six, and seven. Do you have a stable job, are you always honest, do you donate to charity, care about the community, and want kids someday?”
“That’s cheating,” he replied.
“That’s an eight being efficient,” she shot back.
“Well, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes,” he answered, pressing a kiss between each response. He’d never even contemplated having kids, but with her, what had once seemed like roadblocks to his dreams, now felt very possible.
She rocked against him, and his cock sent the signal to wrap up this question and answer session.
He ran his tongue across the seam of her lips. “What’s number eight, Georgiana?”
She trembled in his arms. “I always dreamed of being with someone who kissed me every night until I fell asleep.”
His lips pressed to hers each night sounded like heaven.
“I can do that, but I should warn you now. There’s not going to be much sleeping tonight,” he said as their clothed bodies writhed together in the hottest, and first-ever, dry-humping session his bedroom had ever seen.
“I can live with seven out of eight,” she answered with a sultry bend to her words that had his cock calling the shots.
He flipped her over and pressed her back into his bed as he pulled off his clothes then proceeded to remove her barely-there denim jean shorts and Superman T-shirt, revealing smooth, creamy skin and curves he’d never tire of worshipping.
He covered her body with his, his thick shaft settling between her parted thighs, and pressed a kiss below her earlobe.
He stilled. “Do we need a condom?”
She met his gaze. “I’m on the pill. As long as you’re…”
“I am. I’m clean,” he said a bit too quickly, sounding like an eager, horny teenager.
“Okay, number four on my list is honesty. And you did answer yes.”
He held her gaze. “You can trust me, Georgiana. I’ll never lie to you. Say you want this. Say you feel it, too.”
They’d figure out the blog contest. They had to. There was no choice, not anymore. This hippie skirt-wearing, Birkenstock loving, cardigan donning bookseller beauty queen had peeled back the layers he’d constructed to shield his heart from his past. Yes, he was a ten now, and he still believed in the Marks Perfect Ten Mindset but with a slight tweak that dialed back the importance of image and appearance.
“I feel it, too,” she said, then reached between them and gripped his cock. “Now, be a good ten and finish what you’ve started with this eight.”
Jordan Marks did not need to be told twice. He drove inside her. Bare, with nothing between them, he paused. “You’re the most amazing woman I’ve ever met.”
She bit her lip. “I think you’ve lost the title of the Emperor of Asshattery.”
“After tonight, I plan on earning a new title,” he growled.
“Like a pageant?”
“Yeah, I’m going for the Emperor of I made Georgiana come so many times she forgot her name.”
“That would be tricky to get on a sash, but I’d enter that pageant,” she said in a low, sexy rasp as he pulled back then thrust hard.
The time for pageant negotiations was over. And it was damn time for this ten to get down to business when his eight surprised him.
“I want to be on top,” she purred into his ear.
He maneuvered their bodies and gazed up at the goddess riding his cock. He gripped her ass as she pressed her hands against his chest, bucking and rocking, taking every inch of him into her sweet, hot center. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. She was glorious, this beautiful, sensual woman who’d crashed into his life. He pressed his thumb to her tight bundle of nerves, and she arched her back, grinding into him. With a heated cry, she tightened around him, their bodies balancing on the precipice between desire and ecstasy when he thrust hard and sent them both spiraling over the edge.
They rode wave after wave of sweet, carnal release, gazes locked as if they needed this moment to solidify that they were together. But he didn’t have to worry. Her sweet, sated smile told him this was no longer a stress relief screw. This was the real thing.
She collapsed onto him, and he wrapped her in his arms.
“You’re not sleepy, are you?” he asked.
“No,” she answered in a dreamy sigh.
He pressed a kiss to her tem
ple, then lifted her from his chest and laid her next to him on the bed. He rolled onto his elbow and began dropping whisper-soft kisses to her lips.
“You look a little tired. We may need to work on your endurance,” he teased, continuing his gentle assault.
“It’s better than I imagined,” she replied on another drowsy yawn.
“What is?”
“Falling asleep to kisses. An eight and a ten together. Oh, what will people think?” she said, nuzzling into him.
He pressed one last kiss to the corner of her mouth as her breathing slowed, and she drifted off to sleep when a pang of anxiety shot through him.
Shit!
It wasn’t people he was worried about. It was Deacon.
What would Deac say? Georgie was no Shelly. And thank God Georgie wasn’t like that gym bunny. But Deac had his opinions. If he wanted to stay in the man’s good graces, he needed to win. Dammit! He couldn’t go there. He pushed the thought of Deacon’s approval out of his mind, covered their bodies with a quilt folded on the end of the bed, and gathered Georgie into his arms.
But just as he was about to fall asleep, his gaze traveled to the dresser and the half-opened straw, and he could hear the kids chanting.
“Straws! Straws!”
He couldn’t go back to what his life was like before he’d transformed into a disciplined ten.
Releasing a pained sigh, he shook off the memory and gazed at Georgie’s beautiful, peaceful face. Could he have her and still be a ten?
He closed his eyes and focused on the sound of her breathing. He could do it. They could do it. There had to be a way where he could please both himself and his longtime mentor. A solution that allowed him to walk away with the girl and keep his relationship with Deacon intact.
Exhaustion washed over him, and on the cusp of sleep, all he could do was hope the answer would come.
11
Georgie
Georgie stared at her reflection in the dressing room mirror and frowned. “Jordan, I cannot have sex hair,” she whispered as he stood behind her, kissing a sinfully sweet trail from her earlobe to her neck.
He met her gaze in the mirror and gave her a wolfish grin. “Like when it’s all wild and tangled from us not leaving your place and me fucking you on every available flat surface in your bungalow?”
Well, he wasn’t wrong.
It had been one hell of a Sunday…and Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and half of a Thursday. She’d been rocking sex hair, camouflaged in a messier than usual bun, for the past few days, but she needed normal, un-sexed hair for at least the next couple of hours.
“But I like your sex hair,” he said, back to focusing on her neck.
“Seriously, Jordan, when I was having my hair done, the stylist asked if I’d been camping or lived in a commune without running water.”
He shrugged. “We’ve taken plenty of showers over the last few days.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah! Sex showers that turned into sex out of the shower that brings us back to the sex hair which I do not have.”
“For now,” he teased, that sexy wolfish smirk still pulling at the corners of his mouth.
She leaned into him. It was no use trying to resist. This man turned her body to Jell-O—the good kind that wasn’t prepared with enough grain alcohol to knock out a rhino. He ran his fingertips along her collarbone, and her skin tingled beneath his touch. She hummed a low sated moan, ready to give in to his advances, when a man’s voice cut short their dressing room rendezvous.
“Mr. Marks, are you back here?”
Georgie’s eyes popped open. “What will they think we’re doing in here?” she whispered to the mirror version of Jordan Marks.
“I’m pretty sure the guys will be high fiving me. You look good enough to eat,” he answered, pressing another kiss to her neck. And there was plenty of neck and shoulders to kiss in the strapless metallic silver gown, hugging her curves in all the right places.
CityBeat had tasked a group of personal shoppers, makeup artists, and hairstylists to fancy them up, for what, she didn’t have a clue.
Earlier in the day, when they’d decided to try a particularly naughty sexual position from her research-purpose-only Kama Sutra book, their phones pinged with a CityBeat challenge address just as they’d experienced orgasm number six thousand four hundred twenty-two.
At least, that’s what it felt like.
Her sex-hair twisted into a bun that would make even a messy bun cringe, they followed the car’s navigation app and had driven into a swanky part of town with boutique clothing stores and high-end salons. And over the course of the last few hours, she’d been waxed, buffed, polished, coiffed, and now shined like a new penny with an un-sexed updo.
She gazed at her reflection and had to agree. She looked pretty damn good.
After years parading on the pageant circuit, she’d shunned the primping part of being a woman. But with Jordan by her side, getting the male equivalent of their spa day, it was fun. There were no judges to impress and no scowling fake-eyelashed stage moms sizing each other up. The best part—it wasn’t about her appearance. Jordan liked her for who she was, not what she looked like. His hungry, carnal gaze devoured her both dolled up in a ball gown and while rocking sweatpants and crazy bedhead.
With his knowledge of poetry and British literature and his magical tongue, her trifecta was totally pulling for this ten, who underneath it all, was an eight. But she’d decided she’d let him go on thinking he was a ten. He sure as hell had the abs for it, not that she was looking. Okay, she was. The man was built like a brick house and had the stamina of a suburban housewife camped out in front of a Wal-Mart on Black Friday.
He could go all night—and then some.
The man cleared his throat. “Sir, your tux just arrived. I’d like to check the fit.”
“I’ll be right out,” Jordan answered, then dropped one last kiss to her shoulder.
She shooed him toward the door. “You better go. I don’t know what they have in store for us, but I can’t wait to see you in a tux.”
“A little shallow for an eight,” he teased.
She feigned exasperation. “A terrible habit I picked up from a ten.”
He glanced down at his feet. “I really don’t want to take these off, but I don’t think they’ll go with the penguin suit.”
She held back a chuckle as she watched Jordan admire his Birkenstock-clad feet. “I told you they were comfortable.”
Somewhere in their sex haze, they’d left her place to pick up some Chinese food and popped in the shoe store next door to the takeout place. Twenty minutes later, she’d gotten him to try on a pair, and her Nike-wearing ten experienced a Birkenstock baptism and became an immediate convert.
He took a step back, and his expression softened. “You look beautiful, Georgiana.”
His low, gravelly voice sent the butterflies in her belly into flight.
She felt beautiful. He made her feel beautiful.
She held his gaze. “I’ll see you in a little bit. Try not to make any of the ladies faint when they see you in that tux.”
“There’s only one person whose opinion matters,” he said with a wink as he slipped out of the fitting room.
Her trifecta swooned, and Jane Eyre was back, handing out the fans.
But it wasn’t just these sweet private moments that won over her fictional trio. To the delight of Mrs. Gilbert and her octogenarian clan of Michael Bolton fans and with Gene chuckling in the corner, Jordan had taken part in their weekly needlework time in the shop, not by crocheting but by removing his shirt and running back and forth in front of the shop’s window, for ninety minutes straight, until Mrs. Rothchild’s pacemaker went haywire.
His track pants riding low and his torso gleaming like a Greek god, she may have caught Jordan’s eye a time or twenty as he passed by the shop.
And then, because she owed him big-time, she’d agreed to join him for a couple of training sessions at Deacon CrossFit. It
turns out, it wasn’t the roid-charged operation she’d envisioned. Instead, she found herself getting hot, not from push-ups, but from watching her ten in his element. And while he did take on a slightly cockier persona, which was pretty sexy, even Hermione agreed, it was as clear as day to see that his goal was to help his clients become a better version of themselves.
Deacon, however, was another story.
While the man was polite, she’d felt his gaze boring into her back anytime she’d interacted with Jordan. She got a weird quasi-jealousy vibe that didn’t make much sense. Then again, maybe he thought she was just nuts when he’d asked her to pass him a kettlebell, and she’d searched the place for an actual tea kettle.
FYI: actual tea kettles are not a part of the CrossFit repertoire, which is really a shame, but also very good to know.
Georgie brushed all thoughts of Jordan’s mentor aside and stared at her reflection as a pink blush colored her cheeks. She couldn’t help it. That’s what happened when all you could think about is the next time the guy you never expected to fall for lifts you into his arms as if you were as light as a feather then fucks you against the wall like you were the dirtiest girl on the block.
It almost didn’t seem possible that she’d only met the former Emperor of Asshattery ten days ago.
Ten.
She couldn’t really hate the number anymore. But it wasn’t like she’d abandoned her Own the Eights principles. She’d just come to realize that chemistry mattered, but so did trust, honesty, mutual respect, and kissing. Lots of kissing.
A knock at the dressing room door cut through her daydream.
“Miss Jensen, your car’s here.”
Georgie ran her hands down the bodice of the dress and released a shaky breath when a young woman cracked open the door.
It was…Holy Miss Honey from the grocery store challenge.
“You don’t know me. My name is Layla,” the perky redhead honey enthusiast began. “But I know who you are. Of course, everyone here does.”
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