Strong and Sexy

by Jill Shalvis

  second in history, his mouth slid against hers in a far too fleeting kiss. “Don’t ask until you’re sure.” Then he stepped back.

  She concentrated on gulping in air while he told Bella it was time for food. The dog barked with happiness, while she? Stood there trying to control her body’s needs.

  Note to self: don’t stir the beast unless you’re ready to tame it.

  She didn’t plan on doing that.

  But a small part of her so wanted to.

  Chapter 10

  Shayne walked into his kitchen to feed Bella, incredibly, erotically, aware of the woman who followed him.

  He was also incredibly, erotically aware of her inner struggle.

  Do him.

  Don’t do him.

  She was giving him a damned complex, but he didn’t mention it as she watched him feed the dog or as he led her through his house.

  He’d only purchased the place about three months ago, and hadn’t exactly made it a home yet. There was nothing in the living room but a huge-screen TV and an even more huge soft comfy couch and chair. He had only bar stools in the den, which opened to the kitchen, where Bella was busy chowing through five pounds of food. He hadn’t gotten around to finding a table he liked.

  He had a bed, though, a large, lush bed that he wasn’t having any trouble picturing Dani sprawled across, her wild hair all around her head, his sheets smooth beneath her lovely, hot bod, and then that same body beneath his . . .

  “I can’t.”

  He tore his brain away from the fantasy and looked at her.

  Eyes glued to his bed, she swallowed and shook her head. “I’m not taking your bed.”

  It was barely dawn and they needed a few hours’ sleep. He especially needed a few hours’ sleep, since he had a full schedule ahead of him for the day, including a flight to Santa Barbara. “You’re the guest,” he said firmly. “You get the bed.”

  She stared up at him, her face unreadable. “Have you ever had a woman in your bed that you weren’t sleeping with?”

  “Uh . . .”

  “Have you?”

  “No,” he admitted.

  “That’s what I thought.” She sighed. “At least your mom taught you good manners.”

  “More like they were beaten into me by my father, but yeah.” He smiled, hoping to see her smile in return. “Come on. Just a little shut-eye.” He crossed to his dresser and pulled out a T-shirt and sweat bottoms, handing them to her. “Help yourself, if you want to be more comfortable.”

  Though personally, he’d be imagining her sleeping in the nude. She’d wanted to know what it would take for him to lose his control? That.

  That’s all it would take.

  She hugged the clothes and continued to just look at him, her eyes filled with a longing and a hunger that made him close his.

  Distance. They both wanted it.

  Not going to be easy. “ ’Night,” he said a bit hoarsely, and left the room. Behind him, he heard her shut the door, and at the sound of the lock clicking into place, he let out a long, serrated breath.

  There.

  Safe.

  Though who was safe from whom, he had no freaking clue. Tugging his shirt off, he went into the living room and looked at the couch as he kicked off his shoes.

  Bella came out of the kitchen still licking her chops and smelling like dog food. She eyed the couch, which she considered hers.

  “Not tonight, babe,” he told her.

  But Bella leapt up, turned in a circle three times on the cushions, then plopped into them with a blissful sigh.

  With a sigh of his own, Shayne padded into the kitchen and peered into the fridge. Two beers, leftover pizza, leftover Thai, and leftover Italian.

  Maybe he ought to see if he could pay Jan to keep him in some fresh food as well as walk Bella, because if his mother could see this, she’d just sigh.

  She’d done a lot of sighing over the years for Shayne. There’d been his inability to deal with his older brothers and his father’s constant ribbing and roughhousing. There’d been his trouble in school, not grade-wise, but attitude-wise. Mostly his father had beaten that out of him too, but it’d been a long haul because he’d been pretty attitude-ridden.

  By the time he’d hooked up with Brody and Noah in seventh grade, he’d been pretty damn tired of being picked on. Then two things had happened simultaneously; he’d grown ten inches in four months, and he’d bonded with two boys who were also misfits, also different, and better yet, they got him. Over their mutual love of planes, they’d made promises—that someday they’d run their own private airline for the rich and famous, flying all over the world on someone else’s dime.

  A fantasy, nothing more.

  But they believed in that fantasy, and they’d made it happen.

  It hadn’t been easy. It had nearly sent them each spinning into bankruptcy, several times, and no one had as far to spin as Shayne. Several times through college, and in the years since, they’d lived together because there hadn’t been a spare dime, but that had worked too.

  And in the end, the three of them had pulled it off.

  And this year they’d paid off their last big creditor, celebrating their first month solidly in the black. A few months later, he’d bought this house for himself.

  “Nice to know you didn’t completely blow your trust fund,” his father had said when he’d gotten his first look at the house. His mother had seconded that with “because we weren’t going to replace it.”

  They meant well, he knew that. He also knew that he hadn’t been easy on them. But all he’d ever asked of them was to believe in him, and they hadn’t been able to do that, not once, not ever. So he’d gotten over it. He had Sky High. He had Brody and Noah, and now by extension, Bailey and Maddie. And he was good.

  His life was full.

  Very full.

  With a sigh, he moved back into the living room and nudged Bella.

  She cracked open one eye.

  He nudged her again.

  She closed her eye.

  “Damn it.” Snagging the blanket off the back of the couch, he sprawled out on the carpet, turning over a few times before he could get even quasi-comfortable.

  Just as he drifted off, Bella jumped off the couch and stretched out at his side with a groan. She had his back and would keep him warm. She might be a bed hog with some really bad breath, but she’d never judge him, that was for sure. She’d always be there.

  No man needed more than that . . .

  The phone rang, jarring Shayne awake. The machine on the other side of the room clicked on, telling him he must have been sleeping pretty damn hard if the phone had rung four times, which is what it took for the machine to come on. Because he was so exhausted, he lay there, content to let whoever it was calling him at six in the morning to leave a message.

  “Shayne?” Michelle’s voice filled the room. “Wish you’d come by last night. I was looking forward to one of our late-night trysts . . .”

  They’d had exactly one late-night tryst, one that she’d instigated, promising him that she wasn’t looking for anything more . . .

  “Call me,” she said with promise thick in her admittedly sexy voice. “Maybe we can hook up tonight instead.”

  The machine clicked off, but there was another sound in the room, a light rustling that had Bella lifting her head and snuffling, but Shayne already knew who stood over him wearing—ah, man, look at her—wearing only his T-shirt, which fell to her thighs.

  He’d fallen asleep with the kitchen light on behind her, which allowed him to see right through the material. God bless that light.

  And as a bonus, from his vantage on the floor he caught a peek-a-boo hint of peach panties. Cotton? Silk?

  “Hey,” she said, hugging herself. She took a step closer and tripped over the shoes he’d carelessly kicked off. With a gasp, she fell.

  Right on top of him.

  Not so good for his supposed distance, but pretty damn great for his temporary b
out of loneliness, having that hot curvy body all over the top of him. And she was all over him, her hair in his mouth, one soft thigh between his, her breasts smashed against his chest.

  “I’m sorry.” She tried to push off him but her hand sank into his gut, making him let out an “oof,” and then she overcorrected by shifting her hand lower, and this time when she pushed up she had a handful of his package.

  “Careful,” he warned, wrapping his fingers around her wrist.

  “Oh, God.” She went utterly still, shock on her face. “I’m so sorry.”

  But she didn’t take her hand off him.

  “Dani?”

  “Yeah?”

  Her fingers were warm, and definitely . . . Christ . . . outlining him. “What are you doing?”

  Groaning, she buried her face in his chest. “He has to ask me what I’m doing. That’s bad. Very bad.” Fumbling for balance, she rolled to her back on the floor, thankfully managing not to un-man him in the process.

  Lifting up, he eyed her. Her hair covered her face but his T-shirt had risen up high enough on her thighs to reveal a close-up and personal view of those peach panties.

  Satin.

  He closed his eyes as all the blood drained out of his head for parts south. “I’m sorry if the phone woke you.”

  “Was she your . . . girlfriend?”

  “No.”

  She let out a shaky breath. “But you’ve slept with her.”

  Brody or Noah always said one of his many, many faults was being honest. Too honest. Brutally honest.

  He couldn’t help it. Being honest was all he had. “Yes.”

  “Are you still sleeping with her?”

  “No.” Gently, he pushed the hair from her face, and when her eyes cut to his, he shook his head. “No. It turns out we’re . . . incompatible.”

  She absorbed that, and processed. “As in she wants a relationship, and you don’t?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because you don’t do relationships, right?”

  So he wasn’t the only one who could do brutally honest. “Not as a habit, no.”

  “I do. But I’m bad at them, really bad. Guys don’t tend to stick, and I’ve always blamed them, but lately I’m thinking it’s me.”

  Ah, hell. “It’s not you. You’re perfect.”

  She shook her head. “Don’t say stuff like that to me.”

  “Why not?”

  “It makes me want you.”

  “I thought we weren’t going there.”

  “Well, there’s there, and there’s there. You know?”

  He really didn’t, but she was looking at him so hopefully expectant, he nodded his head, which earned him a beaming smile.

  “So you agree?” she whispered, not breathing, her mouth tantalizingly close to his, and then there was her warm, soft body, barely clad, lying against him.

  He wasn’t breathing either. Did he agree? He hadn’t a fucking clue, but he nodded again.

  “Oh,” she breathed softly. “Oh, I’m so glad.” And leaning in, she pressed her mouth to his jaw.

  His world skidded to a halt.

  “So glad,” she murmured against his skin, her hand coming up to settle on his chest.

  And then, somehow, through the fog of sheer lust, he began to interpret. She was trying to seduce him, and she’d gotten shockingly far. The knowledge pretty much ensured that he went hard and stayed hard . . .

  But then she reached out, presumably to touch the hair falling over his forehead, and caught him in the eye. “Ow.”

  “I’m sorry!”

  He’d been seduced before, but never like this, never in such a sweetly fumbling, klutzy manner, which was somehow far more endearing, more genuine, more real than anything he’d ever experienced. “Dani?”

  “If you could just ignore me, that would be hugely helpful. Seriously.”

  He pulled her hand from her face. “Too late for that.”

  “No, it’s never too late. Really, just pretend I’m not here. Dying.”

  “Dani.”

  “Dani has left the building.”

  He laughed. Laughed. He’d intended to keep his head about him, to keep that blessed distance she wanted so badly, and yet she’d wriggled, tripped, and fallen her way right into his heart. “Come here.”

  “Really? Just for tonight? It has to be just for tonight.”

  This time, he knew what he was agreeing to. “Whatever you want.”

  She smiled, and he felt his control slip.

  But just a little.

  Chapter 11

  Dani slid into Shayne’s arms and lifted her head for a kiss. She needed one, pronto. She needed that rush of adrenaline, that sense of floating, of delicious lust, and the knowledge that she could do anything.

  Including seducing a man right out of himself.

  It’d been a while, but she did remember the basics, plastering herself to his long, rugged length, making sure her breasts brushed his chest.

  His bare chest. And wow, oh wow, was it some bare chest. With him in only his unfastened pants, she could take in all those muscles, and there was a lot of muscle. And then there was that six-pack, and the way his pants hung so low on his hips she could almost just dip her hand in and—

  “Are you cold?” he murmured.

  No, and that hadn’t been the question she’d been expecting. Maybe “are you on the pill,” or “would you like to move to some place more comfortable,” but not “are you cold,” because the truth was yes, she was a little cold, and a whole lot hot at the same time. “I have no idea,” she said, just happy that they were on the same page, that they could scratch this itch and still be on the same page.

  “Let me get a blanket—”

  “No.” She didn’t want him to move. To that end, she wriggled. Wriggled one leg over his so that the T-shirt he’d given her rose up over her butt.

  She knew she wasn’t exactly Miss America, but men liked butts, and if she could just get his hands on hers, things would probably progress pretty quickly.

  She wanted quickly. So she wriggled again, and he caught her knee in his hand, making her realize she’d nearly caught him in the groin again. “I’m sorry.” A laugh escaped her, a very nervous laugh. “I swear I’m not out to hurt you.”